Portugal Makes Games? The First Edition
Portugal Makes Games!
Cristiano Ronaldo, Port Wine, and Pastel de Nata. If you’ve heard of Portugal, one of these is probably the culprit. And while they all have their merits, there’s a lot more to Portugal than that.
With that being said, we’re only here to talk about one aspect of the country: our videogame industry. So let’s get into the first edition of the newsletter.
Portugal Makes Games? is my weekly newsletter bringing you the most relevant events happening in the Portuguese videogame industry, paired with a story giving you a peek behind the curtain.
This Week In Portugal
Nightholme: The First Crossing Event Experience
This past weekend Studio Ellipsis shared a gameplay overview video for their debut title, Nightholme, which looks great, but what truly surprised me was how they went about sharing it.
The studio picked one journalist (Polygon’s Ford James), alongside five content creators (berleezy, early-tv, SmokeeBeeButMore, ToastedShoes, DieHardDiva), and took them to an abandoned convent in Lisbon for an immersive and terrifying experience.
The six participants had to survive the trials and tribulations of an escape-room challenge packed with screeching creatures until they finally reached the only safe space inside the (possibly haunted) convent: a room where they could have a hands-on preview with Nightholme. Take a look:
Codfish Game Clinic
Codfish Academy, a hub which helps aspiring game developers find more opportunities, is partnering up with Dear Villagers, the publisher behind The Forgotten City, to create the Codfish Game Clinic.
Developers and studios from all over the country could apply until April 10th for a chance to be one of the five selected to participated in the event, which includes:
Pitch mentorship, with Codfish Academy helping teams prepare their pitch decks.
Publisher Masterclass going over strategies, KPIs, and more.
Networking dinner.
One-on-one conversation with Guillaume Ancelin, Senior Product Manager at Dear Villagers.
The event will take place in the beautiful city of Óbidos during the weekend of April 23 and 24th. I’m looking forward to see what comes of it.
A Glimpse Into My Conversation With AstralShift
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with three of the five co-founders at AstralShift about their craft. We spoke for over two hours (they were too kind) about a panoply of topics— some of which you might see published elsewhere, stay tuned. One of those was focused on the Portuguese industry and how the team feels about their impact in it.
AstralShift is one of the most successful studios in Portugal. They started off as volunteers working on a game they published for free on Itch.io back in 2016. Only seven years later, Square Enix published their second game, Little Goody Two Shoes, via the now defunct Square Enix Collective.
The studio is also one of the few examples of a Portuguese team that is working exclusively with original IPs and doing so successfully. Speaking on their influence in the Portuguese videogame industry, they told me they feel flattered and proud every time they get emails or messages from fans pointing to them as an inspiration.
Having a real success story happen in their own country gives aspiring Portuguese developers and creators something to look towards when pursuing their own objectives, which fills the AstralShift team with joy. They frequently answer back and try to help as many people as they can, hoping that more and more Portuguese studios can succeed internationally.
Besides 2023’s Little Goody Two Shoes, they’ve released Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum, a remastered version of the beautiful RPG Maker gothic horror game they published for free back in 2016. They’re now working on Hell Maiden (which has a demo available), a horde survival bullet heaven inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, with the narrative and artistic flair that are AstralShift’s defining features.
See you next Saturday, Xau! (colloquial way of saying bye in Portuguese, similar to the Italian ciao. Check back next week for a new Portuguese word).