Getting ready for 2020 with some late 2019 triumphs

  Christophe De bont        03/01/2020

Welcome to 2020! Chances are you’ve already had your fill of lists, achievements, and resolutions over the holiday break. Still, we can’t kick off the new year without one last look at some #BelgianGamesIndustry triumphs from late last year. One for the 2019 road, then.

• Blue by proud FLEGA member Bart Bonte was nominated for the PocketGamer People’s Choice Award 2020. Today’s the last day of voting, so you can still sneak yours in. The winner wil be revealed on January 21.
• Fellow FLEGA member (mind you, there’s going to be a lot of those in this post) and mobile colleague NextApps wins the Digital Product Awards at Henry Van de Velde design awards.
• Studio Waterzooi won the Big Indie Pitch in Helsinki with his artistic puzzle game Please Touch The Artwork.

• Long time member PreviewLabs came in second at the GALA Serious Games Competition with their vaping prevention game Invite Only VR.
• Mantis Games‘ debut Journey for Elysium was nominated for the Unity Awards 2019 in the category best VR game. While the award went to the equally great Falcon Age, the game is still up for three BelgianGameAwards.
• Founding fathers of the #BelgianGamesIndustry Larian Studios might have put Divinity: Fallen Heroes on hold for now, they don’t show any signs of slowing down. With almost 2 million dollars in pledges, their Kickstarter for a board game based on Original Sin was a smashing hit. The studio also announced the opening of a fifth (!) international branch in Malaysia.

• Proud member Triangle Factory will have you shoot other people from the comfort of your own living room with their Oculus Quest developed VR multiplayer shooter Hyper Dash. The game takes place in the same universe as Hyper Ball, and both look esports ready.
• There’s few esports experts like our proud member 4Entertainment. They have been knocking homeruns all year last year, but getting the official League of Legends licence for Belgium and the Netherlands dwarfs all.
• Belgian games service companies made a big splash in the Deloitte50, a list of the fastest growing companies in the country. Proud member CrazyGames and their browser game portal came in seventh and Brussels based ASO experts AppTweak took sixth place.

• Our board member Happy Volcano was named as one of the 10 Leuven based start-ups to keep an eye on in 2020, the year in which they will finally release the highly anticipated narrative puzzle game The Almost Gone.
• Also coming out this year: Cannibal Cuisine, our member Rocket Vulture‘s take on popular party game Overcooked.
• Last but not least: there were some deals inked as well. Our members LuGus Studios and Get Up Games signed a publishing agreement with Astragon Entertainment and Iceberg Interactive respectively.

There! Now we’re ready to go all in on 2020. Are you ready? Because we sure are!