Press Play Invites Gamers to Help Choose and Develop Its Next Game

Xbox fans may know Press Play’s name thanks to the 2013 sidescrolling platformer Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and 2014 puzzle-platformer Kalimba – but pretty soon, the Denmark-based developer will be known for putting the gaming community front-and-center in a unique open development process. 

Starting today, Press Play is opening up the studio and the whole development process to gamers just like you. This new transparent development initiative is about giving the community a chance to provide feedback and help Press Play create the studio’s next game. Over the past months Press Play has been developing three concepts and to show just how much influence the community is going to have, Press Play is letting you decide which of the concepts they should develop and turn into their biggest game yet.

The developers are inviting everyone to provide feedback on the three exciting concepts. Vote for your favorite concept by Sept. 1, and the whole studio will rally around whichever project ultimately gets chosen. The three concepts you’ll be voting on are:

Project: Dwarka
An action-packed first-person co-op game, set in a dark fantasy world. Team up with a group of friends to become a band of legendary dwarven treasure hunters, and explore a procedurally generated underworld filled with gold and monstrosities.

Project: Karoo
A physics based multiplayer construction game set in an open world. Build complex machines out of simple blocks—you can build any type of vehicle you can think of, and use it to go on adventures.

Project: Knoxville
A 3rd person multiplayer action-survival game in which players must both work together and against each other. It goes further than any game when it comes to dynamic relationships and spectator interaction, and makes you wonder: “How far will you go to survive?”

And that’s just the beginning; beyond this initial feedback, the community will get the chance to engage with Press Play throughout development. Some of the things that Press Play is planning as part of this process include sharing early builds of the game and having community members join meetings and project reviews via Skype. And of course, that’s in addition to regular forum activity, lots of video, and frequent blog updates.

Press Play’s hope is that working with gamers like you will lead to better games. This is an exciting time to open the studio to you, and we can’t wait to open and maintain a dialogue between gamers and developers.

Check out the official Press Play website for more information about the program, and the three game concepts that are up for feedback. We’ll have more exciting news to share after we tally the voting results!