Indie publishing label Surprise Attack Games said it has rebranded itself as Fellow Traveller and will now focus on publishing unusual narrative games from independent developers.
Fellow Traveller also announced two new signings to the label. It will publish Chance Agency’s cyberpunk taxi-driving adventure, Neo Cab, and alien-ocean-exploration game, In Other Waters, from Jump Over the Age.
The new label has launched a sale with discounts on all of its games across multiple stores and platforms, including Steam, GOG.com, Humble Store, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch to celebrate the metamorphosis.
Former THQ executive Chris Wright founded Surprise Attack 2011 as an indie games marketing consultancy, and it is celebrating its fifth anniversary as a publishing label this month. It is best known for Hacknet, Orwell, and Screencheat.
Wright started the Melbourne, Australia-based company after the closure of developers Blue Tongue and THQ Studio Australia.
Wright said in an email that the label has always had a taste for the surprising, but it published a diverse and eclectic range of projects, such as party first-person shooter Screencheat, steampunk mini-golf adventure Vertiginous Golf, quick-time quick-draw dueling game Western Press, and the award-winning surveillance thriller series, Orwell.
As Fellow Traveller, the company will now focus entirely on working with developers that are pushing the boundaries of what games can be and exploring new ways for the medium to approach narrative. Upcoming titles include the lonely goat-farming game The Stillness of the Wind; VR echolocation thriller Blind; and Genesis Noir, a noir adventure set before, during, and after the Big Bang.
“The indie scene has matured and evolved since I started Surprise Attack in 2011. Back then, the idea of an indie publisher was seen as an oxymoron, but today, there is a large and mature group of indie labels with more launching all the time,” said Wright, managing director of Fellow Traveller. “Just like the indie record labels that inspired us to start the company, we want to build a reputation for a particular flavor of game. We believe this is the next step for indie labels to help developers stand out in an increasingly crowded market and help gamers find the kind of game they love. We’re all about the weird and the wonderful and pushing the boundaries of how games tell stories. We hope to attract both the developers and gamers who are into our kind of game to join us on this journey.”
Fellow Traveller’s upcoming slate of games and its expected publication dates include: The Stillness of the Wind from Lambic Studios, Q3 2018; Blind from Tiny Bull Studios, Q3 2018; an unannounced game, Q3 2018; Neo Cab from Chance Agency, Q1 2019; The Invisible Hand from Power Struggle Games, Q1 2019; an unannounced game, Q1 2019; an unannounced game, Q2 2019; In Other Waters from Jump Over the Age, Q1 2020; and Genesis Noir from Feral Cat Den, Q1 2020.
Fellow Traveller has seven full-time and part-time employees. Aside from a small, five-figure round, the company is self-funded.
In an email, Wright said, “We expect to still have a fairly wide mix of genres, art styles, gameplay types on the label. Often, the games we’re signing have a unique gameplay interaction that doesn’t 100 percent fit into a standard genre — Orwell for example. The sort of game that definitely falls outside of our new focus would be things like arcade games, multiplayer party games, anything that is driven more by mechanics or action or where narrative is not important.”