Chungkang University of Culture & Industry announced that Kim Seong-hyun, Head of the Industry-Academic Cooperation Center, and Bae Min-ho, CEO of MNB, a content marketing subsidiary of Netmarble, signed an industry-academia cooperation agreement on August 26 to foster practical content talent and collaborate on IP.

Based on this agreement, Chungkang University of Culture & Industry and M&B discussed conducting a practical content production program based on the global metaverse platform Roblox in conjunction with the regular curriculum.

In particular, we plan to support students in directly planning and developing game maps and items using the Kkungya IP by linking M&B’s flagship IP, ‘Kkungya Restaurants,’ with the IP licensing program within Roblox, the PBL classes of the Regional Growth Talent Development System (Anchor) at Chungkang University of Culture and Industry’s Game Content School, and on-campus competitions.

Yeom Dong-hyun, Dean of the Game Content School at Chungkang University of Culture and Industry, stated, “I consider it very meaningful to be able to incorporate Netmarble M&B’s ‘Kungya Restaurants’ IP, which is widely loved by the public, into Chungkang’s regular curriculum.”

In addition, they stated, “This industry-academia collaborative course is a valuable opportunity for students to demonstrate both practical skills and creative development capabilities by directly handling actual commercial IP in the Roblox environment, a global metaverse platform,” adding, “We will continue to take the lead in fostering field-oriented, practical talent through close collaboration with the industry.”

M&B CEO Bae Min-ho stated, “We will actively support students so that they can plan and produce diverse content utilizing the Kungya Restaurants IP.”

Chungkang University of Culture & Industry’s Game Content School conducts project-based education centered on production fields such as game planning, programming, and graphics.

Roblox Game to be Developed Using ‘Kungya’ IP… Chungkang University of Culture & Industry and Netmarble M&B Collaborate - 인디게임닷컴.

The program received 100 team applications. 20 passed the document review to participate in the July Pitching Day. SuperFast evaluated game completion quality, development capability, and growth potential before selecting the final two.

The Selected Studios and Their Projects

Tripearl Games is a PC/console Full 3D action game specialist studio composed of veteran developers, led by CEO Jeong Man-son with 24 years of industry experience. The studio is developing two simultaneous projects:

Level-Up 못하는 플레이어 (Can’t Level Up Player) — a roguelite action game utilizing Kakao Entertainment’s popular webtoon IP. The webtoon source material provides established audience recognition and narrative foundation for the game’s systems.

V.E.D.A — a soulslike action title in original IP territory.

Keymaker Games is a solo developer studio with a 10-year track record. CEO Lee Nam-won has built cumulative downloads of 10 million across Dark Sword and Undestroyed. The new project, IRON SHADOW: Survival Protocol, combines survival genre replayability with action combat — and has already received positive evaluation from global users through a Steam demo version.

Both Can’t Level Up Player and IRON SHADOW: Survival Protocol target an H1 2027 release.

The SuperFast and OFFMOON Context

SuperFast readers may recognize OFFMOON as the label behind the previously covered same-name game. The label has been building a catalog of Steam-focused Korean game releases, and this program represents a structured pipeline for discovering new studios to add to that catalog.

The OFFMOON publishing connection for both selected titles means the program isn’t a competition prize but a publishing relationship — the selected studios receive investment, development support, and Steam distribution infrastructure in exchange for the label’s publishing involvement.

CEO Kim Gang-an on the selection process: “We directly played the submitted games and carefully reviewed the fun factor, development capability, and growth potential. We will work to create synergy aligned with SuperFast’s orientation of actively discovering and investing in excellent IP.”

Keymaker Games CEO Lee Nam-won on the partnership: “As a solo developer studio, the limitations I face in marketing and promotion are what I intend to overcome through SuperFast’s infrastructure. I will raise the game’s quality further based on professional feedback.”

SuperFast NEXT Selects Tripearl Games and Keymaker Games From 100 Applicants — Two Korean Studios to Launch in H1 2027 Under OFFMOON Label - 인디게임닷컴.

