Awesomenauts devs reclaim their unfinished game as new studio Rangatang

gamesindustry.biz:

Ronimo Games, the Dutch developer behind indie hit Awesomenauts, filed for bankruptcy in August last year. Today, four former members of the team – including the CEO – return with a new studio, Rangatang.

Not only that, the quartet is already hard at work on Nubs, the game Ronimo never got the chance to finish.

Co-founder Olivier Thijssen tells GamesIndustry.biz that Ronimo's bankruptcy followed the unexpected cancellation of a publishing deal. The Awesomenauts studio had "quite a colourful history" of narrow escapes, but this was one setback the team couldn't survive.

"There were multiple moments where we went through a keyhole or just about survived," he explains. "Just before the release of Awesomenauts was one such moment. The publisher actually went bankrupt two weeks before [the game] launched.

"But [Ronimo's bankruptcy] was a moment where the keyhole was just a little bit too small. We had a publishing deal with a renowned publisher whose name I shall not mention because the bankruptcy is still in progress. But the game was shaping up very well, we were happy, the publisher was very happy – and then lightning struck. They informed us that they were shutting down a European branch of their organisation. We had to look for money elsewhere to fund the rest of the game."

The deal was scrapped shortly before GDC 2023, when Ronimo's indie brawler Nubs was mid-development and only half funded. Thijssen and his team managed to secure around 40 meetings at the San Francisco conference and came close to signing a new publishing deal, with one even involving the acquisition of the studio, but each one fell through at the last moment.

Wider moves in the industry didn't help matters. Thijssen points to the news from Embracer that followed shortly after, in which the group lost a crucial deal of its own and began a restructuring process that led to multiple studio closures, sales, and over 1,000 layoffs. He says he saw it as an example of the "doom and gloom on the horizon."

"At