Cursed to Golf and Pixeljunk Scrappers devs form new studio, Denkiworks
The developers behind Cursed to Golf and Pixeljunk Scrappers have teamed up again to create a brand new, Kyoto-based studio called Denkiworks, which already has its first title in development, codenamed Project Tanuki.
Made up of Liam Edwards (Designer), Taku Arioka (Designer), and Jan de Graaf (Programmer), the term Denkiworks has two meanings. Denki, in Japanese, means “electricity”, but also apparently carries a second meaning of “spark of creativity”, which is a fine motto for a developer, really.
The three co-founders were working a Q-Games, having worked on Pixeljunk Scrappers, which is soon coming back around as Pixeljunk Scrappers Deluxe on July 27th, though the team are not involved in that port of the game. Following development wrapping up on that title, Edwards left Q-Games to create Cursed to Golf with Chuhai Labs, and after that, reunited with the other two co-founders to create Denkiworks, with the plan to create future indie games that are unique and have an “East meets West perspective”.
Liam Edwards was excited to reveal the studio, saying “We’ve been hard at work on our first title, inspired by our experiences of life in Japan, coming from an expat and native perspective,” “It’s essentially a love letter to this country and its beautiful culture. We all have an idealised vision of what Japan is, especially its stunning countryside, popularised in art and media over centuries. Project Tanuki will be our take on that”.
Jan de Graaf said: “Our experience working together on Pixeljunk Scrappers was a really special collaboration and we all gelled really well together creatively”, adding “We joked back then that one day we’d re-unite to make a game again. I don’t think we actually thought it would happen, but here we are.. We’re honoured to now be able to plant our personal flag in the Japanese indie scene. If you’re attending BitSummit, please say hi”.
“Forming a new studio is always risky, but we needed to take ourselves out of our comfort zone,” said Taku Arioka. “We have so many ideas and needed complete creative freedom to pursue them. “It’s been so stimulating to collaborate with Liam and Jan again, and work on the new project has been progressing so well already. We cannot wait to reveal it to the world!”.
