Alt Ventures Announces a Further 3 Gaming Studio Investments
31 March 2022

Latest studio investments from Alt Venture’s Kiwi gaming fund include:

Deep Field GamesUnfortunateSpacemen

Is a new studio founded by Geoff “Zag” Keene – creator of Unfortunate Spacemen and godfather of the social-deception genre – who has assembled a crack team of industry veterans from around the world focused on co-op games with mood, atmosphere, and the attention to detail that makes players fall in love with worlds. Their debut title is Abiotic Factor, a paranormal survival game that sees players struggling to escape a secret facility, to be released later this year, with a second title also in pre- production.

Spotted Kiwi InteractiveXERA

Founded in 2018 by Joshua Harrington, who was quickly joined by Gary Stewart and a small team of experienced game designers to launch their debut game, XERA: Survival which hit the front page of Twitch on its opening weekend, played by some of the biggest streamers in the world. XERA is built on the studio’s own stable, scalable in-house technology stack and since their impressive start, the team has continued to build out the game as a community-led, persistent survival shooter which is about to enter its sixth season with a global audience of over 550,000 players. The new investment will support both ongoing XERA development and also the studio’s second title which is currently in pre-production.

Usual Suspects StudiosUsualSuspects

Recently founded by ex-Rocketwerkz game designers Aaron Alexander and Jayde Cohen, is at an advanced development stage on its debut title: a satirical, modern-day tale of Robin Hood set in a sprawling, free-roaming city environment where players will take on a corrupt mayor and his cronies in a turf war to recover the city for the dispossessed underclasses. With co-operative online multiplayer gameplay that blends the petty crime of GTA and player-space customisation of Animal Crossing, Usual Suspects’ debut title received a CODE Start Up grant in 2021 and the new investment will support its completion and release.

 

Alt Ventures’ Managing Partner Chris Jagger said of the latest investments:

“It’s awesome to be backing more talented and experienced local teams building the next generation of Kiwi game studios, joining our existing investments in Flightless, Phat Loot and November Games. We will see a number of the studios release games over the course of this year, and we are super pumped about what is to come. Stay tuned.”