Global Top Round (GTR) – the prestigious accelerator program for the world’s most promising games developers – chose Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW) to run its 2017 program.

Seventeen shortlisted studios from around the world competed in the two-day program that helps turn good games ideas into thriving businesses. Ten studios were awarded seed funding.

GTR’s Peter Van Dyke praised the finalists who went through a rigorous three-step selection process to shortlist games that were good investment candidates. “We considered their current prototype with a focus on detail and vision, evaluated their progress, plans, and of course their team.”

During the program, participants received hands-on help with everything from strategy, production planning and design through to studio and team growth. GTR winners will receive ongoing support in addition to the seed funding.

“In addition to our initial investment and the potential for follow-on investment, we work directly with the winning studios, sharing our expertise and the knowledge of our network of mentors and partner publishers. We’re here to support studio projects in the short term and the larger studio vision for success and growth in the long term,” Peter said.

The successful games and development studios are:

• Akuto: Mad World – Hut 90 (United Kingdom)
• Boom Fighters – Cocodrilo Dog Games (Colombia)
• Cubiverse – Cubinauts (Germany)
• Failure NeuroSlicers – Dream Harvest (United Kingdom, head office)
• Fiend Legion – Spree Entertainment (Australia)
• Keen – Cat Nigri (Brazil)
• Relic Hunters Legend – Rogue Snail (Brazil)
• Sky Kraken – The Pulse Originals (Australia)
• Spitkiss – Triple Topping Games (Denmark)
• Woodpunk – Meteorbyte Studios (Spain)

Andrew Lau, head of successful GTR 2017 Melbourne studio Spree Entertainment, said winning GTR makes a huge difference to small studios. “In addition to helping us polish our game and make it more commercial, winning GTR gives us recognition and connects us to investors and publishers.”

Melbourne International Games Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government. The Victorian Government was a sponsor of Global Top Round 2017.