Rat King

Factsheet

Developer:
Rat King
Based in Halle (Saale), Germany

Founding date:
January 4, 2011

Website:
RATKING.DE

Press / Business contact:
jana@ratking.de

Social:
TWITTER Friedrich
TWITTER Jana
FACEBOOK Rat King
YOUTUBE

Releases:
Jam Games
Pitman
TRI - Of Friendship And Madness
Tumblox
Behind Stars And Under Hills

Address:
Robert-Franz-Ring 3
06108 Halle (Saale)

Phone:
+49 345 6141741

Description

Rat King, that is Jana Reinhardt and Friedrich Hanisch. They love to make weird game experiences - most often with first-person perspective - that enable players with more freedom than walking through tubes. Their emphasis lies on mainstream-incompatible designs, atmosphere and characters. This is why they participate in game jams regularly, where one can work quickly and intensely on new ideas with like-minded people. For their creations they often use Photoshop, 3dsmax, Unity, coffee and mild confusion.

History

Rat King Entertainment was founded in 2011 in Halle (Saale), Germany. To get to know the business from the beginning they made small games mostly for Apple's mobile platform iOS, but also participated in several game jams. Pitman and Tumblox are two titles that were made in these times, laying the groundwork for future games. While Pitman has its origin in the 7-Day-Roguelike-Challenge (a one week game jam) and was ported to desktop computers, Tumblox is a slick puzzle game challenging the players' brains. Later on, while developing TRI, they continued to experiment with jam games and a few releases on Android.

TRI is the first bigger game by Rat King. The prototype was made for the online contest Ludum Dare in April 2011. Several months later Rat King started to work on the full game, where players would retrieve the legendary TRI artefact and get the power to conjure triangles out of thin air, everywhere. Those they can use to overcome obstacles, reflect light rays and walk on the walls, to finally find the Divine Fox on behalf of a mysterious Monk. In a series of Making-Ofs Friedrich and Jana explain their journey to the finally finished TRI, released in 2014 under the banner of Rising Star Games on Steam and several other sale platforms.

In 2015 Jana applied for a sponsoring at the Art Foundation Sachsen-Anhalt, to create a game based on her escapist fantasy to become a shepherd and live a solitary life. With Friedrich's help she created an isometric art game where an office clerk wanders around an office, talking to people in different situations and turning them to sheep, while the environment slowly becomes the nature we all desire. SOLITUNE was first presented at an art exhibition for children in 2016, and afterwards digitally released on itch.io.

Rat King's current game project is "Behind Stars and Under Hills", a dungeon adventure with detective elements. It puts emphasis on story and atmosphere, on interaction with NPCs (dialogues) and on exploration. While there are fights, those aren't the main focus. Instead, players will find hidden ways and items, translate scriptures, talk to the inhabitants, trade with them, circumvent and/or find ways around dangers (like enemies and traps), and use the light by placing torches. 'Behind Stars and Under Hills' is co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA of the European Union and the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung.

Projects

• Jam Games
• Pitman
• TRI - Of Friendship And Madness
• Tumblox
• Behind Stars And Under Hills