Lithuania-based game developer Outlander Studios has signed a partnership agreement with pre-seed investor HackFwd, securing enough funds and support to commercialize the company’s first game, Equilibrium.
Equilibrium is a 3D real-time strategy game for Android. Players are taken into a medieval fantasy world of Chaos vs. Order in which they have to build and defend their village against the opposing force. Reminiscent of tower defense, Outlander Studios promises that the game mechanics and challenges presented in the game are actually quite unique.
Equilibrium originally started out as a non-commercial side project of Kestutis Tauckela in 2009. Tauckela was a gameplay programmer at Realtime Worlds at the time, but after the company folded in 2010 he decided to turn Equilibrium into a full-time job. Continuing the development of the game as Outlander Studios, Tauckela and his team released the first version of Equilibrium in July of 2011.
Lacking the necessary funds to take Equilibrium to the next level, the team sought funding from investors and ended up signing a partnership with HackFwd in December. Tauckela says that HackFwd’s investment is just what the studio needed.
“Our to do list is roughly six months long and having HackFwd’s funding for a whole year – we have a very real opportunity to enhance our game up to world-class level.”
With the help of HackFwd, Outlander Studios has identified 78 distinct tasks to accomplish in the coming months. 80 percent of them focus on business development.
“Having an awesome game is very important for players, but to have a successful business – there are many more things to think about than just the game,” says Tauckela. “Besides development of our project, we invest into building a proper company. Everyone on our team loves to come to work every day and that is by design. I personally believe having a strategic plan of how to make exceptional people gravitate towards your company is no less important than having feature or bugs-to-fix lists.”
Even though both the game and the company are still at the very early stages of development, Tauckela and his team are setting their sights high.
“Our dream is to be known for our impact on the games development world,” Tauckela concludes.
