Dutch indie game studio Vlambeer is breaking up on its 10th anniversary. The studio, which developed games like Ridiculous Fishing and Nuclear Throne, is a product of developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman, who started working together in 2010 after dropping out of their game development university classes.
Vlambeers first official game, Super Crate Box, was released in 2010 shortly after the studios founding. With a focus on classic-but-quirky arcade-style games, Vlambeer released more than a dozen games with different teams of developers, the last of which is Ultrabugs for Windows PC, Mac, Linux, and Nintendo Switch. But the duos not waiting for development to complete before dissolving the studio. Ismail told Polygon the studios closure was particularly fitting.
[The 10-year anniversary ending] was right, Ismail said. But its also so Vlambeer. Its a little overdramatic. Nobody does it.
Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman in 2012
Image: Vlambeer via YouTube
Nijman continued: Were pretty good at taking big jumps. This feels like one of those moments, like, Hey, should we shut down the studio? Yeah, lets do it. And then, here we are a few weeks later shutting down the studio, pretty much.
It wasnt the original plan to keep the studio going for so long. Ismail said the goal was to keep the studio running as long enough as we need together to have a chance in the games industry and do our thing. After all, Ismail and Nijman said they were never really friends. Even though I respect [Nijman] a lot, I dont go to his birthday party or something, Ismail said. Were not really friends, in that sense of the word.
The people weve worked with have been excellent
We had a really good, unique dynamic, Nijman added during a Skype call with Ismail and Polygon last week. And we realized you dont need to be friends to work together in that way. In fact, that space between them ended up being a productive way of working, each working alone on the things they wanted to, trusting each other to make decisions Nijman on the design side and Ismail doing business and implementation.
But Vlambeer became much more than a small project between people who arent really friends, they said. We accidentally ended up [here,] Ismail said. We never meant Vlambeer to be what it is now a studio that makes multiplatform games, stuff bigger and more complex than the simpler, weird games they started out making.
Ultrabugs is kind of a return to smaller games with a clear, arcade focus. And so its fitting its the game Vlambeer is ending things on. (There is no release date set just yet, just that its close to being ready.)
To celebrate the 10-year run and the studios closure both Ismail and Nijman were clear this is not sad news Vlambeer is running a Steam sale called Vlambeer and Friends. Because throughout development, its actually been a lot more than just Ismail and Nijman. Each of their games was a collaboration between each other, but other developers and artists were major parts of that.
The people weve worked with have been excellent, Ismail said. Theyve ranged from, like, a kid that sent a fan drawing that we hired, to people JW knew from forums years before.
For now, both Ismail and Nijman will continue to do work similar to what theyre doing now, just separately. Nijman said hes excited to make more small games with small groups of developers projects like Minit, which was co-created by Nijman alongside Kitty Calis, Jukio Kallio, and Komink Johann. Ismail said hell focus on advocacy in games diversity, whether thats with gamedev.world, the global game developer conference, or free online consultancy for indies. A lot is up in the air right now, as Vlambeer ramps down. But one thing is for certain, they joked: They still wont go to each others birthday parties.read more
It’s Vlambeer’s 10-year anniversary, and the studio’s breaking up
