Independent Danish developer 3 Lives Left has been given a $125,000 grant to develop a demo for The Ark, a game concept by New Danish Screen.
The Copenhagen-based developer was announced as a grant recipient at this year’s 2008 Nordic Game conference in Malmö, Sweden. The money is intended to assist home-grown innovation in the Danish game development community. The program is administered by New Danish Screen, a division of the Danish Film Institute.
“We are extremely pleased with the faith that New Danish Screen has shown our team and our game concept,” said 3 Lives Left co-founder and technical director, Gorm Lai. “This capital is extremely important to us. It ensures that we can get this project off the ground, and it will serve as foundation for further development.”
The Ark, described as a “tactical multiplayer online role-playing game,” takes place in a huge underground city created to ensure the survival of the human race during World War III. The surviving humans in the city now use a wide range of genetic modifications to fight a post-apocalyptic battle to return to the surface, where they will sow the seeds of a new human race.
“Our concept has potential, because we have chosen a radically different style of graphics and gameplay,” Lai said. “We are not developing a multi-million dollar concept, and thus aren’t competing on the number of polygons or stunning visual effects in our game. Our game simply won’t look like anything else on the market. We have also chosen a robust business model, which we hope will ensure that we reach our goals as an independent.”
