You're invited to the
#MidnightMurderClub
, a dangerous and hilarious game of hide, seek, and shoot as you and try to survive against your friends in a pitch-dark mansion armed with nothing but a revolver and a flashlight. Join the club and die trying. Coming fall 2024 to PC. 🔦
The developers of Knockout City have announced Midnight Murder Club, a new six-player first-person hide-and-seek multiplayer party game where all you'll have in order to survive against other players are a flashlight, a revolver, and your wits.
Everyone here at Velan Studios is extremely excited to announce that
@EA
Partners will be publishing our first original IP for consoles, PC, and mobile! Stay tuned and follow us for more exciting info in the future. Here's the press release:
Chaotic pinball action flipped inside out! 🪩
Just announced at The
@UploadVR
Showcase, Bounce Arcade is VR Pinball like you've never played before. Enter the Machine on Meta Quest, coming fall 2024.
THANK YOU to our very passionate team, with an obsessive desire to advance the possibilities of mixed reality that brought this to life! We are grateful for our incredible partnership with
@Nintendo
and, of course, all the fans! 💜💜💜
Take a deeper look at the approach our phenomenal team took when crafting the look and feel of Knockout City. Explore the details applied to every surface, hair and expression and see how our artists made it truly come to life.
The day has arrived:
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
is OUT. It's the culmination of three years of development here at Velan and with our friends at Nintendo, and we can't wait to see what you create.
What a wild week! Karthik and Guha Bala shared some thoughts on the excitement of announcing both
#MidnightMurderClub
and
#BounceArcade
over the last few days, and what else is on the path ahead.
Velan was proud to welcome Sen. Maj. Leader Chuck Schumer to help push for federal investment to ramp up game development in the Capital Region of NY. Key to this is the Game On Accelerator which seeks to create 350 jobs and create a destination for digital game entrepreneurs.
I have an inkling that we've some extremely creative
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
fans out there... like the fan who made this elaborate Splatoon-themed course! Looks like some good, clean fun (unless Blooper comes along).
Introducing Spotlight—a new
#EAPlayLive
series where celebrated studio developers talk shop & swap stories. First up is The Future of FPS on July 8th with
@Respawn
and
@EA_DICE
.
Read more:
Creating
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
required incredible discovery and collaboration both internally and with our friends at
@Nintendo
. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at some of the gameplay and technology innovations packed into the game!
Velan Studios will host our annual
#ExtraLife
stream on Saturday, November 6th, for 24 hours!
🎮 Help us raise money for our local Children's Hospital!
💜 Donate to get Holobux in
@knockoutcity
!
🎮 Unlock challenges and get entered for drawings!
Info:
Velan's proprietary game engine viper rolls back time to create an incredibly rewarding gameplay experience in Knockout City. Our lead engineer, Doug, shared some details about how it all works:
Now that we've announced
@knockoutcity
, I can finally show you my cosplay for "Betty", which is what we call the central character in our cover art! Check out the thread for TONS of process thoughts 'n' images
Haven't gotten your fill of
#MarioKart
Live: Home Circuit info? We've got two new posts on the Velan Studios blog! First, more on Mario Kart Live's origin story:
Race a real-life Mario Kart through your home when
#MarioKart
Live: Home Circuit arrives on 10/16! Learn more about the ways you’ll be able to bring your home courses to life and hit the tracks right away!
As our team prepares to spend time with friends and families, we extend our warmest winter greetings to you and yours! Thank you for being such a wonderful part of our community!
Happy Holidays from everyone at Velan Studios!
Congratulations to our neighbors at Vicarious Visions on the
#THPS
release! Another quality title coming out of the NY Capital District gaming cluster.
We're excited to talk more about Midnight Murder Club 🔦 soon, but that's not all we have up our sleeves this week. Tune into The
@UploadVR
Showcase tomorrow at 3pm ET / 12pm PT for another surprise. 👀
We are delighted to win the 2021 Japan Game Awards' Game Designer Award! It is truly an honor to be recognized and presented this award by Mr. Sakurai. It is rare for overseas game studios to be recognized at these awards. We are truly humbled, thank you.
A week after announcing
#MidnightMurderClub
, we're recruiting for an upcoming playtest! Sign up below to be considered for a closed alpha test we'll be running later this month. Share the link with friends you'd like to play with, too!
Karthik and Guha sat down for *just* a moment to share their thoughts about how it feels to launch Knockout City after building this immersive dodgebrawling world for the past four years.
Our team has made the decision to postpone the release of Hot Wheels® Rift Rally until March 31st, 2023 due to supply chain delays and to implement some final software improvements. We appreciate your understanding as we work to give Rift Rally one last tune-up!
The Beta is only days away! Stop by our Steam page tomorrow (Tuesday) from 5pm-7pm Eastern to watch the devs play Live on stream as part of our countdown.
#indiegamedev
#midnightmurderclub
You should only check out our Careers page if you're looking for a games industry engineering position. Or art position. Oh, or design position. Hm, production too. Or an internship? What I'm saying is, we have plenty of openings, take a look.
We are delighted to announce that
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
has been nominated for "Best Family Game" by
@thegameawards
! Fan voting is open now; check out The Game Awards website to cast your vote!
Honored to be recognized as Company of the Year by the
@AlbanyBizReview
! We want to thank the incredible team of individuals that made this possible through their endless curiosity and ingenuity. We truly have the best team! 👏👏👏
In case you missed it, our incredibly talented team of artists shared some of the concepts and designs that went into the journey of creating Knockout City
Our founders Guha and Karthik made an (animated) appearance in last night's
#EAPlayLive
event to talk about what makes Velan Studios tick. Shoutout to our fellow
@EA
Originals developers,
@HazelightGames
and
@ZoinkGames
!
