Unsigned: High-octane multiplayer in SpellPunk VR!

Unsigned is MCV/DEVELOP’s monthly initiative to bring the best upcoming indie titles to broader industry awareness. We aim to help them find the support and partners they need to reach the best and biggest possible audience.

SpellPunk VR is a high-octane competitive multiplayer spellcasting game with a comic book art style. The player unleashes extraordinary powers and turns into a magician who casts spells by drawing magical symbols with their own hands.

Developer: Incineration Productions

Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Team size: 12 people core team, 4 of them worked on SpellPunk VR

Progress: Early Access

Contact details: gergana@incineration.games

Tell us about your game and why you decided to develop it?

Set in a vibrant and abstract world that’s energized by a soundtrack composed of a wicked mix of hip-hop and electronic beats, SpellPunk VR is a high-octane competitive spellcasting game oozing with style. Players take the role of mighty-magicians who duel in fast-paced multiplayer battles. Spells are hand-drawn during battle to attack and defend. SpellPunk VR features Casual and Ranked online duels and also the option for players to create a private room with a password and play an online multiplayer match versus a friend. Offline play against AI opponents and a Shooting Range Mode are also available.

Who do you think the audience is?

SpellPunk can be considered suitable for ages 7 and older. The game has its own unique aesthetics and most people actually fall in love with it. This allows us to sell the game to a wider audience. However our main focus is people between 16 and 34 years old.

The good thing is that as of this moment our target audience overlaps with our active player base. People playing SpellPunk in VR Arcades are aged between 16 and 22 years old. As of direct B2C sales, 29% of our player base is aged 18-24 years old, 35% is in the 25-34 age group. Currently more than 50% of SpellPunk VR sales are coming from the US and Canada. 30% from Western Europe, 5% from Russia and 5% are from Brazil and Australia. Only 2% are coming from Asia. Sales, coming outside Canada, the US and Western Europe are completely organic. We definitely want to expand our presence on the Asian market, especially in China and Japan.

Why did you decide to use Unity to create this game?

Unity has all the right tools and modularity to allow our team to iterate fast and remain flexible. It also offers in our opinion the best VR rendering solution on the market. These things combined with Unity’s easy support of different platforms makes it the best tool for us.

How long has this been in development, how long will it take to complete?

The current Early Access version of SpellPunk was made by four people for the period of eight months and supports most commercially available headsets. Since we are Sony Playstation Partners, support for PSVR will be available soon. It depends on a lot of things, but potentially we will be able to release the full version of SpellPunk in a year.

What kind of support are you looking for from a potential partner?

We are mainly interested in mid and long-term business partnerships, investments, publishing deals, outsource contracts, etc. Besides SpellPunk, we have one more released VR game and 2 other conceptual IPs – one for a story-driven dark fantasy action adventure, which is intended for PC, but can easily be ported for PS5 and Xbox X and a jump-and-run game, which is suitable for the PC and Nintendo Switch.

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About Chris Wallace

Chris is a freelancer writer and was MCV/DEVELOP's staff writer from November 2019 until May 2022. He joined the team after graduating from Cardiff University with a Master's degree in Magazine Journalism. He can be found on Twitter at @wallacec42, where he mostly explores his obsession with the Life is Strange series, for which he refuses to apologise.

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