League of Geeks: "It's a very serious time for a studio of our size"
League of Geeks has a special place in the Australian games industry. A pioneer of the indie scene with Armello back in the early 2010s, the Melbourne-based studio has followed a successful path for over a decade, always lending a helping hand to other Australian indies along the way.
"Our [aim] as a studio is to take strategy games and crack them open for wider audiences through a signature aesthetic, through subject matters that are cross-cultural and appeal to a far wider number of audiences than your typical hardcore fans [of the genre]," says studio director and co-founder Trent Kusters, who just won the Adam Lancman Award at the AGDAs, for his ongoing support to indies and being "a great ambassador for the Australian games industry locally and abroad."
Kusters says League of Geeks wants to follow in Paradox's footsteps, making strategy games and their usually opaque UX "far more accessible."
The mission was more than successful with Armello, supported by the developer for four years after its 2015 release, and the developer is currently hard at work on its remake of cult classic Solium Infernum (due next year), and Jumplight Odyssey, a sci-fi sim with an anime aesthetic.
The latter released in Early Access on Steam this August. Kusters says the traction has been "amazing," with "wishlists in the six figures, up until [the] early access launch." Then things got a bit more difficult.
"The early access launch came out and we are publishing and marketing in one of the busiest months I've ever seen in my life in games. We punched into the top ten for a few hours there on Steam, and then we hovered around 15 or something for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the game had some bugs that slipped through that were a
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