The Archive · Play as Record
The
Workshops
3 studios making games on the continent
The oldest games in this archive were carved into wood and dirt. The newest are compiled. Treating only the first kind as heritage would freeze African cultural production somewhere in the past, which is precisely the habit this archive exists to break.
These studios' games are their own work, commercially released and under their own names. The archive records them and points you to the source. It does not host, reproduce, or imitate them.
Free Lives
Cape Town, South Africa · est. 2012
A Cape Town studio known for prototyping loosely and publishing what works. Terra Nil, its 2023 release, inverts the city-builder into an ecological restoration game in which the win condition is leaving without trace.
Notable work: Broforce, Genital Jousting, Terra Nil, Anger Foot
Visit the studio ↗Nyamakop
Johannesburg, South Africa · est. 2015
Founded by Ben Myres and Cukia Kimani. Semblance (2018) is built on a deformable world in which the player squashes the terrain rather than the character, and was among the first games from sub-Saharan Africa to be published on Nintendo Switch.
Notable work: Semblance, Relooted
Visit the studio ↗QCF Design
Cape Town, South Africa · est. 2010
Makers of Desktop Dungeons, a puzzle roguelike that compresses a dungeon crawl into a single screen and a few minutes. It won an Independent Games Festival award for design in 2011.
Notable work: Desktop Dungeons, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind
Visit the studio ↗