Poncle, the studio behind Vampire Survivors, has revealed that it has 15 projects in the works and also plans to expand its operations with the opening of new studios in Italy and Japan.
Speaking during an interview with The Game Business, Matteo Sapio, Chief Strategy Officer for Poncle, revealed that the success of Vampire Survivors has allowed the team to reinvest in three types of projects — spinoffs, original IP, and new Survivors games based on currently existing franchises such as Warhammer 40,000. To facilitate these plans, Poncle is looking to open new studios in Italy and Japan, which the developer says will allow it to collaborate with local studios.
Vampire Survivors came from a solo developer. It was Luca Galanta, who made a game for him and his friends. Vampire Survivors exploded, and in two or three months, it sold more than one million copies. Luca’s yachts are video games. So instead of buying a yacht, he made the Emerald Beyond DLC [for Vampire Survivors] with Square Enix, which we released for free. Things grew organically from there.
A lot of people came to us and said: ‘Let’s do a collaboration with Survivors’. Survivors seems very simple, with simple graphics. But it’s actually quite complicated. “If we have knowledge of the IP, we will [make the game] ourselves. But a lot of times we don’t. If you have an IP, for example Warhammer 40k, which has decades of story and lore, we don’t want to risk disappointing the fans. So, we made an engine called the Vampire Survivor Engine, which is a kind-of template with all the Vampire Survivor juice inside, and we then we’re giving it to people that we consider the IP guardians.
You can read our Vampire Survivors review here.
[Source – The Game Business via VGC]