Italic Pig offers first look at Mona Lisa

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Thanks to a €122,500 award from Creative Europe’s MEDIA sub-programme, Northern Irish game development studio Italic Pig is about to embark on their second epic adventure. First they took on quantum physics. This time, they’re taking on the Renaissance.

One year ago saw the release of Schrödinger’s Cat And The Raiders Of The Lost Quark, a quantum physics themed action adventure game. Schrödinger’s Cat was published by Team17 (creators of Worms, and 2015 Publishing Hero from Develop Industry Excellence Awards), originally released on Steam for Windows, Mac & Linux, and has since become the first Northern Irish game to be released to Xbox One and PS4. Earlier this year, the game was nominated for Best Writing In A Video Game by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Writers’ Guild of Ireland.

Since then, Italic Pig’s director Kevin Beimers has been working with a number of indie game studios on story, dialogue and character development, all the while secretly working on a pitch for his next passion project, entitled Mona Lisa.

“Mona Lisa is one of the most identifiable faces in the world, and yet there’s so much mystery surrounding who she is. Out of all of Leonardo Da Vinci’s talents – painting, sculpting, engineering, inventing – what is it about Mona Lisa that makes her Da Vinci’s greatest work?” muses Kevin, creator/writer of the Mona Lisa project.

“And then I thought: what if the painting isn’t his greatest creation, but the girl herself?”

In the game, you will play as Mona Lisa, who happens to be a Renaissance robot. Far from a clunky bundle of ropes and flywheels, she’s a marvel of engineering perfection, the culmination of all of Da Vinci’s talents, truly his greatest work. She also happens to be Renaissance Europe’s greatest art thief, breaking into 16th century strongholds to heist paintings from the other great masters.

“I’m aiming for an over-the-top mashup of Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett and pre-steampunk,” adds Kevin. “Hey, nobody ever got anywhere by thinking medium, right?”

The recognition received from previous projects and an intriguing concept pitch put Italic Pig in good standing as the studio to watch for narrative-driven video games, which is exactly what Creative Europe’s Media sub-programme aims to support.

“We were delighted to give Italic Pig advice and support with their application, and are very pleased that their application to Creative Europe was successful, making them the first video games company in Northern Ireland to receive funding from Creative Europe. Funding for the development of video games is a new addition to Creative Europe’s MEDIA sub-programme, which supports the European audio-visual sector,” from Agnieszka Moody, Director, Creative Europe Desk UK.

Northern Ireland Screen is also on board with Mona Lisa. With a long and illustrious reputation for helping Northern Irish entertainment studios get their big ideas off the ground, Northern Ireland Screen has approved match funding toward the Mona Lisa project.

Richard Williams, Chief Executive of Northern Ireland Screen, said; “We are delighted to be working with Italic Pig on such an exciting, engaging and unique concept. Italic Pig is a prominent member of an emerging group of interactive content creator developers based in Northern Ireland. Expectations for this project to succeed in the market place are extremely high and we are keen to support Kevin and his team at Italic Pig throughout the development process. We are also greatly appreciative of the funds that the Creative Europe MEDIA Award provides and extremely proud that key Northern Ireland talent can access this strand of funding.”

With the funds promised from Creative Europe and Northern Ireland Screen, Italic Pig aims to spend all of next year in development on Mona Lisa with a release in early 2017, using as much local talent as possible.

“There’s such a passionate games industry in Northern Ireland with great stories to tell, and with help from sources like Creative Europe and Northern Ireland Screen we’re getting a chance to tell them in a big way.”

 

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To follow Mona Lisa’s development, visit the blog at www.MonaLisaGame.com.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of Schrödinger’s Cat, get it on Steam this week for 75% off.

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Italic Pig is a Northern Irish game development studio established in 2012, specialising in sarcastically epic story-driven adventure games. The studio is run by Kevin Beimers, one of the guys who brought you the critically-defamed Hector: Badge of Carnage (developed by Straandlooper, published by Telltale Games) and he’s not at all embarrassed about it.

 Italic Pig’s debut game, Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark (Published by Team17) turned the infamous physics feline into a quantum action hero, battling anthropomorphic particles in a subatomic zoo. In 2015, the game was nominated by the Writers’ Guilds of both Great Britain and Ireland for Best Writing in a Video Game.

For more information on Italic Pig, Schrödinger’s Cat or Mona Lisa, drop by http://www.italicpig.com or follow @italicpig on Twitter.

 

About Creative Europe

Creative Europe is the European Union’s programme to support the cultural, creative and audiovisual sectors. From 2014-2020, the EU is investing €1.46 billion in the creative industries through one unified programme, Creative Europe, which replaces the two previous Culture and MEDIA programmes. Creative Europe supports European projects with the potential to travel and find audiences beyond their national borders. Launched in 2014, Creative Europe brings together a Culture sub-programme, which provides funding for the cultural and creative sectors, and a MEDIA sub-programmewhich invests in cinema, television, new media and games. Match funding is required by participating organisations. Visit www.creativeeuropeuk.eu.

 

Kevin Beimers
Creator/Director, Italic Pig Ltd.

Email: kevin@italicpig.com
Phone: +44 79797 26519
Twitter: @kevinbeimers
Website: www.italicpig.com

Italic Pig shares in €3.4 million funding for narrative-driven games

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Creative Europe has handed out non-repayable grants worth a total of €3.4m to game developers across Europe.

The UK picked up the biggest portion for a single country, with four studios taking a share of €547,000 in funding. Successful applicants were Revolution Software, The Chinese Room, SFB Games and Italic Pig. The latter developer aims to used the money to make a new game entitled Mona Lisa (main picture).

Studios in the Netherlands and Denmark meanwhile were also awarded €499,000 and €454,000.

The funds are intended to support early development. To be eligible, a game must have a strong narrative component.

In response to the news, UK industry trade body TIGA congratulated the recipients, but called on for more flexibility on eligibility.

“TIGA hopes that the Creative Europe funding programme becomes more flexible in the future so that even more games can benefit from its investment,” said TIGA CEO Richard Wilson.

“At present, games have to have a narrative component or be of a particular game genre in order to be eligible for EU funding via the Creative Europe programme. TIGA will continue to promote the Creative Europe Programme, encourage funding applications and work to make the scheme even more effective in the future.”