The year 2015 in review

  • 30/12/2015
  • Company, Blog

What a year it was! 2015 was full of great moments. Gentlymad has grown a lot within the past twelve months. Here are some excerpts we think are the most important.

2015 has come to an end and we are looking back on many highlights that helped us evolve personally and professional or simply gave us thrills. Not for financial reasons! But for reasons! And that leads us to one simple question that everyone - or let's say those people who are standing in a closer relationship to us and know the industry not in the least - was asking over and over again.

We have to admit that we somehow wished 2015 would be the year of our financial independence. But of course we were a bit simple-hearted to believe that we would earn enough money to pay the four of us any wage in the first months of competition. What competition you're asking? Well, there is a rapid increase of monthly published games on the most important platforms like Steam, Google's PlayStore or Apple's AppStore which is hard to stand against! Especially if you are thrown in at the deep end because you are still making your first experiences on the market. The risk is high that you just disappear within the flood of games.

Besides the financial part there is another difficult aspect to releasing a game. And I am not talking about the leaks we had of our mobile version. If your game is available to the public you have to face opinions. And even if there are a lot of useful perceptions of your game, no matter if positive or negative, there might be opinions you just can't understand. Always remember, even though someone didn't like your game it doesn't automatically mean your game is bad.

The good side of 2015

In May we won the German Video Game Award for the best newcomer concept for our game In Between. That was a great honour for us, especially as the other participators were very strong. Besides the fame we also won some prize money, which is a big help for us. As you might expect we spent most of the money for licences. Below is a picture of the beautiful kryptonite-like award and a delicious gently-cake made by Simone Rus (Thanks again!).

One big step forward was that we found ourselves a publisher right after winning the German Video Game Award. We are now sailing under the headup games flag. Whoop! Whoop!

In August we went to Gamescom as we had a headupgames slot at the Indie Arena Booth. These guys did a great job enabling small developer teams to present their wonderful games on this huge exhibition in Cologne, Germany. We are really thankful that we could be a part of it. And we really enjoyed the time meeting everyone who gave In Between a try.

Suddenly, on the 21st August 2015 it happened. Our game In Between which we were developping for 2,5 years was released on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux). This was a great relief and a moment we were looking forward to for such a long time. And boy, it feels good. Shipping your a game on Steam is all we ever dreamed of. It actually felt like we finally arrived in the industry. And the best part of it is the small but coolest community ever, giving us so many positive reviews, Let's Plays and even secret Achievement guides.

There are some reviews that should be pointed out. There were really short reviews just giving us a good feeling about what we achieved:

And there were really touching reviews like the following one, which shows that games can be more to people than simple entertainment:

By the way, In Between is also available for Android and iOS and will come to xBox in early 2016.

Later this year gentlymad has been officially appointed to be creative by the german government. We are now so called "Kreativpiloten" (Creative pilots) 2015 which makes us representatives for the creative and cultural industry in Germany. We will benefit from professional assistance for the next year.

Last but not least we were nominated for the German Developer Award 2015 in three categories. Besides "Best Story" and "Best Indie Game" we were also nominated for "Best German Game". Even though we did win none of these categories it was a great honour to be even nominated.

Altogether 2015 was a great year. We feel like we arrived in the industry since we won awards and shipped our first game. The next year will be even more exciting as we are hard working on our next game. See a really short character christmas teaser below:

We want to thank everyone who supported us in 2015, above all Linda Breitlauch and Marcus Haberkorn. A special thanks goes out to the guys from headup games and to Wolfgang Walk, who is responsible for the phenomenal story. In Between wouldn't be what it is today without your help.

We wish all of you a happy new year 2016!

And now: Feel free to comment your best gently-moments below. Let's give this old, dusty blog some life back! :)

In Between - Demo Update
Unity - Deploy on the Mac Store