If you would have told us three years ago that our tiny team was going to make video game history, we would have called you crazy. In that instance, you would have been in good company, because Ukuza has been crazy from the beginning. I suppose that had something to do with how we find ourselves where we are today. For indeed, we have made video game history.
Our longest-running project, Skelattack, has been published by Konami. Konami chose to get back into the business of releasing new IP...with us.
What. The. Hell.
Near the beginning of March 2018, the only person planned to attend GDC at the Moscone Center in San Francisco was Ukuza CEO Shane de Lumeau. Sitting in his basement with Ukuza’s Head of Content, Doug Borghese, they received an email that was promptly proclaimed as bullshit by the both of them. Why, you may ask? Because this email had @konami.com appended to it.
It was not bullshit.
Konami was inviting Ukuza to pitch them for our game, Skelattack.
They had heard of us and the game through coverage of the title by PC Gamer. They said they thought our main characters, Skully and Imber, had a lot of potential to become iconic, and they loved the idea of the game being a reverse dungeon-crawler. Needless to say, our wigs were thoroughly flipped. Shane decided we should pitch the game together, so Shane booked me (Doug) for GDC as well.
On March 20th, 2018, we pitched Skelattack to Konami. The pitch was a success. We knew it, and they knew it.
After finishing our pitch, shaking hands with the Konami people and exiting gracefully, Shane and I had a full-on meltdown in the elevator on our way out.
After this moment, a year and a half of further development would be put into Skelattack, including an epiphany that we needed more now that Konami was attached. We did a total rewrite halfway through development to create a more expansive world. By the time we hit the middle point of this endeavor, we found ourselves with six months to finish our game. With bleary eyes focused on our computer screens, we made it our mission to devote every moment of our lives to finishing our game. We gave up sleep, food, socializing and family time to finish building and polishing, making sure no dungeon stone was left unturned.
Against all odds, our ragtag troupe managed to pull it off, and today, our game is being released.
We thank you all for your support of Skelattack, a small game we signed years back to publish and that has now been taken into a catalog of IP with other great games. We couldn't have done this without our community and the support of Konami.
