Before we start gearing up for gamescom (more on that next week), as previously announced, join us for a final cross-country tour of #BelgianGamesIndustry achievements we weren’t able to catch the first time around.

Let’s start off with BIG news. Literally, as Marie’s Room by FLEGA member like Charlie has won the BIG Impact: Social Issues award at the Brazil Independent Games festival. The studio celebrated the win in their brand new office in Ghent, where they’re focusing on their commercial breakthrough Ghost on the Shore.

Elsewhere in Flanders, exciting start-up and beloved FLEGA member Adshot collected € 320.000 in investments in order to further build their platform to easily set up campaigns and sponsorship deals between brands and content creators. The money, which partly comes from heavy-hitting digital entrepreneurs Steven Van Belleghem and Pieter Janssens, will be used to implement an AI that makes the platform even smarter.

On the other side of the country, Faeria developers Abrakam managed to get their new title Roguebook funded on Kickstarter. Roguebook takes place in the same universe as the collectible card game Faeria and wants to be the ultimate roguelike deckbuilder.

Staying in the land of the French tongue, solo developer Rablo Games has released Healer’s Quest: Pocket Wand, the mobile version of his comedy RPG on iOS and Android. The game features an adapted control scheme and the added benefit of giggling at RPG tropes while you’re on the toilet.

Another solo dev mobile effort, this week saw the release of 4 in a Blow. You can get Joris Van Goidsenhoven’s reinvention of classic connect four, a project he completed over the course of 3 years, now on iOS and Android.

Rapid prototyping company and FLEGA member PreviewLabs keeps collaborating on interesting research projects with big universities in the United States. Recently, they created a VR prototype to portray the effects of opioid addiction. In the simulation, you witness the short-term positive effects are quickly outweighed by the addictive nature of the drugs, which ultimately lead the player down the path to a coma.

In less depressing news 1UP has come out of hibernation and announced they will be back for a second round of conference, expo and of course BelgianGameAwards goodness. The event will take place from February 21-23 and you can join the countdown on their Discord or follow the event on Twitter to keep on top of all the latest speaker and exhibitor announcements.

A big thank you to everyone who makes our beloved industry a joy to report on. Next stop: gamescom!