Epic Games awards $150,000 in Unreal Dev Grants

Unreal Engine creator Epic Games has awarded another $150,000 to a variety of games and technology developers.

The no-strings-attached grants are part of a $5m programme Epic launched earlier this year, and provides extra funding to ambitious and impressive projects being built with Unreal technology.

The latest round splits the $150,000 between 11 recipients for projects that range from new video games to virtual reality experiences and development tools.

The new recipients include:

• Beatbuddy developer Thr3aks, which received $17,000 towards the development of their latest title Retro Invasion (pictured), a 2.5D co-operative brawler/shooter.
• Montreal start-up Elastic Games also received $17,000 to help with their Kickstarter-funded multiplayer horror game Last Year, in which five players take on the role of typical horror movie high school student and another player is the serial killer.
• $15,000 was granted to Agog Labs for their work on SkookumScript, a text-based programming language that has been used in titles such as Sleeping Dogs and is available as a free plug-in for UE4.
• Ziva Dynamics also received $15,000 for integrating its anatomical simulation software with UE4.
• Sinister Cyclops Game Studio was granted $14,000 to help bring its 2D platformer Spartan to Steam and potentially other platforms.
• $13,000 was awarded to UK studio Digital Cybercherries for the new virtual reality co-op shooter Hypercharge, currently in development for PC, Mac, Linux and Xbox One.
• Chinese two-man studio EasyFun Games was awarded $12,500 towards future games development following the success of Wanderer 2: The Rebirth.
• Another $12,500 went to Korean dev GaniTani for their new hash-and-slash mobile game Bellatia, the team’s first non-casual title.
• WindLimit Studios earned $12,000 for its Ghibli-inspired platform game Talewind, which uses Unreal’s Paper 2D tool.
• A further $12,000 was granted to Heiko Fink, the developer behind a UE4 integration for the Perception Neuron motion capture suit.
• Finally, $10,000 was given to German developer Rafaele Picca, who developed VR experience Deep Echo, which puts players on a mission in a submersible at the bottom of the sea.

You can read more about the Unreal Dev Grants and the latest recipients at Epic’s Unreal blog. Find out more about past recipients here.