After student success and a viral hit, this developer-turned-publisher is building for the future

BY CHRIS SCHILLING

Luck, the old saying goes, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So while Coffee Stain Studios’ breakthrough came early, it would be wrong to think of it as simply good fortune. Formed by nine students from Skövde - a small town whose university’s comparatively large game development programme attracts students from all across Sweden - the studio’s first game was conceived while they were all in their second year, and launched less than six months after the company was founded. “Basically, half of us graduated and half didn’t,” CEO Anton Westbergh laughs.

CEO Anton Westbergh and studio manager Johannes Aspeby are two of the nine students who founded the company

“WE REALISED THAT THIS WASN’T JUST AN INTERNAL GAME JAM ANY MORE. WE HAD SOMETHING HERE THAT COULD SELL”

It’s easy to understand why they were so ready to drop out. Sanctum, a firstperson shooter/tower defence hybrid, started life as a mod for Unreal Tournament. The group entered it into Epic’s Make Something Unreal contest, and though it didn’t win anything, the praise they received gave them the confidence to continue working on it. After preparation came opportunity: impressed by the students’ evident talent, Epic contacted the young team and asked if they would like to make Sanctum into a demo for the Unreal Development Kit. Naturally, they were floored. “We got super-excited,” co-founder and studio manager Johannes Aspeby says. “I mean, we were students in game school being contacted by Epic. So we immediately jumped on board.” A mod became a demo, and by April 2011, Sanctum had made its debut on Steam.

Having seized its opportunity, the studio was keen to capitalise on Sanctum’s success. Console versions were one option, and Coffee Stain began talking to publishers about the possibility of a port. But Sanctum’s rapid development had left the studio with unused ideas - and, co-founder and CEO Anton Westbergh concedes, room for improvement. A sequel was a better idea, and so, a little over two years from the original, Sanctum 2 launched on PC - and, courtesy of Reverb Publishing, consoles.