Dundee studio Hyper Luminal has unveiled plans to join Scotland’s small but growing band of games publishers in conjunction with the launch of its second original title Pine Hearts.
The move is part of plans for continuing growth at Hyper Luminal, which has expanded its workforce from 30 to more than 80 people during the three years since chairman Sean Tracey came on board as a minority investor. The company has primarily focused on work-for-hire since it was set up in 2014 by Rob Madden and Stuart Martin, but is now looking to grow its catalogue of original IP.
Released earlier this week, Pine Hearts is a storytelling game that explores the themes of family, love, loss and hope, and is the brainchild of Mr Madden.
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“It’s story that’s really personal to my life,” he said. “I lost my dad very suddenly to cancer in 2019 and so a little while after that, once I had started to process it a bit more, I wanted to make a game that covered that story a little bit, and talk about that journey but in a kind of hopeful way that looks to the future in a positive and hopeful light.”
The game is available on PC and Nintendo Switch and is the first title to come out under Hyper Luminal’s Little Nook label. Mr Tracey, a former chief executive of the Powerleague five-a-side football chain, said publishing will be an important pillar in Hyper Luminal’s growth story in the coming years.
“Little Nook will be available for games around the world,” he said. “What we are planning to do is have a home for independent studios who have exciting games that for whatever reason haven’t been picked up by the larger publishers.
“We want to create our own publishing label to give a home to those games and help early-stage developers potentially complete their games, help them with marketing and bringing their product to the market. That’s an exciting development for us that we want to build on.”
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Hyper Luminal is working on its third original game, titled Cloud Jumper, which is due to be released by Little Nook in the second half of next year. The Dundee studio is also working on a joint partnership with a London counterpart to produce another title that again will be under the Little Nook label.
The company joins a small number of Scottish-based publishers in what is the weakest link in the country’s otherwise formidable presence in the global gaming industry. While the Scottish sector is home to an estimated 125 studios of varying sizes, it contributes a relatively modest £188.5 million to the country’s economy because the most successful titles made here are owned and published by companies abroad.
Little Nook will be a “home for cosy, whimsical games” in keeping with the ethos of Hyper Luminal.
“We try to pick projects that align with the company’s values and we have this motto in the studio called ‘making games better’, and that’s about making games in as ethical and sustainable way as possible, but also making the best games that we possibly can,” Mr Madden said.
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“For example, one of the clients that we are working with out on the west coast of America called the Singleton Foundation, they’re building a game called Venture Valley which is completely free…and it’s geared towards teaching younger folk financial literacy and trying to improve their understanding of how they manage their finances, and also how they might use that knowledge to start their own business one day.”
He added that while the company will be shifting towards original games development, services work “is always going to be the backbone” of the operation.
“We want to be able to comfortably afford our own original games as much as we can,” Mr Madden said.
“The market for original games is a tricky one. You can have games that are roaring successes, and great games can also fall into obscurity, so it can be a bit of a risk but we want to be able to do that more regularly and with more certainty.”
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