Epic reveals recipients of latest round of Unreal Dev Grants

Unreal Engine developer Epic Games has announced the latest round of Unreal Dev Grants, a $5m development fund founded in February 2015 to help studios that are pushing the boundaries of UE4. Over $200,000 will be shared between the thirteen developers which exist across the globe, including Scottish studio Puny Astronaut, which is creating a dragon flying game called Skye which will be released on PS4 and Xbox One this year.

Previous recipients of this grant includes Moss developer Polyarc, which is creating what could be the closest we’ve got to a killer app on PlayStation VR, judging from early footage.

"Receiving an Unreal Dev Grant is a huge achievement since we are using Unreal Engine in the full production of a film," said Usman Iqbal, head of production at grant recipient 3rd World Studios. "Our film wouldn’t be possible without Unreal’s fast, built-in tools like Sequencer, the immensely powerful Material Editor, particle editing, post-process effects, and so forth. We can make constant improvements to heavily populated sets that have dynamic foliage, furry animals and lots of particles. This would not be possible if we were using a regular rendering pipeline. Thanks to Epic for enabling an indie studio like ours to Dream Big."

"Unreal Dev Grants is our way to reward and highlight the incredible talent that makes up the Unreal development community," said Chance Ivey, partnership manager at Epic Games. "These projects show what is possible when you combine passion with creative technology, and stand as examples of why we do what we do."

The full list of recipients is as follows:

• Allahyar and The Legend of Markhr by 3rd World Studios (Pakistan)
• Bebylon Battle Royale by Kite and Lightning (United States)
• BlueprintUE.com by Sebastien Rancoud (France)
• Claybook by Second Order Ltd. (Finland)
• Genesis Noir by Feral Cat Den (United States)
• Halflight by Students of the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan)
• Hyper Jam by Bit Dragon (Australia)
• Rogue Universe by MUST Games (Korea)
• Shift Quantum by Fishing Cactus (Belgium)
• Sinner by Dark Star Game Studios (Hong Kong)
• Skye from Puny Astronaut (Scotland)
• The Machines from Directive Games Limited (China)