Hello and welcome to the new Spanish video games industry newsletter. We are about to wave goodbye to May (and we hope you have high expectations for your summer tan) and this week we wanted to highlight two importantes anniversaries for our industry: Dragon City and RiME. And, of course, we’ve had some exciting new releases.
Dragon City turned 10 years old this month. The game first appeared on Facebook on May 8th, 2012, and since then has grown to become Social Point‘s biggest IP. The Barcelona-based studio was able to gather 4 million monthly active users just two months after its release (and despite the game being in beta!). The game has grown to establish a user base of more than 20 million MAU from 220 countries.
Dragon City allows you to unlock more than 1,600 dragons and the game encourages players to cooperate to complete their dragon books and become masters. The best news for Social Point was that Dragon City’s success was just the beginning. In 2017, Take Two acquired the company for $250 million in February, 2017. Let’s hope Dragon City’s next decade is as successful as this one!
There was another celebration this week. This time, it was a console game birthday. RiME was Tequila Works second release, after the critically acclaimed Deadlight. The game released on May, 26, 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC and tells the story of a young boy trying to escape from a mysterious island. Since then, Tequila Works has become one of Spain’s most distinguished studios, thanks to releases such as The Invisible Hours or Gylt. Right now, they are working on Song of Nunu, a video game set in the League of Legends universe and developed in partnership with Riot Games.
And a special bit of news to end our weekly summary. Mansion Games just ended their Kickstarter cmapaign for its 2D run ‘n’ gun Operation Highjump: The Fall of Berlin. The game, a tribute to titles such as Metal Slug, has raised more than $65,000. Congratulations!
We don’t want to say goodbye without taking a look at this week’s new releases. The great Octavi Navarro (perhaps you know him as one of the artist of Thimbleweed Park) just released Uninvited on Steam, a weird horror story that started as a game between friends and ended up in a race to save everyone’s life. If you like his style, you should check his other games as well!
Other games that have been released this week are Injection π-23: Ars Regia (PlayStation 4, Xbox), the second installment in a survival horror trilogy that pays tribute to some classics from the PSX era from Abramelin Games. The folks at Eclipse Games have just released the Switch port of Super Toy Cars Off Road and last but not least we have Yakyosho, a Japanese horror story, that is also Kanashi Studio‘s debut.
That’s all for this week! We hope to see you next Friday with some news about Spanish video games!