A document issued at the end of last month from Creative Europe (handled by the European commission) detailing grants for 31 European interactive projects has shed some light on upcoming projects from major studios. And by light we mean possible titles or working titles - there are no actual details apart from that.
The grants range up to €150,000 and the projects clearly vary in size. For instance Paradox Development Studios (Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV) got a maximum of €150,000 which only made up 13 percent of the budget of their "Project Dallas".
Perhaps the biggest name in the pile was CD Projekt Red who got the same amount for The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (one of two upcoming major expansion of the wildly successful RPG). The grant makes up 7 percent of the total budget of Blood and Wine. That puts the total budget at €2.15 million, which sounds modest but then again the groundwork has been laid with Wild Hunt.
Interestingly the list also included new projects from The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), Revolution Software (Broken Sword), and Zoink Games (Stick it to the Man). The Chinese Room's new title is referred to as Total Dark with €124,503 (50%) suggesting it's a fairly small project. Revolution Software on the other hand got €150,000 (37%) for something called The Enemy Within. Zoink Games' whose beat em' up Zombie Vikings is due out early September got €145,074 (43%) for something called Fe.
Kyy Games from Finland who most recently did Knights of Pen & Paper II received €116,950 (50%) for something called Darkening of Twin-Star.
Among the interesting games receiving grants that we were aware of was Die Gute Fabrik's (Sportsfriends) Mutazione that received €60,000 (47%).
As you'd expect there are lots of different types of games among those who received grants including kids games and browser giants like Bigpoint (Impossible Crimes).
It can be noted a total of 182 studios applied for grants with 31 receiving funds - 4 out of 22 UK studios received funding - in addition to The Chinese Room and Revolution Software those were Italic Pig's new project Mona Lisa (Schroedinger's Cat) and SFB Games' sequel Detective Grimoire 2.