If you missed it live or on #twitch, rediscover Nicolas Juspin's discussion for Akedo Studio and Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause with other #indies during the Stunfest Festival!

In 2019, we met the organizers of Stunfest de Rennes. After this great exchange, we decided to participate in the 2020 edition! Then COVID came through. There you go, 2022! A new opportunity to participate in a world-renowned event!

On May 20, 21 and 22, we will be in Rennes with a 15 min demo by Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause. We are excited ! Akedo Studio, always looking for a challenge, has entered the jury prize competition... will we be selected?

​To be continued...

​For the past few weeks, the independent video game studio has released its adventure game Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause, which immerses you in an immersive and bewitching universe alongside a hero, Nick Reckless, struck by the curse.

Created by Nicolas Juspin and Zoé Toussaint, Akedo is a fully independent and 100% self-funded French video game studio. The company wants to develop small and medium budget games.

"Nicolas worked for many years at Ubisoft Montreal on major video games such as Watch dog, Splinter Cell, and Rainbow Six at For Honor. At one point, Nicolas wanted to change his working environment by touching on something other than 3D development. Nostalgic for his first lines of code on the Amiga 500, his desire was to return to more creative and artisanal work. The idea then came to create Akedo Studio " explains Zoé Toussaint, Head of Communication and Marketing at Akedo and partner of the founder.

From 2019, the studio is working on its first platform game called "Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause". In this 2D game, the hero takes the form of an anti Indiana Jones affected by a curse that continues to haunt him throughout his epic.

The player must then avoid all the traps present on his way through completely randomly generated levels; a feature that gives gamers access to almost endless replayability.

“Each environment has four levels with gradual difficulty. In all environments, the curse plays an essential role: it can be beneficial to the player, or on the contrary harmful; this element then gives rhythm to the game. In this unrealistic universe, the imagination takes over thanks to neo-retro gameplays, the magic of 2D, and pixel art ".

Officially launched in October 2021, the game whose mission is to reveal players through many stimulating challenges is currently available on the itch.io and Steam platforms.

​“We want to offer an immersive neo-retro experience and convey our passion for video games and our enthusiasm to be an independent, self-funded development studio. This form of entrepreneurship allows us to make video games a reflection of our creativity, in complete freedom! "

Akedo Studio also offers its players and Internet users an online store called "The Loot Zone". The main purpose of this platform is to financially support the studio through the sale of all kinds of objects bearing the image of its video game (sweaters, T-shirts, mugs, USB keys, mouse pads, notebooks, artbooks , etc.). From November 15 to 29 on Black Friday, the company will be offering AK’WEEKS. Internet users will be able to take advantage of a 15% discount with the code "AKWEEK15" and free delivery in mainland France for any order.

Such a short sentence to conclude 770 days of development and yet: it's done, we've released our first game.

Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause.

In 770 days, there have been ups and downs, doubts and joys. But above all there was the expression of a passion, that of the man behind the code!

In this first game, the character is a kind of anti Indiana Jones, touched by a curse that continues to haunt him. A platform game with a retro touch. The player must therefore return the idol stolen by his ancestors while avoiding the traps that will be in his path. The hero evolves through levels generated randomly, which allows Gamers an almost infinite replayability.
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For Nico, there was no question of using Unreal or Unity game engines to develop his first video game. For three years, the former employee of Ubisoft Montreal has thus developed his own machine in order to embark on purely independent video game creation. Nico has learned other professions in the game to offer unrealistic worlds where the imagination takes over thanks to the magic of 2D, pixel art and neo retro gameplays.

Available on itch.io and on Steam, discover Nick Reckless in The Curse of The Lost Cause:

This unprecedented experience, we have made it possible to create the foundation of our 2D pixel art platform with which we participated in the Montreal DreamHack and in the MEGAMIGS, with these graphics here. The work accomplished during the summer of 2019 opened the doors to certain media and other partnerships.

Since then, the game and its universe have evolved and we teach you to discover the metamorphosis.

We have a team, we have well written docs with all the theoretical instructions and concepts. In short, it's time to start working. We were able to take advantage of the school premises, and work for a term on the graphics of the game. It was a very rich experience, the little secrets of which you can discover in the web series made at that time. And yes, 2019 was another time, especially for Akedo Studio.