The alpha will be kicking off this weekend, and we're lifting the NDA so players can talk about and share clips of their time in the mansion.
The three club members who post our favorite clips will be immortalized somewhere in Wormwood Manor!
A week after announcing
#MidnightMurderClub
, we're recruiting for an upcoming playtest! Sign up below to be considered for a closed alpha test we'll be running later this month. Share the link with friends you'd like to play with, too!
We have all kinds of excitement planned for
#ExtraLife
, but perhaps the most exciting excitement is... we're playing our own game!
Join a cadre of
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
devs as we race around a themed track to ring in the holidays; the fun begins 7:00pm EST on Sat. 11/07!
The doors to the manor are once again closed. Thank you everyone who signed up for and played Midnight Murder Club this weekend during the Closed Beta!
Stay tuned for another chance to join the Club. 🕛 🗡️
Join us for Velan’s Extra Life Stream this November!
Our 24-hour charity stream will raise money for our local Children’s Hospital at Albany Med, and we've got a stellar lineup. 🤩
Mark your calendars: the ex-stream-vaganza kicks off November 12th!
Huge thank you to our community for showing up for the Closed Alpha of Midnight Murder Club and shared clips! If you missed it, don’t worry - there’ll be more. Stay tuned! 😎
Wishlist on Steam for more details -
Shapeshift into high gear!
The Chameleon can transform into 140+ Hot Wheels vehicles, each with their own unique abilities! Race to unlock your favs. 🏁
Learn more about the mixed reality world of
#RiftRally
by visiting
Brawlers!! We're starstruck!
Knockout City has been nominated for a Webby, in the category of Best Social Gaming Experience 🤩 🤩 🤩
Get us to the gold with your vote! ☑️
This Saturday, Velan devs will play games in a 24-hour charity live stream to raise money for the Albany Med. Children's Hospital.
Check out the rewards you get when you donate!
Follow us on Twitch to watch our Extra Life live stream this weekend:
It turns out that "game developers" and "board game café" are a great match... even more so when the café is right around the block! Thanks to the
@bardandbaker
for hosting a lovely Velan social.
We're seeing SO MANY cats thanks to
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
, so it's only fair that we show you more of ours. This seat-stealing angel is Chester, whose human is our graphics engineer Leander.
#PetsOfVelan
Let your creativity drive - and watch your living room roar to life - with
#RiftRally
!
Drift, stunt and race on a mixed reality track of your own design. 🏎️ 🏁
Pre-order and learn more by visiting .
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
launches TOMORROW, and the reviews are flying in!
@FastCompany
says:
"Whereas most mixed-reality experiences feel like technical demos, Mario Kart Live is an incredibly entertaining mix of what’s happening on the screen and on the floor."
We are now hiring for a Marketing Coordinator! Come work with a fantastic team on Knockout City at our studio in beautiful upstate NY! If you know someone who would be a good fit, please share this job post with them!
The fine folks at Nintendo created this amazing SNES-inspired Mario Kart course for
#MarioKartLiveHomeCircuit
. Check out the awesome multiplayer race!
Josie, our VFX artist, had some spare time over lunch. We don't mean that hyperbolically, this didn't exist before lunch and did exist afterwards. Great work Josie!
Rise and shine brawlers! After a rockin' Day 1, the Knockout City Beta is coming atcha for Day 2, and we're opening up Steam to anyone who wants to play. Come help us *really* put those servers through their paces!
Are you interested in being a part of what's next for Velan Studios? We're looking for an experienced Art Director to join our team! Check out our Workable for more info!
The crew over at
@KindaFunnyVids
are going to be checking out Midnight Murder Club in celebration of the launch of our Closed Beta! The stream will be starting at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific!
(Check out our Steam Page to sign up for the Beta!)
“ARG” = not just the exclamation of pirates! ☠️ In this blog post, programmer Carlo del Mundo gives insight into ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), including the one we hid inside Knockout City’s Season 3. Great read for those curious about game development!
Velan is up-and-running in full work-from-home mode. It'll be an adjustment for almost everyone, but we're going to keep doing what we do best: making awesome games.
Congrats to the Balas for being inducted into the
@AlbanyBizReview
40Under40 HOF. The video game cluster has over 420 individual game developers & 21 video game companies in the region. “It’s amazing to be in downtown Troy. I knew this was the place we wanted to be.”
There's all kinds of discourse about the pros and cons of working from home. But I think we can all agree on one thing:
More pet photos are good.
Here's Samson, new kitten of our engineer/IT person Tim.
#PetsOfVelan
Excitement awaits at every (in)tern: we've got job postings for Design, Art, and Programming Interns for winter or summer (and all of our internships are paid!)
From
@slashgear
:
"The value of this game is not just in how entertaining and fun it is for the user. The connection Nintendo’s made with this experience is a door to a future in which virtual reality and actual reality can meet on common ground."
Join us tonight at 5:30pm ET for our Dev Team Stream! We'll be playing this week's new Playlist, Classic Team KO, with Discord mods
@mClarkTV
and
@paeth_
!
I think Halloween being on Saturday officially makes today "Office Halloween". Our production coordinator Spider-Man was busily spinning webs, by which I mean building roadmaps. (His secret identity is "Kyle", don't tell anyone!)
Merc and Quinn dedicated a few hours to judging dozens of student games, and there are few better ways to spend a Saturday. Kudos to all of the
#GameFest
participants!