Studio Name
Clockwork Acorn
Founding Date
January, 2014
Location
Remote across South Africa.
Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa.
Website
fbzijyboi.xyz
Press Contact
[email protected]
Clockwork Acorn is a South African indie game development studio that focuses on making timeless games with chunky design.
The studio is fully remote, based in South Africa, working with collaborators all around the world.
The studio also offers a range of services to their clients, including: rapid prototyping, co-development, full game dev and expert consulting.
Clockwork Acorn started as an idea in late 2013 when the three founders, Hilgard Bell, Francois van Niekerk and Leon van Niekerk, were busy completing their postgraduate studies at the MIH Media lab at the University of Stellenbosch. Each was doing research into some aspect of games, and was starting to contemplate life after university.
Clockwork Acorn officially came into existence in 2014, setting up in a small office at the InnovUS Launch Lab in Stellenbosch. The three founders bootstrapped the business themselves. They spent the majority of the year prototyping games, building ties with the local game dev community and getting to grips with all things business. This process culminated in a host of prototypes and the launch of the company’s first commercial game, Monsters and Medicine, in October 2014.
The end of 2014 was also when Clockwork Acorn expanded into doing contractual work, building specialised software solutions for its first clients.
The start of 2015 saw Clockwork Acorn set up its first long-term commercial clients and hire its first employees. Throughout the year the company grew and focused on its new commercial ventures with client projects.
The end of the year also had the company launch its second commercial game, Luminare, to the Google Play and iOS App stores.
In early 2016 the company officially moved out of incubation and into new offices located in Woodstock, Cape Town. Since then the company has focused on growing its client base while still finding time to work on its internal game development projects.
This is a work in progress. We’ll update this soon…
