The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Industry Promotion Agency (hereinafter referred to as SBA) announced that the selected works of the ‘2021 Indie Game Fast Track’ marketing support project were officially released.
‘Indie Game Fast Track’, which celebrated its 4th year this year, is SBA’s representative game support project that discovers indie game contents with excellent game characteristics through expert systematic diagnosis and creates success stories with customized support.
Funive’s ‘Animal Doll Shop’ and Meet & Grit’s ‘Do Shindos Work Overtime?’, which were selected for the indie game fast-track marketing support project in the first half of this year, were officially launched thanks to various stages of follow-up support.
‘Animal Doll Shop’, introduced by FunnyEve in June, is a tycoon-style game that develops the doll shop inherited from the legendary doll maker Pepeto into the world’s best doll shop. The game has fun elements of collecting cute dolls, interacting with animal guests and learning their stories. Since its release, it has achieved about 350,000 downloads, comforting many people’s weary daily life as a so-called healing game.
In addition, it is continuing its popularity by listing in the Indie Game of the Month category in the first half of 2021 and the Top 20 and Popularity Awards of the 2021 Google Indie Game Festival.
Kim Je-woong, leader of Funny Eve, explained the characteristics of the ‘Animal Doll Shop’, saying, “Unlike other tycoon games, ‘Animal Doll Shop’ is a game that focuses on the relationship between characters and the process of learning the story rather than running the store.” He also introduced, “You can feel the fun of collecting more than 100 characters and their stories.”
Funive has announced that it is developing unique content that combines webtoons and games using the IP of ‘Panda Dog’, well known as Naver Webtoon. It is a game in which the player who watched the webtoon plays the role of helping the character in the webtoon at the turning point of the story, and the content changes according to the selection. Much attention is paid to whether the sequel will also be successful, like the ‘Animal Doll Shop’, which successfully settled in the market by using a famous IP.
Meet & Grit’s ‘Do Shindos Work Overtime?’ is a visual novel-based romance simulation game depicting the mysterious adventure story of an ordinary office worker becoming a god one day and romance with four attractive male characters.
The developer, Meet & Grit, made great efforts to incorporate Korean beauty into the game based on various Korean tales and myths, such as ‘The Story of Bihyungrang’ and ‘The Myth of the Only Daughter’. , which uses materials that are difficult to find in existing female-oriented games, was released on the Google Play Store in August and ranked 7th in the ‘simulation category’.
In 2019, 1,241% of the target amount was achieved in crowdfunding during the game development process, drawing attention from the industry.
Lee Ji-min, CEO of Meet & Grit, said, “There was a time when even adults in this age, who live ordinary lives, eagerly waited for the admission notice from the magic school. I wanted to awaken the desire for fantasy,” he explained, explaining the game’s design intent.
He continued, “We have been preparing for a long time to satisfy the needs of female game consumers with a high-quality game. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those who supported me until the end.”
, which has been in the spotlight even before its release with various elements such as overwhelming illustrations and background music, is expected to continue the legacy of dating simulation games represented by and .
Meanwhile, is running events such as 30-day login rewards to commemorate the launch of the Apple App Store. More details can be found on the official blog.
Park Bo-kyung, head of SBA’s Strategic Industry Headquarters, said, “Through the indie game Fast Track’s step-by-step customized support program, we will actively support indie developers to respond to trends and continuously secure users in the rapidly changing game market.”
