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“Developers from underrepresented backgrounds often deal with neglect from publishers.”
Publisher Top Hat Studios has banded with a team of indie developers to bring “underrepresented and grassroots indie” games to consoles and “reach wider audiences”.
The first “indie pack” initiative is out now and hopes to “highlight a variety of genres and aesthetics”. All games included will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One/Series X.
Whilst called a “pack”, the games aren’t available as a bundle, but rather as part of an initiative to “semi-regularly spotlight small groups of indie developers’ titles for the first time ever on console”, and “bring more attention to these developers’ titles as well as hope to create a meaningful community experience”.
The first “pack” features the family-friendly Ukrainian game A Tale for Anna, the Malaysian-developed Fires At Midnight, Metroidvania Vision Soft Reset, and a twin-stick shooter psychothriller called The Lost And The Wicked.
“Developers from lesser-known or underrepresented backgrounds often deal with neglect from wider industry publishers, and face challenges with scaling their games and reaching broad audiences,” Top Hat Studios says. “Despite these challenges, these games still have validity and deserve to have the opportunity to be discovered.
“As such, Top Hat Studios, Inc. expert internal engineering and porting team have been working with a series of developers to support and port a number of titles from underrepresented and grassroots communities, bringing them to console for the first time, and exposing them to new audiences that otherwise would have never seen the games.”
“Everybody who goes into making a game does so because they think it means something,” adds Top Hat Studios producer, Andy Andi Han.
“No matter the scope or size of the game, that doesn’t detract from any of the artistry involved and there needs to be more recognition and appreciation for underrepresented and grassroots developers in this industry.”
