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Frontier Developments today officially launched and named its third-party publishing initiative: Frontier Foundry. The label launched alongside two titles, the “time-twisting turn-based combat strategy shooter” Lemnis Gate, and “physics-based co-op platformer” Struggling.
Both titles exemplify the new label’s aim to do something different, Frontier CEO David Braben told MCV/DEVELOP: “I think they are interesting and unusual games… I think the more interesting and diverse things we make, the more interesting and diverse the opportunity is for the player.”
Although he was keen to note that the initial games aren’t necessarily indicative of the label’s output going forward. Instead it will be variety and creativity that will be the hallmarks of the new brand. “It’s easy to get labelled as one thing or another,” he noted.
“We can help bring more unusual projects to market working together with the developer, because we’re very conscious from being a developer not to tread on toes on the things that matter,” Braben told us. “You’ve got to make sure that we just look at issues that have to be addressed, not necessarily trying to solve problems, because you can end up with things that are quite derivative if you’re not careful by going down that route.”
“I think the more interesting and diverse things we make, the more interesting and diverse the opportunity is for the player“
The games are certainly different from Frontier’s own bread-and-butter of titles that usually some kind of simulation aspect, along with big communities and long lifespans.
“They’re not the sort of games that frontier would do probably from our own resource, because we’ve not necessarily got the experience, but it allows us to do the kinds of games, really interesting, rich games that other people have put all of their effort into, their love into, making something that’s great. I think that is very interesting to us.”
The new initiative will make full use of the significant internal resource Frontier has built up as a self-publishing developer:I think what we’re doing is a positive for Frontier, a positive for the industry and a huge positive for those people involved with us. And we’re looking to build long term relationships with people Here, and hopefully, they will see that and the market will see that.
Struggling is from Montreal studio Chasing Rats Games, and places players in the “unsightly skin of a lovable monstrosity on a bizarre and outrageous adventure.” The title is available immediately for Steam and Nintendo Switch.
Alongside it is Lemnis Gate, from Ratloop Games, also in Montreal, which “subverts the popular first-person-shooter genre to create a brain-bending combat strategy where past, present, and future collide.”
The titles are just two of five that have been signed to Frontier Foundry over the last year (ending May 31st), with the only other title announced being an in-development game by Surviving Mars developer Haemimont Games.
You can read a full interview with Braben about the new label in the upcoming MCV/DEVELOP.
