The Southern Pixel Fund has named the six studios in its second annual cohort, spreading development grants and eighteen months of production support across teams in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
The selected projects make a pleasingly odd bouquet: a "wool-punk" logistics strategy game set in an alternate high-country; a te reo Māori language-learning adventure built with iwi consultation; a surf-lifesaving arcade title; two narrative games; and a cooperative lighthouse-keeping sim that several of this masthead's editors have already argued about.
Fund director Alan Su said the cohort was chosen for "games only this country would make" — a selection philosophy we would frame and hang on the wall.
The first cohort's alumni have collectively shipped four titles, including one that reached a seven-figure player count. The new studios begin their funded development period in August; expect first trailers at next year's Play Aotearoa Summit.
