The company behind gun-wielding worms is helping another small studio get its game to the world.
Team17 announced today that it will publish the indie game Aven Colony, which has players creating and managing cities on alien planets. It’s yet another example of a long-running indie studio becoming a publisher by taking on another indie project. It will come out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC during the second quarter of 2017. If you buy the game from the PC indie games store Itch.io, you can play Aven Colony’s beta now.
“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Team17 and bring Aven Colony to PS4 and Xbox One,” said Paul Tozour, founder of Aven Colony developer Mothership Entertainment, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “Team17 shares our values and our passion for serving the customer. The Itch.io beta has helped our tiny 4-person team engage with the community and grow the game significantly as we build toward some big new features we plan to unveil in the coming months. The Team17 partnership will help us grow that community even further and allow us to serve console customers in a way that we could never have done alone.”
You can see Aven Colony in action in the trailer above.
Team17 is most famous for developing the Worms series, cartoony games that has the tube-shaped crawlies try to kill each other with turn-based strategy combat that focuses on aiming and destructible environments. The Worms franchise has sold over 12 million games. Founded in 1990, Team17 is one of the longest-running indie game studios.
The studio is using its indie expertise to help other developers. It published Beyond Eyes: Perception in 2015, a game about a blind girl who has to use her other senses to navigate her world.