"It's about the passion and freedom to develop games as we see fit."

How did Twirlbound originate?

While still in secondary school, my business partner Marc Peyré and I started developing a portfolio for admission to the Creative Media & Game Technologies programme at BUas (Breda University of Applied Sciences) here in Breda. This programme is among the best in the world. For our graduation project, together with a group of students, we created a prototype of a game. This later became Pine, our company’s first major title.

We started our own business because we wanted the freedom to follow our passion and create our own concept. We knew that when in a big studio, it often means working in a group of 200 to 300 people. You are a small fish in a large pond. That's fine, and it gives a lot of stability, but we had our own ideas and worked very well together. We can produce a whole game with only 5 to 7 people. We did and it became our first title – Pine. We dove into this process thinking, "let's try this now while the risks are low. We don't have kids or mortgages or things like that. We have the opportunity to do this now." So, we started. We all live in Breda, we moved here for our studies and have never left, it's as simple as that.

Why is the training at BUas so exceptional?

The BUas degree program is fuelled by the experience of those who have extensive experience working on games in the industry. They set up the programme and convey their knowledge to the students. The curriculum is directly related to how the industry works and how projects are created within it. We learned everything from coming up with a concept to the entrepreneurship necessary to actually launch a game.  In general, there are 2 types of game industry. You have AAA (triple-A), which are huge companies. And there are indies, or independents. These are smaller teams that usually focus on smaller, often 2D, games.  We were trained in the triple-A techniques. This means big worlds, big adventures, and everything in 3D. We decided to use all of those methods in developing a 3D indie game. That's why we stand out within the indie scene because not many studios are trained to be able to do this.

Can you tell us a bit more about Pine, your first game?

Pine is an open-world action-adventure game set in a simulated world in which humans have never reached the top of the food chain. I think the visuals are one of its greatest strengths. We want to keep pushing the visual side of our games and it is hugely important to combine that with great audio. The game makes a great impression due to this combination and this is one of our strongest points.

It's scary to release a game after working on it for so many years. Fortunately, you can see how it goes on the first day. If no one is playing the game or talking about it, you have done something wrong. Luckily this wasn’t a problem since we built up the momentum while we worked on it over the years. That was 3.5 years in total. We could shout it from rooftops.

How is Twirlbound doing? Are you currently working on a new game?

So far, it's going well. Games are a high-risk, high-reward product. It normally takes three to four years to make a game. That's a long time and a big investment. The sales of our first game went very well and are ongoing. This allows us to start a new game and at the same time make refinements to Pine. And now the whole process starts all over again. It is exciting, but also fun and challenging.