This doesn’t happen often. The chart positions that matter in mobile gaming are typically dominated by established IP, franchise recognition, or significant marketing spend. Parallax: Orbit has none of these. What it has is a design that is genuinely novel: a one-button runner where hitting an obstacle doesn’t end the game — it triggers an optical illusion quiz whose correct or incorrect answer determines whether you survive.

The Illusion-as-Survival-Mechanic Design

Standard runner games punish obstacle contact with immediate death or a significant setback. The tension is pure — avoid the obstacle or lose progress. Parallax: Orbit intercepts this moment and inserts a different kind of challenge: you hit the obstacle, an optical illusion appears, and your perceptual accuracy in the next few seconds decides whether you continue.

The 13 optical illusions included in the game are drawn from established cognitive and perceptual psychology research: the Poggendorff illusion (a line appears misaligned when crossing a barrier), the Müller-Lyer illusion (lines of equal length appear different depending on their arrowhead direction), the Hering illusion (straight lines appear curved due to radial background patterns), the Jastrow illusion (identical shapes appear different in size depending on orientation). These are phenomena that researchers have studied for over a century — not invented for the game, but recruited from cognitive science into game mechanics.

The design implication is that the illusion quiz is not a random trivia round. It is specifically testing the perceptual processing that the illusion is designed to confound. A player who knows about the Müller-Lyer illusion intellectually may still fail the in-game quiz because the perceptual bias operates pre-consciously — knowing that two lines are actually equal doesn’t reliably make you see them as equal.

This is the game’s genuine creative insight: it’s not testing what you know. It’s testing how your visual system processes information in real time, under the specific pressure of having just hit an obstacle.

The Orbit Map Visualization

After each run, the player’s illusion responses — which illusions they passed, which they failed, how quickly they responded — are converted into an individual “Orbit Map”: a visual representation of their perceptual choices rendered as color and trajectory form.

The team is explicit that this is not a psychological diagnostic tool. The Orbit Map is a visualization of one run’s choices and reactions, not a personality assessment. The player who tends to respond quickly to the first impression will generate a different orbit shape than the player who is reconsidering before responding — but the game is making no claims about what those shapes mean about the person.

The value of the Orbit Map is reflective rather than diagnostic: it gives players a visual artifact of their perceptual processing in a way that numbers alone wouldn’t, and it creates the “shareable result” dimension that mobile games use to generate word-of-mouth. A distinctive Orbit Map that looks like the player’s specific pattern of visual choices is more interesting to share than a distance score.

The Team Behind It

One NEUTWORK founder studied psychology and cognitive science at Ewha Womans University and completed a master’s degree in cognitive science at Seoul National University before working as a game-type digital therapeutics (DTx) designer. The other studied game engineering at Korea Polytechnic University and spent 13 years as a game designer at Pearl Abyss and Krafton.

This is the specific team composition that makes Parallax: Orbit work as more than a novelty. The cognitive science background provides the understanding of which optical illusions are robust, well-validated, and produce reliable perceptual challenge across different viewers — not every optical illusion meets this standard. The game design background provides the understanding of what makes a challenge feel fair rather than arbitrary, what pacing works for mobile sessions, and how to convert scientific phenomena into game mechanics that players engage with rather than analyze from a distance.

The combination produced a game that is both scientifically grounded and mechanically coherent — the illusions aren’t decorative, and the runner isn’t a throwaway vehicle for the quiz.

The No-Marketing Chart Climb

No. 5 on the Google Play Paid Arcade chart from a new IP, with no advertising spend, within 10 days of launch is the specific commercial outcome that demonstrates genuine organic discovery. In mobile gaming’s current landscape — where discovery is increasingly dependent on algorithmic amplification of existing momentum or paid user acquisition — reaching chart position through pure player-to-player sharing indicates a game that people find genuinely worth telling others about.

The ₩2,900 price point (one-time purchase, then no further monetization of any kind) removes the friction that free-to-play monetization creates for recommending a game: when someone shares Parallax: Orbit, the recipient’s full experience is available for ₩2,900 with no subsequent extraction.

Who This Is For

Strong fit for: mobile gamers who want a paid game with no post-purchase monetization; players interested in cognitive science and perceptual psychology in interactive form; runner game enthusiasts who want a novel mechanic beyond obstacle avoidance; players who enjoy the “shareable result” dimension of games that generate individual visual artifacts; anyone looking for a short-session mobile game that repeatedly reveals something new about their own perception.

Cautious fit for: players who want extended session length over the runner’s inherent short-session structure; anyone who finds optical illusion challenges more frustrating than interesting; players who want narrative content alongside the arcade mechanic.

Less ideal for: players who dislike one-button runner mechanics; anyone wanting multiplayer beyond the global leaderboard; players seeking visual complexity over the game’s minimalist aesthetic.

The Takeaway

Parallax: Orbit is the specific kind of mobile game that chart positions can occasionally validate before reviews can accumulate: a genuinely novel mechanic, a team whose backgrounds make the novelty coherent, and word-of-mouth strong enough to reach No. 5 without marketing spend. The cognitive science of optical illusions as survival mechanics is an idea that required a cognitive science researcher to identify the right illusions and a veteran game designer to make them work in a game — and the chart result suggests that combination produced something people find worth sharing.

₩2,900. No ads. No in-app purchases. The illusion appears. Your visual system processes it before your reasoning can intervene. The answer you give determines whether the run continues.

Available now on Google Play.

Information regarding ‘Parallax: Orbit’

Parallax: Orbit Review: Korean Cognitive Science Team’s Optical Illusion Mobile Runner Reaches No. 5 on Google Play Paid Arcade Chart Without a Single Ad - 인디게임닷컴.

The campaign’s conclusion brought a platform announcement: Hollow Home will release simultaneously on PC (Steam and Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One. The game is supported by Microsoft’s Xbox Developer Acceleration Program. Target remains H2 2026.

[Related Article: A Boy’s Day in the Ukrainian War… ‘Hollow Home’ Launches Kickstarter Campaign]

What the Funding Adds

The first stretch goal achieved unlocks two new in-game costumes for protagonist Maksym. The funding beyond the base goal goes toward additional development rather than core production — the game was already in development with Crunchy Leaf Games (Berlin) committed as publisher.

The Ukrainian Radio Archive Addition

A significant new content announcement accompanied the campaign closure: Twigames has partnered with Ukrainian Radio (the country’s public broadcaster) to embed actual radio archive recordings from the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 into the game. These are real broadcasts from the moment being depicted — not recreations, but the actual audio that Ukrainians heard in real time as events unfolded.

This addition is significant for what Hollow Home is trying to do. The game was already built around 600+ documented records and diaries from Mariupol residents. The radio recordings extend this documentary foundation with the specific ambient reality of what information was reaching people during those days — the broadcasts that shaped what ordinary civilians understood to be happening and what they didn’t know yet.

The Context

This coverage ran a full preview of Hollow Home in late July when the Kickstarter campaign launched, examining the game’s design in detail — the no-combat narrative survival structure, the 14-year-old’s perspective, the Resolve management system, the branching endings, the 97% positive demo rating, and what it means that the team making this game was displaced from Kyiv while making it.

The Xbox expansion and the Ukrainian Radio partnership are the material developments since that coverage. The demo remains on Steam. The game targets H2 2026 for full release.

Information regarding ‘Hollow Home’

Hollow Home Kickstarter Closes at 140% — Twigames’ Ukraine Siege Survival RPG Adds Xbox to Its Launch Platforms - 인디게임닷컴.

What Changed in Round 3

The program’s previous two rounds focused on studios with 1-10 employees and saw those allocation slots filled. Round 3 expands eligibility to companies of 21 or more employees and establishes a priority selection order: studios with 11-20 employees and 21+ employee companies will be selected first, with remaining slots going to smaller studios afterward.

Companies of 21 or more employees must submit a Small and Medium Enterprise Certification (중소기업확인서) with their application.

Support Amounts by Company Size

The program covers 100% of the costs for domestic AI programs and solutions used in game production and service. Foreign AI solution costs are covered at 90% up to the company’s applicable limit. VAT is excluded from the subsidy calculation.

Who Can Apply

Domestic small and medium-sized game companies, indie game businesses, and sole proprietors engaged in using AI technology in game development or service operations. Applications are submitted through an online Google Form during the August 21 – September 4 window (closes 5:00 PM on September 4).

Selection is determined through eligibility review and a combined lottery system administered by the participating association.

The Korea AI Game Association stated that Round 3’s expansion reflects the program’s objective of enabling companies at various scales — not only solo developers and small studios — to integrate AI tools into their development environments and strengthen their global competitiveness.

Korea AI Game Association Opens Third Round of Game Development AX (AI Transformation) Subsidies — Expanded to Companies of 21+ Employees, Up to ₩50M Available - 인디게임닷컴.

Prideful Sloth is five people in Brisbane with collective résumés from Batman, Elder Scrolls, and Guitar Hero. Go-Go Town! is their third game and their biggest commercial result — 100,000 copies in the first month, Nintendo Switch charts topped in three major markets simultaneously. Two years of Early Access built the community that made the 1.0 launch land the way it did. This is the shape of what patient, community-engaged indie development is supposed to produce.

The Mayor’s Desk

TownCo. — the mysterious corporation that apparently acquires neglected settlements for improvement — has appointed you Mayor. The town needs shops built, staff hired, delivery routes automated, tourists attracted, infrastructure maintained, disasters prevented, and the whole mess turned into something that actually functions. The metaphor of the corporate-appointed public servant trying to make a genuinely livable community from a corporate mandate is the specific political comedy the game is running quietly in the background.

The management structure beneath the cheerful aesthetic is what makes Go-Go Town! Interesting as a design. Early town management is direct and hands-on — you’re building things, moving things, managing things personally. Late-stage town management is systems management — you’ve built enough infrastructure that the town runs itself, and your job is to optimize the systems rather than operate them manually. This is the correct arc for a management simulation: front-loading player involvement while back-loading the satisfaction of watching something you designed run autonomously.

The self-running economy is the specific design goal that makes the late game feel like a payoff rather than endgame content waiting. A town economy where delivery chains operate independently, where shops stock themselves from automated supply, and where tourism income arrives as a consequence of infrastructure rather than constant intervention — this is the simulation depth the comparison to Cities: Skylines (in lighter form) is pointing at. The cozy exterior does not fully prepare players for the pleasure of eventually having built something that doesn’t need constant tending.

The Co-op Chaos

Go-Go Town!‘s co-op is built around the specific comedy of four people trying to run the same town simultaneously without adequate coordination. In single-player, the town does what you tell it. In multiplayer, the town does what everyone tells it, which is a different and consistently funnier thing.

The “unpredictable situations” that emerge from multiple mayors occupying the same town aren’t designed specifically — they emerge naturally from the collision of individual decision-making in a shared space. One player is extending the delivery route while another has redirected the supply chain. Two players are trying to build adjacent structures at the same time. The chaotic mutual interference that the game doesn’t prevent is the co-op content, and the emotes and communication tools (chat, location pings) provide just enough coordination capability to make organized chaos possible without making disorder impossible.

This is the correct approach for co-op simulation: making communication infrastructure available while not requiring its use, so that organized play is possible for groups that want it and chaotic play is equally valid for groups that don’t.

The local co-op support extends the audience beyond online gaming groups to households and physical spaces — the Switch version specifically serving the way that Nintendo’s platform enables shared-screen multiplayer that PC gaming doesn’t as naturally accommodate.

The Sound Design

The detail that critics and players have consistently flagged as unexpectedly excellent is the sound design. The chainsaw sounds for construction, the satisfying audio feedback of management actions, the ambient town audio that scales with development — these are the signals that communicate progress and activity in ways that visual feedback alone doesn’t fully achieve. A management simulation where actions feel and sound different from each other demonstrates the craft that separates polished games from competent ones.

Sound design in management games is often the first quality that gets cut when scope needs to be reduced. Its consistent praise in Go-Go Town! is an indication of a development team that kept it on the priority list even when a five-person studio in Brisbane had many reasons to deprioritize it.

The AAA-to-Indie Transfer

Prideful Sloth’s team backgrounds in Batman: Arkham, Elder Scrolls, and the music game franchises (Rock Band, Guitar Hero) are not arbitrary details — specific skills transfer from AAA contexts to indie work in specific ways. Combat feel, narrative design, and rhythm game responsiveness are skills that don’t obviously apply to town-building simulations. What transfers from these backgrounds is a collective understanding of what polished game feel means across different categories: how actions should sound, how interfaces should communicate, how feedback systems should reinforce player investment.

Go-Go Town!‘s specific qualities — the sound design, the feedback clarity, the co-op coordination tools — are the places where that AAA production knowledge expresses itself on an indie budget. The game doesn’t look like it was made by a AAA team. It feels like it was made by people who have internalized what good feel means and applied that internalization to a much smaller-scale project.

The Early Access Covenant

Two years of Early Access before the July 16 launch means the Go-Go Town! community has had meaningful input on what the 1.0 delivers. Cheryl Vance’s acknowledgment of that community — “thanks to the Early Access community that stood with us for two years, we were able to successfully launch version 1.0” — is the kind of public recognition that validates the specific investment players made in following and shaping the game’s development.

The post-launch roadmap continuing beyond the 1.0 (with the Industrial and Rustic decoration sets and six new language additions already announced as initial post-launch content) signals that the community relationship continues past the commercial launch rather than concluding with it. For a game whose player community built genuine investment over two years, this continuation matters.

The languages note: Polish, Turkish, Russian, Italian, Dutch, and Indonesian are incoming. Korean is not in this wave, which is worth noting plainly for the Korean indie game audience this coverage primarily serves.

The Reference Points

Animal Crossing, Dinkum, and light Cities: Skylines are the comparison set that the game’s critical coverage has reached for. Each of these captures something real: the warm, cozy register of Animal Crossing, the Australian-flavored town building of Dinkum, the systems-depth aspiration of Cities: Skylines. None of them captures what Go-Go Town! Adds to this combination: the specific comedy and coordination dynamic of its co-op implementation.

The game that Go-Go Town! most resembles it in its co-op ambition is Overcooked — the kitchen management game whose genius was finding a setting where individual competence and group coordination collide in ways that are both frustrating and hilarious. Go-Go Town!‘s town management context is more complex and less structured than Overcooked‘s kitchen, which makes it both more interesting as sustained management and less precise as coordinated chaos. The comparison isn’t direct, but the design thinking about what multiplayer simulation comedy needs is related.

Who This Is For

Strong fit for: Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing players who want a management simulation layer alongside the cozy aesthetic; Cities: Skylines players who want the genre’s systems depth in a warmer, more approachable form; co-op groups who specifically enjoy the chaos of shared spaces; Nintendo Switch players who want a showcase game for the platform’s multiplayer capabilities; town-building enthusiasts who have been looking for a new entry in a genre with few high-quality recent titles.

Cautious fit for: players who want the management simulation genre’s full complexity rather than its accessible form; solo players who specifically want solo-optimized design rather than co-op-first design that works alone; Korean-language players who need localization (not in current plans).

Less ideal for: players who dislike management simulation regardless of aesthetic; anyone wanting competitive or action-focused gameplay; players who find co-op chaos frustrating rather than fun.

The Takeaway

Go-Go Town! is the third game from a five-person Brisbane studio that has been building patiently toward its commercial peak, arriving with an 81 Metacritic score, 95% Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews, 100,000 first-month sales, and chart positions across three Nintendo Switch markets. The AAA background of the team expresses itself in craft qualities — sound design, feedback clarity, co-op coordination — rather than in scale. The management depth is real, the co-op chaos is genuine, and the two years of Early Access community development produced a 1.0 that a community of committed early players helped shape.

The self-running economy you eventually build is the reward for the chaotic mayor’s office you started in. And four people trying to run the same town simultaneously is reliably funnier than any of them expected going in.

Available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Information related to ‘Go-Go Town!’

Go-Go Town! Review: Brisbane’s AAA-Veteran Five-Person Studio Delivers a Co-op Town Builder That Hides Genuine Management Depth Behind Cheerful Chaos - 인디게임닷컴.

Korea Indie Game Showcase in BIC: Five Curated Titles

KOCCA’s open-format joint booth — the “2026 Korea Indie Game Showcase in BIC” — exhibited five titles selected through the agency’s game development support program:

The Newspapers of the Day (divingstudio), Light Odyssey (Sun Games), Bellaster (Odysseyer), Net Raiders (Oblicon), and Lone Chef (Project Morm).

The booth delivered measurable improvements over the previous year across all tracked metrics. On-site feedback survey responses reached 772 — a 72.7% increase from last year’s 447. Business consultation (Meet to Match) sessions totaled 24, up 50% from 16. Per-company averages were equally significant: average visitor count per participant rose from 132 to 229 (73.5% increase), and average business matching consultations per company moved from 2.7 to 4.8 (77.8% increase).

Supplementary activities included a Steam wishlist and review stamp event and a social media mascot customization contest using KOCCA’s “Spaceman” character — both designed to extend audience engagement beyond the physical exhibition.

One participant noted the operational support value directly: “We were able to focus entirely on game demos and business consultations because the exhibition logistics were closely managed for us. The response to the provided merchandise brought in far more visitors than we expected.”

The Newspapers of the Day (divingstudio) — covered in this series at its August 14 Liberation Day launch — was one of the five exhibited titles, which connect the KOCCA showcase directly to the curated coverage of the BIC period.

Korea Indie Game DevCamp: Six Studios With Pearl Abyss

Six studios participating in the “2026 Korea Indie Game DevCamp” program exhibited within Pearl Abyss’s designated exhibition space — the major developer serving as this year’s leading company sponsor for the program:

Textura (HyperTension), Override: Dissonance (Harbor Games), Brayta (Abnormal), Structural (Sintown), Alice in Wonderland (Sesi Studio), and Hellgrid (DuPoint Games).

The DevCamp program provides development grants, education, expert mentorship, and leading-company collaboration support to promising indie projects with creative concepts. The Pearl Abyss partnership gives participating studios access to industry-level feedback and networking that the program’s institutional structure alone doesn’t provide.

Game Academy: Six Student Projects, Expert Testing Sessions

KOCCA’s Game Academy — the professional training institution producing game designers, artists, and programmers — exhibited six student-developed projects: Draw the Sword: Attack and Defense Record, Baroque, Who Is Beth, Alice in Boardland, Face the Face, and Yellow Jacket.

The projects spanned strategy, roguelite, puzzle, and action genres. Crucially, the exhibition wasn’t purely public-facing: industry professionals and reviewers ran dedicated testing sessions where students presented their games and received structured expert feedback on planning structure, completion level, and user experience.

Game Academy planning student Lee Eun-seok described the value directly: “Being able to show what we developed in the classroom to actual visitors and see their reactions — and then develop our work based on that — is one of Game Academy’s greatest educational advantages.”

Programming student Park Jun-hyeok added: “I was able to define specific directions for improvement in UI and tutorial design based on the on-site feedback. The support from KOCCA through Game Academy has been very helpful in raising the quality of the work.”

The Institutional Signal

KOCCA’s game head Kim Sung-jun framed the agency’s full-cycle approach: “BIC 2026 was a meaningful opportunity to confirm both the original potential of domestic indie game developers and the practical capabilities of future talent cultivated by Game Academy — all in one place. We will continue to strengthen customized support across the full development lifecycle, from initial discovery of promising indie games with fresh ideas through ecosystem building and international expansion.”

The 50%+ improvement in business consultation metrics — the measure that most directly indicates whether BIC participation translates to commercial relationships rather than only audience visibility — is the data point that validates the KOCCA investment at BIC as effective rather than ceremonial.

KOCCA at BIC 2026: Korea Indie Game Showcase, Pearl Abyss DevCamp, and Game Academy All Represented — B2B Consultations Up 50% Year-Over-Year - 인디게임닷컴.

The on-site program is complete. Online exhibition continues at bicfest.org through August 28.

Grand Prix and Rising Star

General Division Grand Prix: GARBAGE COUNTRY — Noio (₩10,000,000 + 2027 complimentary booth)

Rookie Division Rising Star: Yūrei — Team Yūrei (₩5,000,000 + 2027 complimentary booth)

GARBAGE COUNTRY from Noio takes the festival’s highest honor in the general competition — a result that makes the game one to watch for whatever commercial release follows the BIC recognition. Yūrei from Team Yūrei earned Rising Star in the Rookie Division, where it had already won the Audio category before being elevated to the top honor.

Jury Prize

General Division: Tokatonton: One-Armed Blacksmith — Semo Games (₩5,000,000 + 2027 complimentary booth)

Rookie Division: UpBRELLA — ABW (2027 complimentary booth)

Full Award Results

General Division — Category Awards:

Social Impact: 봄이 돌아온 학교 (Spring Returns to School) — Chorok Woosan
Audio: Witch’s Lounge — Wolsang Studio
Casual: Cat Squeeze — Maowor Workshop
Action: Seven Trials — Newcore Games
Narrative: Lea, Lars, Samson and Ivy. Their One Year — Idun Studio
Experimental: Bojonggye — Banjihwa Games Inc.
Game Design: Necrosweeper — Studio An
Art: Finding Polka — lidlocks
Jury Prize: Tokatonton: One-Armed Blacksmith — Semo Games

Rookie Division — Category Awards:

Social Impact: Reptilian to the National Assembly! — MyTrix
Audio: Yūrei — Team Yūrei
Casual: Choozle! — Byeolmuri
Action: Amalgam — Triple Kill Interactive
Narrative: This World Syndrome — (Yi)sekai Research Lab
Experimental: Folder Escape — Team Crux
Game Design: Soom — Smallboots
Art: Soom — Smallboots
Jury Prize: UpBRELLA — ABW

The Notable Names

Several games appearing in these results have prior coverage connections. Finding Polka (lidlocks) — the Japanese solo developer’s ballpoint-pen walking adventure about a dog named Polka that we covered ahead of its August 12 release — took the Art award in the General Division, the category where the game’s visual identity is most definitively its own. Bojonggye (Banjihwa Games) won both the Experimental category and the ₩30 million first prize at the BIC x Google Play IndieFest Awards (covered separately), making it the festival’s strongest double performer. Seven Trials (Newcore Games), which appeared in the BIC x Google Play IndieFest Top 10 pitch stage, earned the Action category award.

HIPS N NOSES (PepperStones) — covered at ChinaJoy and again at the IndieFest Awards Top 10 — appeared in the General Division finals but did not place in category awards.

The Structural Changes

The prize structure introduced this year — cash awards alongside guaranteed complimentary booth placement at BIC 2027 for major award recipients — represents a shift from recognition-only awards toward awards with ongoing commercial support. A studio that wins at BIC 2026 and returns to BIC 2027 without exhibition costs is better positioned to use the second appearance for business development and community engagement rather than managing the financial burden of booth participation.

BIC organizing chair Joo Sung-pil noted: “The new prize money and booth support are designed to provide real stepping stones for developers’ growth.” Jury committee chair Lee Jeong-yeop acknowledged the quality of submissions: “There were many highly polished entries, and the jury reached its decisions only after deep deliberation.”

What Continues

The online exhibition at bicfest.org runs through August 28 — all selected games, including award winners, remain playable. The festival’s physical days are complete; the discovery access extends another twelve days digitally.

BIC 2026 Awards: GARBAGE COUNTRY Takes Grand Prix, Yūrei Claims Rising Star — 20 Winners Across General and Rookie Divisions - 인디게임닷컴.

This coverage has tracked BIC 2026 across multiple pre-festival articles: the record 856 submissions from 57 countries (a 44% increase over last year), the early bird ticket sales, the YouTube Playables partnership for 5 companies and 7 selected games, and the DDB Award inaugural honoring the memory of developer Park Dong-heung. The festival is now open.

The Numbers

332 games from 42 countries have been selected for exhibition, drawn from the 856-submission pool. The General and Rookie divisions were evaluated by 22 jurors across a three-month selection process. The Connect Pick non-competitive section was selected through BIC Connectors voting — bringing the player-and-fan perspective directly into exhibition curation.

