MoaCube

Factsheet

Developer:
MoaCube
Based in Warsaw, Poland

Founding date:
April, 2011

Website:
moacube.com

Press / Business contact:
tom@moacube.com

Social:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr

Releases:
Cinders
Solstice
Bonfire

Phone:
+48 696 423 334

Description

MoaCube is a small collective of indie game developers, started by two industry vets: designer Tom Grochowiak and artist Gracjana Zielinska.

We aim to make games that are diverse, personal and highly polished and are mostly known for our narrative titles Cinders and Solstice.

History

Some backstory:

Tom & Gracjana are two gaming industry vets who met while working for a small Polish studio Codeminion on a casual point&click adventure Phantasmat. Stagnating casual market and ambition to create more personal work pushed them towards starting MoaCube together.

MoaCube's core idea was to create a micro-studio sustaining itself with meanigful and distinctive games that works more as a collective of close friends who share both costs and profits of the development. With the inclusion of writers Agnieszka Mulak & Hubert Sobecki and artist Kate Kluge the team grew to five people and started working on their first project - Cinders.

Cinders was a modernized re-telling of Cinderella challenging the fairytale tropes and giving more focus to the side characters. The game launched in 2012 and its unexpected critical and financial success stabilized the studio.

Solstice was MoaCube's second narrative-centric project. The dystopian crime mystery about the price of safety and freedom launched in 2016 after nearly 3 years of development.

MoaCube's games have been praised for their painterly artwork, heavily branching storylines, diverse casts, and focus on developed side characters with complex and believable motivations.

What's next:

MoaCube is currently bringing Cinders and Solstice to new platforms while working on two new projects:

Bonfire is a battle roguelike-like(like) about journey and failure, mixing procedural generation with a personal story on the collapse of one person's world. It's headed for Steam's Early Access in 2019.

A yet unannounced game bringing MoaCube's experience in storytelling to strategy genre.

Whatevsies:

- Tom's first commercial release was his solo project Magi - a nerdy wizard duel simulator launched in 2007.
- He also worked on the first The Witcher. Like approximatelly ALL Polish developers.
- Gracjana is an accomplished digital artist, but her first game dev gig was an erotic mobile game. The kind of job where art direction feedback involves the color scheme of pubic hair.
- Agnieszka and Hubert haven't worked in the industry before MoaCube, which proved to be a huge plus. She's an academic researcher and a psychologist. He runs a LGBT+ rights organization Love Does Not Exclude.
- Kate and Tom are a couple for 15+ years. Nothing says 'indie' more than working with your partner, even if it's tricky at times.
- MoaCube is still above else a group of friends who have fun working on games together and share their profits. It shouldn't ever work but it does.
- Cinders' concept was born when Tom and Gracjana got stuck in traffic for several hours.
- MoaCube is based in Warsaw, Poland, but doesn't have an actual office. We prefer working from our homes, with regular meetups at local cafes.
- Cinders' development was supposed to take 6 months as our savings were rather tight. It took a year and a half and we honestly don't know how managed to avoid starvation.
- During that time, Tom's electricity has been cut off for due bills. Twice.

Projects

• Cinders
• Solstice
• Bonfire

Team & Repeating Collaborator

Tom Grochowiak
Developer

Gracjana Zielinska
Artist

Kat Kluge
Artist

Hubert Sobecki
Writer

Agnieszka Mulak
Writer

Rob Westwood
Composer, Freelancer

Arkadiusz Reikowski
Composer, Freelancer

Contact

Inquiries
tom@moacube.com

Twitter
twitter.com/TomGrochowiak

Facebook
facebook.com/MoaCube

Tumblr
moacube.tumblr.com

Website
MoaCube.com