Vlambeer was a Dutch independent video game developer based in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

. Founded in 2010, the studio was composed of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman, and closed down on its tenth anniversary after the two recognized they were moving in different directions. The studio was known for the games '' Super Crate Box'' (2010), '' Serious Sam: The Random Encounter'' (2011), '' Ridiculous Fishing'' (2013), '' Luftrausers'' (2014), and '' Nuclear Throne'' (2015), as well as for their stand against video game cloning.

History

Vlambeer was founded in 2010 by Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman after both dropped out from a game design course at the Utrecht School of the Arts. According to Ismail, they had been developing a game outside of the school but when the school found out, the school demanded the rights to the game, which they refused, leading to their decision to drop out. Ismail and Nijman began by working together to develop a prototype, initially created by Nijman, called "Crates from Hell". It was released on 11 May 2010 as '' Super Crate Box'' and earned the studio recognition in the form of an

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

finalist position in the Excellence in Design category.The 14th Annual Independent Games Festival Finalists
. Igf.com. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. During the development of ''Super Crate Box'', Vlambeer developed '' Radical Fishing''. It was released in November 2010. ''Radical Fishing'' was the first of many games released by the studio under a "Not Vlambeer" label, which encompasses the studio's games that are developed for money or as an experiment. Vlambeer was approached by publisher Devolver Digital to develop a game in the ''Serious Sam'' franchise. The studio and

Devolver Digital Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilso ...

agreed to develop and publish a turn-based role-playing game. The result, '' Serious Sam: The Random Encounter'', was released on 24 October 2011. During the development of ''Serious Sam: The Random Encounter'', Vlambeer released many small games, most notably ''Luftrauser''. Vlambeer started development on an iOS version of ''Radical Fishing'' called '' Ridiculous Fishing''. Development was halted after a San Francisco–based studio released a clone of ''Radical Fishing'' on iOS. This generated discussion about the cloning of video games and led Vlambeer to be somewhat of an icon on the topic.Someone Else’s Solutions
. PocketNext. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. The term "Vlambeer'd" was introduced by several media outlets.SF Molyjam: A Tale Of Three Parkour Romances
. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. In November 2013, the browser game ''Vlambeer Clone Tycoon'' was launched to provide a satirical comment on the issue of Vlambeer's cloning ordeals.Vlambeer Clone Tycoon
. IndieStatik. Retrieved on 13 December 2013. In February 2012, Vlambeer released ''Gun Godz'', a first-person shooter inspired by hip-hop, in collaboration with Brandon Boyer's Venus Patrol.VENUS PATROL: charting a new course for videogame culture by Brandon Boyer — Kickstarter
. Kickstarter.com (7 September 2011). Retrieved on 2012-08-13. ''Ridiculous Fishing'' was nominated for the 2012

"Best Mobile" award.The 14th Annual Independent Games Festival Finalists
. Igf.com. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. At the conference where the award ceremony was held, Vlambeer released ''Yeti Hunter''.Vlambeer to release Yeti Hunter from GDC show floor
. The Verge. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. On 2 December 2012, Vlambeer announced a sequel to ''Luftrauser'' called '' Luftrausers''. On 19 December 2012, Vlambeer released the

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

version of ''Super Crate Box''. Its success prevented the studio from going out of business due to the financial ramifications of the decreased motivation caused by the cloning incident. On 14 March 2013, Vlambeer released ''Ridiculous Fishing'' on iOS, after resuming its development. In 2015, they experimented with live streaming their development process and had at one point over 12,000 paid subscriptions to their Twitch channel. On 5 December 2015, Vlambeer released '' Nuclear Throne'', a

top-down shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player charac ...

which had been in Steam's early access program since 2013. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, receiving positive reviews from users. On 8 August 2016, Vlambeer announced ''120 Years Of Vlambeer And Friends. Bringing back arcade games since 1896'', an art and history book of the company written by Arjan Terpstra and published by Cook & Becker. Ismail received the Ambassador Award at the March 2018 Game Developers Choice Awards for his support of independent video game development through both Vlambeer and other activities. On September 1 2020, the tenth anniversary of the studio's formation, Vlambeer announced that the studio would come to a close. Ismail and Nijman had made the decision a few weeks prior, having come to recognize they were moving in separate directions within the video game industry since 2016. They had plans to release a final game, "Ultrabugs," which as of December 2021 has yet to be released. Ismail plans to continue to work on supporting advocacy for diversity within the video game industry while Nijman expects to continue to help develop smaller games similar to '' Minit'' with other teams.

Games

* '' Super Crate Box'' (2010) * ''Karate'' (2011) * '' Serious Sam: The Random Encounter'' (2011) * ''Gun Godz'' (2012) * ''Yeti Hunter'' (2012) * '' Ridiculous Fishing'' (2013) * '' Luftrausers'' (2014) * '' Nuclear Throne'' (2015) * ''Ultrabugs'' (TBA)

References

External links

* {{Vlambeer Dutch companies established in 2010 Video game companies established in 2010 Defunct video game companies of the Netherlands Indie video game developers Companies based in Utrecht (province) Video game companies disestablished in 2020