Founder Julian Mautner; Photo credit: stillalive studios
The game, described as an action-adventure ride featuring magical abilities, such as telekinetic powers and altering the character’s environment, has been well received on the popular gaming distributor site Steam, as proven by the numerous reviews on its website. Son of Nor was released on 31 March.
“The reception of Son of Nor has been really positive and we’re really happy about that,” said Julian Mautner, the startup’s founder and lead developer. “We are at 87 per cent positive reviews right now.”
A ‘working version’ of the game was available on Steam through an early access campaign that began last July.
The advantages of addtional funding
“The main benefit of [early release] is that you get a lot of feedback from players, if they like the game, if they don’t like certain features of the game, then you get the feedback and incorporate that into your development,” Mautner explained.
Their Kickstarter campaign, which successfully raised 150,000 dollars in 2013, mentioned June 2014 as an expected release date. However, the indie game developers found additional funding that allowed them to expand their project and therefore forcing them to push the official launch date.
“We were lucky and found a partner who pushed a little bit more of funding into the development to make the game bigger, better and more polished,” said the 27-year-old developer.
Some of the reviews on Steam described it as a game that does not compare to others in the market due to the puzzles featured throughout it, for example.
“Developing a game is a big process. There was the vision in the beginning of having a very dynamic environment, that is basically the soul of the Son of Nor.”
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRX0atwUc-U]
International team with Italian roots
Stillalive studios currently has a 13-member team with experts working from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Finland, Ecuador, and its home base here in Innsbruck, Austria.
Regarding other working projects, Mautner, originally from southern Tyrol, is keeping a tight lid but says that if ‘everything goes according to plan’ that the startup may be expanding its team in two year’s time.
This story is brought to you in partnership with AplusB, a programme funded by FFG.
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