Starting Gemelli Games
20 SEPTEMBER 2022
Hi there !
Antoine and I are very excited to be building Gemelli Games and we will be using this blog to give your regular updates on the studio and the development of our first game. This first post will give you some background on our story and what we are doing.
How It Started
Antoine and I have been playing video games since we were young kids. It all started with Pokémon - like many gamers! - before we discovered the thrill of MMORPGs and raided countless dungeons on World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Dofus. We started playing League of Legends in season 1, watched Fnatic defeat French team aAa in the first World Championships final before witnessing the explosion of Esports. We were huge fans of Dofus Arena, where we would organize tournaments and leagues and interview top players.
Professionnally, we have been lucky to work with various game studios, either as game developer or investor. Over the years, these experiences grew our conviction in three things:
Recent technologies have significantly lowered barriers to entry for online games. Instead of technological sophistication, offering a unique game experience that is engaging over the long-term for the community has become the key success factor of online games.
There is a real opportunity to develop and publish a unique online player-vs-player tactical game and create a large, sustainable business around it.
Many large, established gaming studios have failed to build a healthy working environment and are losing talent and players as a result. Starting a company from scratch would make it easier to create a sustainable working culture, by setting the right standards from the very beginning.
Game On
To achieve this vision, we founded Gemelli Games at the beginning of 2022 with the mission to develop original and ambitious games, in a way that respects and empowers our players and our employees. We are developing our first game, Skygard Arena, an online competitive turn-based tactical game. Skygard Arena will combine team-building mechanics with fast-paced tactical battle, in an original heroic fantasy universe with colourful characters. It will be released on mobile and PC and will be free-to-play and fair-to-play, without pay-to-win mechanics.
We have raised €1.5m in pre-seed funding, split between €1m in equity from investors, including Kima Ventures and experienced business angels, and €500k in innovation loans & subsidies from BPI France (yes, developing games in France comes with some benefits!).
We have started to build a strong team of talented & passionate game developers who share our vision. We are hiring, so check our open positions here or email us to introduce yourself!
Building Skygard Arena with our Community
We believe that the best way to develop live online games which are fun and engaging for years is to involve players as early as possible in the development process. We will start small-scale external playtests in the next few weeks and we plan to gradually increase the number of people who can play the game early. We want to hear your honest thoughts and iterate based on your feedback, to build a game that you will truly love.
Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter below and follow us on Twitter & LinkedIn to receive our latest updates. We can not wait to show you what we are building and to invite you to play with us!
Stay tuned,
Antoine & Alexandre
