Veteran of the industry and games marketing, Michal Napora, has announced UNIKAT – a brand-new video game publishing label based in Perth, Western Australia, and working with indies across the glob.
UNIKAT’s mission, as described by Napora, is to support developers to produce “independent, unique, and minimal games” that bring new and forward thinking to the medium. The label’s first two games includes Tensori’s recently-launched and hugely-popular POOLS on Steam along with Dystopika, which our very own Brodie played as part of the last Steam Next Fest and highly recommended.
The label’s offerings include custom marketing, publishing, and business development services with simple contracts that are tailored to the individual needs of a title. Over on its About page, it’s claimed there are no over-inflated prices for UNIKAT’s services or unfair splits in the publisher’s favour, and that it plans to keep its roster of titles small in order to maintain its values and support the unique-ness of each game.
“If we’re in this, we’re in this together,” Napora says.
POOLS is available right now for $14.50 on Steam and takes players on an eerie and unsettling trip through a variety of beautifully-rendered liminal spaces, and you can find it here. Dystopika, on the other hand, is a “dark cozy” cyberpunk city builder that’s launching sometime soon on PC, and you can download a free playable demo for it right here.
“For the last year and a bit, I’ve noticed a shift in our industry – in what players play, how they behave and buy, how people, both players and devs, want to be treated, how our industry treats them, and what games can actually be” Napora wrote in an accompanying press release. “It feels like there is a new wave coming, a new wave of ideas, patterns, behaviours, and expectations. I feel that this change is a great thing. However, new changes cannot be supported by old industry habits. The old ways of doing business are dying. It’s 2024. Here’s to new ways of working with each other.”