Indie Studios Are Breathing New Life Into Classic Franchises

There is a long history of video games collaborating with movies, television, and other brands to create meaningful interactive media and gaming experiences. In the 80s and 90s, building out a video game associated with a major film release was a great marketing tactic to reach new audiences. This brought us titles like Goldeneye 007 on N64, Aladdin on SNES, or the infamous E.

T. the Extra-Terrestrial on Atari. While there has always been some level of official licensing of popular brands in video games, the frequency is far from what existed in the early years of gaming, mostly from a decline in the overall quality within those licensed games.



Recently, though, there has been a resurgence of officially licensed games and it’s coming from the indie gaming scene.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s RevengeIn the indie gaming space, more and more brands are taking the chance at an officially licensed game, which gives a pulse test of whether there is still interest in properties that have been stagnate for some time, or that could be looking for a unique and refreshing perspective. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is one of the most successful such examples of an indie studio breathing life back into an older brand.

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge was developed by Tribute Games and released in 2022. The game debuted with an 85 on Metacritic, and reported over 1 million copies sold. The interest in Shredder’s Revenge was enough so that it warranted the release of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, a compilation of several of the most successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games, a few months later.

The success with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge seemingly also had an impact leading to the development of other upcoming indie Ninja Turtle games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed.prince of persia: the lost crownTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is not the only brand getting value from indie development , either. Ubisoft brought life back to the Prince of Persia franchise with the publishing of two titles developed by smaller or indie studios.

Previously, Prince of Persia had been without a release in nearly 15 years, with the last major release in 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. In 2024, both Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia were released by Ubisoft’s Montpellier studio and Evil Empire, respectively. Both titles were received well by audiences, with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Crown selling over one million copies and The Rogue Prince of Persia being rated very positive (86%) on Steam.

Opportunities for film adaptations into officially licensed video games by independent studios have also seen various levels of development in the indie gaming space. 2020 saw the release of John Wick Hex by Bithell Games, and the independent AAA studio IO Interactive is looking to develop the next James Bond 007 game. More recently, it was announced that an official Terminator 2 side-scroller will be coming in September dubbed Terminator 2D: No Fate, developed by Bitmap Bureau.

The anticipation of Terminator 2D: No Fate was also enough to support a physical release across all major console platforms.terminator 2d: no fateThe appetite for these officially licensed video games to capture new audiences has not been missed by independent publishers. So much so that publisher Devolver Digital launched a dedicated label, Big Fan Games, to explore publishing opportunities for officially licensed video games by indie developers across film, television, comics, and more.

Big Fan Games is the publishing arm behind Tron: Catalyst, Hellboy Web of Wyrd, Reigns: Game of Thrones, and John Wick Hex within the space of officially licensed indie games.While officially licensed video games are nothing wildly new within the gaming industry, seeing AAA brands like Terminator, John Wick, or Prince of Persia experimenting with independent studios is noteworthy. Indie studios have the benefit of tapping into a brand with an established audience base, while major franchises can explore a refresh on an IP that might have been stagnant.

Hopefully, there isn’t a descent back into lower-quality officially licensed games, like in the 90s, that loses the value for approaching indie studios to produce something creatively unique.The post Indie Studios Are Breathing New Life Into Classic Franchises appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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