Former Cursed to Golf and Q-Games devs announce new studio

Former Q-Games and Chuhai Labs developers have announced Denkiworks, a new Kyoto-based indie studio.

The team is made up of Liam Edwards, Taku Arioka, and Jan de Graaf. Denkiworks has already started work on its first game, which is codenamed Project Tanuki.

The three co-founders of Denkiworks met will working on Pixeljunk Scrappers. Liam Edwards then left the team to direct his own new game, Cursed to Golf, which made VGC’s top 10 games of 2022.

Following this, the trio reunited with the idea of creating indie games with an “East meets West” perspective.

“We are so excited to finally reveal Denkiworks,” said Edwards. “We’ve been hard at work on our first title, inspired by our experiences of life in Japan, coming from an expat and native perspective. It’s essentially a love letter to this country and its beautiful culture.”

Jan De Graaf added: “Our experience working together on Pixeljunk Scrappers was a really special collaboration and we all gelled really well together creatively.

“We joked back then that one day we’d reunite to make a game again. I don’t think we actually thought it would happen, but here we are.”

The studio’s first game is to be “inspired by the Japanese countryside and rural culture.”

“Forming a new studio is always risky, but we needed to take ourselves out of our comfort zone,” said Taku Arioka. “We have so many ideas and needed complete creative freedom to pursue them. “it’s been so stimulating to collaborate with Liam and Jan again, and work on the new project has been progressing so well already.”