FarBridge’s 2024: A Year In Review

With 2024 sliding into the rearview mirror, we once more find ourselves in a reflective state – so much happened this year that it feels like it’s been more than 12 months since our last Year in Review Blog!

Before we activate the eggnog, fire up the yule log, and otherwise switch into Winter Break Mode, we want to take you on a tour of some of the most important and memorable parts of our 2024:

THE DREAM TEAM

This year, we’ve been fortunate to work with some truly special folks – either long-term or briefly – on smaller projects. All the people at FarBridge make FarBridge what it is: a place where we hold our culture close and strive first and foremost to put people first.

This year was only possible with the concerted, expert, and sometimes exhaustive efforts of our team. Every opportunity that led us forward, every possibility that became a reality, was the product of the people at FarBridge taking care of each other and themselves, and being human in the face of every challenge.

We extend our unending thanks to every person on the team, as well as our vendors and long-time supporters from outside the definition of the company.

A THANK YOU TO OUR CLIENTS

2024 put its own spin on the trials and challenges our industry faced as a whole, and we want to take this opportunity to send out our deepest appreciation to our clients, old and new, who chose to work with us to make amazing worlds to get lost in.

The team at FarBridge is passionate, driven, and always looking for the next creative solutions and contributions. We’re beyond thrilled to have been able to deepen our longstanding collaborations this year, as well as establish new connections.

MAKING AND SHIPPING WORLDS TO GET LOST IN

This was a benchmark year for FarBridge when it came to shipping games. In contrast to last year, when we could only hint at the cool things we were up to, this year we got to launch a record number of new and much-anticipated projects – which means we can talk about them for real! Very exciting stuff!!

Homeworld: Vast Reaches

In May of 2024, the team at FarBridge was beyond proud to launch Homeworld: Vast Reaches, an all-new game in the beloved Homeworld saga, designed specifically for virtual reality and mixed reality. We worked closely with Gearbox and Meta to craft a dramatic single-player campaign where players build an arsenal of spaceships to command in thrilling battles against a mysterious new foe.

Homeworld: Vast Reaches received tons of great press, and was even included in the “Best Mixed Reality Experiences For Quest 3 & 3S by Don Hopper” – you can read more here.

And you can check out Homeworld: Vast Reaches for yourself here.

What’s next for this world to get lost in? FarBridge is committed to bringing the game to Steam VR in 2025 – stay tuned for updates by following Homeworld: Vast Reaches on X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Dimensional Double Shift

A substantial part of our ongoing collaboration with the folks at Owlchemy Labs in 2024 was the September 2024 launch of Dimensional Double Shift, a cooperative social VR game where up to four friends work at an interdimensional diner and service station. FarBridge worked as an integrated part of Owlchemy’s development team, contributing art, concepts, and engineering to make this fantastic experience.

You can learn about this game and play the open Beta for free here.

Tower of Heck: Super Only Up!

Continuing our 2024 theme of only working with the best people, FarBridge was thrilled to team up with Alex Seropian and crew at Look North World to create Tower of Heck: Super Only Up!, an all-new Fortnite island that dares players to race up a harrowing gauntlet of challenges. This fun and social game is free and available to all Fortnite players – check it out here.

REPRESENTING FARBRIDGE ACROSS THE GLOBE

Every year, the Away Team at FarBridge ventures forth to represent our company at conferences and speaking events, and 2024 unlocked some core memory moments for us:

Meeting new and old friends in the game industry makes DICE and GDC two of our must-attend events.

And with SXSW taking place in our backyard here in Austin, we were thrilled to see folks and catch up over some barbeque.

ATX Game Makers Third Annual Showcase and Arcade at SXSW

Journeying to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany is always an adventure, and being surrounded by the games community, developers and enthusiasts from all around the world, makes this event truly unique – and worth every hour of jetlag!

SPEAKING, SHARING, MAKING… GOOD COMMUNITY

Our team also has a deep appreciation for learning, and sharing that bounty with the community.

Donald Harris, Executive Producer, held events with his non-profit organization ATX Game Makers. From the ATX Game Makers Game Jam-A-Thon to the ATX Game Makers Third Annual Showcase and Arcade at SXSW, Donald ensured that the game devs in the Central Texas area had plenty of opportunities to get together, game, and network. Donald also continued his community leadership by participating in Afro Tech in Houston, Ignite Tech Youth Summer Camp, Texas Game Dev 2030, and was a guest on the Founding Up Podcast.

The ATX Game Makers Jam-A-Thon was a huge hit!

Richard Rouse III, Studio Creative Director, held his crowd-favorite panels and sessions at GDC and LudoNarraCon. Richard’s GDC sessions, including the annual [Rules of the Game] series, can be found in the GDC Vault.

