Factsheet

Developer:
Broken Rules
Based in Vienna, Austria

Founding date:
April 23, 2009

Website:
brokenrul.es/

Press / Business Contact:
hello@brokenrul.es

Social:
twitter.com/brokenrules
facebook.com/BrokenRulesGames
Skype

Releases:
Chasing Aurora
And Yet It Moves

Address:
Museumsplatz 1/e5.3
1070 Vienna
Austria

Phone:
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Description

Broken Rules is an independent game studio based in Vienna, Austria. We make downloadable games with refined game mechanics.

History

And Yet It Moves

Broken Rules' first title, And Yet It Moves, was released on Steam, the Mac App Store and for the Nintendo Wii and is available for PC, Mac and Linux platforms. The game received a lot of attention when it won the Student Showcase at the Independent Games Festival 2007.When it was shown at E3, Nintendo got interested and the team subsequently started to port the title to WiiWare. But porting is not enough, so a couple of new features and game modes found there way into the WiiWare version of the game. That's why the metacritic score of And Yet It Moves on WiiWare is 83%.

Growing

The company was initially founded by Felix, Jan and Peter. During the launch of And Yet It Moves, Broken Rules merged with one half of their indie friends and office neighbors studio radiolaris. Learning that one half of studio radiolaris was quitting game development the team quickly decided to hook up with Martin, the other half. studio radiolaris had previously released three iPhone games; Radio Flare (which was nominated at IGF as well as IndieCade), Zombies vs. Sheep and Radio Flare REDUX. At the same time Clemens joined the company as an artist. After the merger, the new team started working on Ginkgo, an in-house engine. Ginkgo features a modern component-based architecture, a physics-, geometry- as well as frame-based animation system, deferred rendering and a live editor.

Chasing Aurora

Broken Rules' current work-in-progress game is called Chasing Aurora. Chasing Aurora started out as a bird-flying racing game prototyped in late 2010. By spring, Broken Rules managed to get public funding from the city of Vienna to develop a three part series of games set in the Alps. Soon afterwards, a first multiplayer prototype based on the children’s game of tag was implemented. The multiplayer mode was supplemented by a single player campaign and racing made place for exploration and brawling. The game was developed with Ginkgo, Broken Rules' in-house game engine. In mid 2011 the company received the offer to bring the game to the recently announced Nintendo Wii U console as a launch title. Chasing Aurora is scheduled to be released in 2012. The whole team is currently working on a single player campaign and a number of multiplayer modes.

Videos

Chasing Aurora Mood Teaser Trailer YouTube

And Yet It Moves WiiWare Release Trailer YouTube

Images

download all screenshots & photos as .zip (8MB)
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There are far more images available for Broken Rules, but these are the ones we felt would be most useful to you. If you have specific requests, please do contact us!

Awards & Recognition

  • "AMAZE Indie Games Award Nominee" - Chasing Aurora, 2012
  • "IndieCade finalist" - Radio Flare (studio radiolaris), 2009
  • "Independent Games Festival Mobile Audio Nominee" - Radio Flare (studio radiolaris), 2009
  • "IndieCade finalist" - And Yet It Moves, 2008
  • "Independent Games Festival Student Showcase winner" - And Yet It Moves, 2007
  • "Independent Games Showcase at E3" - And Yet It Moves, 2007
  • "EUROPRIX Top Talent Award Nominee" - And Yet It Moves, 2007

Selected Articles

  • "Do what you love and what you do best"
    - Interview with Felix Bohatsch, Pixelate
  • "Most people don’t care about art"
    - From Media Art to Video Games: Interview with Martin Pichlmair, Next Level Conference
  • "Two and a quarter dimensions"
    - ByteJacker interviews Felix Bohatsch from Broken Rules, ByteJacker
  • "Broken Rules shares Nintendo’s eye for new ideas"
    - And Yet It Moves Review, EDGE Magazin

Team & Repeating
Collaborators

Felix Bohatsch
Game Design & CEO

Jan Hackl
Game Design & Sound

Peter Houska
Console Development

Martin Pichlmair
Production, Development & Business

Andrea Schmoll
Communication & QA

Clemens Scott
Lead Artist

Peter Vorlaufer
Development & Technology

Josef Wiesner
Level Design

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks