David 
17/09/2015
The Flemish developer Happy Volcano (Lava Fever) is working on an ambitious new game called Winter. In mid June, Happy Volcano set out to create an abstract mobile RPG and brainstormed for about three months. After countless discussions and iterations they ended up with a prototype that wasn’t really an RPG anymore, but a story driven exploration game where you only see one tile of the game world at a time. Winter became a tale of a young girl, trapped inside a world that isn’t exactly how she remembers it. It looks familiar, but doesn’t feel like the world she once knew.
Because writing a compelling narrative is complex, Happy Volcano head out to find an experienced writer to help them out. A mutual acquaintance introduced them to Joost Vandecasteele, a stand-up comedian and an award winning Flemish author (he has published five books since his debut in 2010). He was also a member of the internationally renowned theater collective Abatoir Fermé and writes columns for some of Belgium’s leading newspapers and magazines.
Together, Happy Volcano and Mister Vandecasteele applied for the open call for literary games, organised by the Dutch government a few months ago. Out of 47 proposals, Winter was selected together with 4 other games and already received some initial funding (€7.500). A further €60K will be divided between the chosen projects after review of the proof-of-concepts.
If you want to help Happy Volcano in making Winter possible, you can support them by buying their current game Lava Fever on the Apple App Store.