Richard’s LudoNarraCon 2024 panel, “Difficult Decisions & Moral Quagmires — Player Choices in Game Narratives” can be found on Youtube: Difficult Decisions & Moral Quagmires – Player Choices in Game Narratives

Richard’s inspiring sessions are famous for bridging the gap between game design and storytelling, and feature creators from all corners of the game industry. Be sure to catch them at the Game Developers Conference in March of 2025!

SHARING WHAT WE’VE LEARNED AND CELEBRATING ALL THINGS HORROR

With each blog we write, we always ask ourselves “What did we learn from this that could help other game developers?”. For example, when Homeworld: Vast Reaches launched, we wanted to provide a peek behind the curtain of bringing such an iconic franchise to VR. We enlisted our Studio Creative Director, Richard Rouse III, to share how we merged our long history of working on VR projects with working on a new story in the Homeworld universe. In “How We Made Homeworld: Vast Reaches”, Richard recalls the “perfect challenge” (his words) of bringing what makes Homeworld so iconic – the battles, soundtrack, and storytelling – to the virtual reality space, and how important it was to the team that we develop something fans would enjoy playing.

We continued sharing our #GoodCommunity series where we highlight all the great organizations and companies that help our communities grow and learn from each other. We are still committed to making a safe, welcoming environment for all humans we work and come into contact with, and the organizations we featured are shining examples of this. If you have any recommendations of groups we should highlight, please feel free to share!

In the fall, we couldn’t let Halloween go by without putting together another horror-related blog; it’s one of our favorite traditions at this point. We asked ourselves, “Why haven’t we asked the team about their favorite horror games?” Making worlds to get lost in that are full of twisty stories and gripping characters is exactly what we’re striving for at FarBridge. We were curious about which horror titles have stayed engrained with the team after all these years. Check out their answers here. If you dare…

Last and certainly not least, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the horror cult-classic game, The Suffering, we chatted with our very own Richard Rouse III and Andre Maguire, two of the game’s creators, to reflect on the project, reveal what ended up on the cutting room floor, and share some of their favorite memories.

SPENDING TIME TOGETHER

Prioritizing time with each other as a team continues to be our top priority. We made sure to schedule both virtual and in-person events everyone on the team could attend. It’s important to us to create a sense of community within our team and make sure to play lots and lots of games.

April IRL Hang

In April we got together for a team dinner at Easy Tiger in Austin, Texas. Easy Tiger has become our go-to spot, especially since they have tables long enough to fit both our team and our board games!

The team at Easy Tiger in Austin, Texas.

Homeworld: Vast Reaches Launch Party

In the midst of many game launches, we also found time to celebrate at the Homeworld: Vast Reaches launch party. We love nothing more than getting the opportunity to get our team together and recognize big company milestones. Launching a game is no easy feat, and we wanted our team to know how much we appreciate their hard work over the last two years.

The team at the *Homeworld: Vast Reaches* party.

IRL Hang at Wonderspaces

The primary challenge of planning a gathering in September in Austin is finding something indoors with turbo-charged-AC. We were thrilled to be able to spend some time at Wonderspaces in North Austin to play and experience their current art installations.

The team enjoying the art installations at Wonderspaces.

Fall Pumpkin Carving and Craft Hangout

We spent a Friday afternoon in October right before Halloween carving pumpkins and working on craft projects together over zoom.

The team crafting together just in time for Halloween.

We played games together between Hangs!

As video game developers, we take playing games very seriously – as you can tell by the group photo a few of our coworkers took during their bi-weekly Street Fighter 6 time.

The team posing before another successful Quarter Circle Lunch play session.

Friendships were tested during an Among Us play session, but we persevered! (Turns out some of us actually do just run around trying to complete our tasks vs. being killers.)

The team awaiting a new game in the *Among Us* lobby.

And in celebration of Dimensional Double Shift launching, a group of team members got together to play the game. Everyone worked together very diligently, as you can tell from this accurate retelling:

LOOKING AHEAD TOGETHER

It’s no surprise that 2024 feels like it was at least two years stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat when so very much happened in just twelve short months!

As we turn now to look ahead at 2025, we can only imagine the opportunities, challenges, and triumphs that await us. No matter what lies ahead of us, we remain deeply grateful for the people standing beside us:

Our Advisors who work behind the scenes to give us guidance, insight, and wisdom about our business.

Our Partners and Clients who trust us to be active collaborators with them to make games in wonderful worlds of make-believe.

Our Fans who play our games and are an important part of giving us feedback and guidance about the types of fun they want to have.

And truly most importantly: Our Team, without whom none of this would be possible, and without whom none of this would be nearly as fun.

We are wishing you all a peaceful, restorative end of the year, and a bright start to the next.

And now, we hope you’ll join us in clearing your calendars, switching on those vacation auto-responders, and taking things a little slower and a little easier for the holidays.

–The FarBridge Team