French studio Alkemi games, creators of An Ankou, announces its closure

A new day, and another painful loss for the video game industry. French developer Alkemi Games, creators of An Ankou, announces the closure of the studio, following the end of its development contract in December.

Alkemi Games never managed to find financial stability or much impact with its title An Ankou, despite quite positive reviews for this isometric view roguelite that is very reminiscent of the Survivor and Hades type games. The studio's founder and director, Alain Puget, says in a statement on social media that after the end of the contract he will hold out for a few more months, teaching his intern as much as he can, before throwing her into this "hostile world". He also throws a curveball at Ankou's publisher, PID Games, which will keep the rights to the game after an agreement between the two parties fell through, and Alain says he no longer has the strength or motivation to stay awake at night to finish the game. A transcript of the original French text translated below:

"December will see the departure of Alkemi's last permanent contract and the beginning of the end for the studio. Alkemi won't be closing just yet (that is, if everything holds together for a few months), because I've got a great intern, and closing the company would mean sending her back to the trenches at the worst possible time and I have still a couple things to teach her, I think.

After this period, Alkemi will probably close. I'll lose the games, the rights, the (very meager) income... 15 years of work. I made my peace with it a long time ago, and it wasn't just "my" games anyway. Besides, it didn't make any money and I'm not the type of person to make sequels either.

I think my biggest regret will be An Ankou: a fantastic playground on which we had a blast for 11 months in 2023 before the party came to an end. Since then, we've been rowing non-stop to avoid sinking. I'd always hoped to get back into it even in my spare time. But now, with the almost certain prospect of losing the company and all rights, the motivation to invest my nights and weekends in An Ankou has obviously disappeared. I'm very sorry about that, believe me. I have I tried every negotiation I could in order to find a plan to finish it.

Thanks to Mickael, Christophe, Guillaume, Kévin, Dimitri, Louis, Pilou, Anaïs, GC, Morgan and Viviane. The best team.

Thanks to our regular and one-off partners. Thanks to Biborg and Bruno, without whom we wouldn't have lasted 15 years. Thanks to our friends Fabien, Olivier, Thomas, Laura, Audrey, Matthieu, Rémi and so many others...

Thanks to the players who have played our games. Our weird games, sometimes a little broken, but always made with the desire to do something new that we would have liked to play.

Love, Alain."

A sad farewell for a studio that didn't quite fit into the current scene, despite the fact that its titles have a very strong personality.