If you play a lot of indie and AA games, chances are you are very familiar with Curve Games, who publish a lot of projects in these categories. The company has given us plenty of memorable titles, including Microbird's Dungeons of Hinterberg in mid-2024 and also more recently, Patattie Games' Wax Heads.
During our time at DevGAMM, we had the chance to catch up with and speak to the CEO of Curve Games, Stuart Dinsey, where we got to learn about how the publisher chooses its games and also what it hopes to achieve with Dungeons of Hinterberg and Wax Heads, including how it's focus isn't on huge sales out the gate but providing a unique and even niche experience that fans will flock to for years to come.
"When we're at our best, we focus on indie games and keeping our personality as a publisher, and we sign games that we love and we like working with the developer. Microbird who make Dungeons of Hinterberg, some of the nicest people you're ever going to meet. And the game has been reviewed very, very well. It's not the most successful game in the world. But it's a fantastic game that will sell and find an audience for many years to come.
"So we approach all of our games like that. We never spend too much money on a game, we want to have hits, we want to deliver royalties to our partners, and Wax Heads we actually, you're right, we've just released that. That's sort of a cosy punk simulation of working in a record store and the developer Patattie Games, it's just two people, one based in Spain and one based in the UK, and it's all beautifully hand-drawn and there's 30 songs on there, an all original soundtrack. And again, it's a game which will find its audience and it will probably win awards, we're very very proud of it, it's been two years in the making. It's not going to rule the world, but right now it's very high in the Switch chart at the moment in the UK and the US, particularly. Obviously some cultures don't have that record store culture, so it's perhaps going to be difficult for us in Asia with that game. But we focus the title on where we think the players will be."
We also inquired about what we should be looking forward to from Curve Games later this year, to which Dinsey told us the following.
"We have a number of games to announce soon, so I can't talk about them, but one of them is absolutely fantastic and it's going to be our big release towards the end of the year featuring a very popular animal. But we'll be announcing that soon, and all of our games, we love all of our children equally, obviously. But we do have a game called Sovereign Tower coming out soon from a French developer, which is a sort of a decisions-matter narrative adventure and it's going down really well, the wishlists are flying, there is a demo available on Steam, which I think you can play in your browser, it's very easy to play. So yeah, maybe keep an eye out for that one."
Check out the full interview with Dinsey above for more behind-the-scenes glimpses at what makes the indie and AA games business tick.