The Schedule

August 14 (Business Day): Business matching between industry professionals and the Busan Indie Wave Conference. BIC Awards finalist announcements at 5:00 PM alongside the conference closing.

August 15-16 (Festival Days): Public game exhibition and experience programming for general attendees.

August 16 (Closing): BIC Awards final ceremony incorporating on-site voting results. Festival closes.

Through August 28: Online exhibition and play at bicfest.org.

The YouTube Playables Partnership in Context

The YouTube partnership — covered in detail in our August 11 article — is operating at the festival itself, with the 5 selected companies being featured in the conference programming on opening day. The BIC organizing committee’s YouTube channel recently surpassed 100,000 subscribers to earn a Silver Play Button, which the festival is citing as evidence of its growing digital reach alongside the physical event.

What BIC 2026 Represents

Busan Mayor Jeon Jae-su framed the festival’s significance directly: “The Busan Indie Connect Festival, now in its 12th year, is the core foundation for Busan’s emergence as a global hub for indie games. We will continue to expand city-level support for activating the indie game creative ecosystem and for advancing into the global market.”

For the games in this coverage that received BIC selection — Dawnkeep (Rookie Division), Where’s My Red Ball?, PengPong, and others — the festival period is when exhibition experience, player feedback, and business meetings happen in concentrated form. The three days of BIC represent the commercialization opportunity that months of development have been building toward.

The full lineup and event details are available at bicfest.org.

BIC Festival 2026 Opens at BEXCO Busan — 332 Games From 42 Countries, YouTube Partnership, and a Silver Button - 인디게임닷컴.

Lunosoft marks 20 years of operation as a mobile-to-PC publisher this year. Game Business PM Baek Cheol-min described the launch’s significance: “Cat Butler was a meaningful project where we confirmed the high expectations of global users through platform-featured selections from the pre-registration stage. Starting with stable Korean service, we will expand the service area to the entire world going forward.”

[Related Article: Shooting Idle RPG ‘Cat Wizard’ Sweeps Featured Pre-registrations on Top 3 App Markets]
[Related Article: Adding the ‘feel’ of shooting to idle games… ‘Cat Wizard’ begins pre-registration]

The Game at Launch

The premise remains the premise: a house cat teams up with their rat master to rescue the cat’s beloved butler (and the “Daily Churu Guarantee”) from alien spider forces. One-handed joystick control, auto-attack idle progression for standard play, and bullet hell boss pattern encounters for active challenge — the hybrid design that separates the idle RPG audience from the shooting game audience while serving both.

New content confirmed at launch:

The “Ikmyeong-i” collaboration brings the popular Korean character trio — Ikmyeong-i, Ggekkug-i, and Oljaeng-i from the “Ikkuk-jjaeng” character group — into the game as playable characters, companions, and themed content. The collaboration represents the IP partnership pathway that Lunosoft’s 20 years of experience in Korean mobile game publishing specifically enables.

Special dungeons confirmed at launch: Bounty Hunt (현상금 사냥), Golden Wing Tournament (골든윙 대회), and Random Battle (마구마구 전투), each with distinct reward structures for repeated engagement.

Offline event: A character pop-up store runs at Shinsegae Centum City in Busan from August 21 for two weeks, with collaboration commemorative reward coupons for attendees connecting the in-store and in-game experiences.

The Pre-Registration Conversion

The triple-platform pre-registration featured sweep — Google Play Global, ONE Store PLUS, and Samsung Galaxy Store — was an indication of platform editorial confidence before a single review existed. Whether that confidence converts to actual player retention and positive reviews is what the post-launch period will determine. Lunosoft has noted that the stable Korean service launch is the foundation before global expansion — the sequenced rollout strategy that allows operational refinement before the full international push.

Information regarding ‘Cat Wizard’

Cat Butler: Idle Shooter RPG Launch Update: Lunosoft’s Mobile Hybrid Releases on Google Play and ONE Store — “Ikmyeong-i” Character Collaboration at Launch - 인디게임닷컴.