Fresh out of Niš: the VR game Shopenkraft’s Magic Goods

Ingenious Studios released Shopenkraft’s Magic Goods on Meta Store in December last year, and their first originalni IP is also available on Pico Store. What is new is that from today you can play this title on the most popular gaming platform – Steam!

This is a crafting game in which the player forges magical weapons and prepares enchanting potions for the most diverse clientele. Under the slogan “Your shop, your rules, your legacy”, the game says that everything is up to the player – from choosing Cozy Mode for a chill experience, to total chaos in Challenge Mode.

SGA: What wasn’t a part of your portfolio until Shopenkraft’s Magic Goods were VR games. Why did you decide to experiment with them?

Danko: Ingenious started out as an outsourcing studio, which means that historically we’ve worked on really, really diverse projects. This naturally created a team that likes to tinker and try something new – very often we had to learn things from scratch in order to win over a client. When we could finally work on our own title, VR was the perfect combination for us – a market that is still a niche, so we have room to break through with our own product, and at the same time, a new interesting thing to poke around!😄

SGA: The game was released in December on the Meta Store, and soon after on the Pico Store. What are the results so far?

Danko: So far I am very satisfied with the results. The game was in Early Access for about two months before full release and during that time we gained an initial base of over 20 thousand players. A large number of downloads and positive ratings allowed us to appear on the homepage of several categories on the Meta Store, which gives us a steady flow of organic purchases even when we are not actively advertising. Since it is a premium title, the return on investment is a process that will take some time, but for now the pace exceeds my expectations!🤞

SGA: How important was it for the team that you work on an IP that is yours and yours alone? Was the work on the project somehow different from the previous ones because of that?

Danko: Very much so! The motivation was definitely on a completely different level. None of us got into this industry because it’s lucrative – developers and artists could have worked in any other domain that was more stable and profitable. We all choose to do what we do here because: a) we love games; and b) we want to create something of our own that other people will enjoy.

SGA: The game is now out on Steam! Why was it important for you to be present on this platform and what kind of results are you hoping for?

Danko: Although VR is a fun platform, which we plan to continue working on in the future, Ingenious also has ambitions to make more classic games for PC and consoles. Since Steam is the most accessible platform for PC, we wanted to use the example of Shopenkraft to go through the entire process of publishing the game. This is not Shopenkraft’s primary platform (we expect the biggest income from the Meta Store), so it represents a safe space for us to learn what publishing a game on Steam looks like without major consequences for earnings. Also, through Steam VR we expand the audience to which we can offer the game, and somehow… Steam is a platform that everyone knows. I think we’ll feel more like we actually made a game when we can tell our friends: “Type it in Steam and see”!😁

SGA: Tell us a little about Ingenious Studios: who are you, how long have you been around, how many of you are in the team…?

Danko: Ingenious was created in December 2018 as a separate brand of the Niš company Ingsoftware. Ing has a long tradition of selling software development and design services, so they formed Ingenious as a branch that sells game development services – specifically game dev and game art. The dream of the founders has always been to one day make our own games, but for many years there were no conditions for such a thing, so we worked mainly for clients. Only since last year (so 2024) have we separated into its own legal entity which has its own CEO, and can focus in the direction of selling products (rather than services).

Our team currently consists of 16 nerds of different profiles who during the day contribute to the development of our studio and games, and at night sit together in pubs, play board games around the office or throw a multiplayer party each from their own home!🎮

In terms of video games, what we play together changes regularly – for me, it’s currently Baldur’s Gate III with three other colleagues, and there is, of course, a group that devotedly plays Apex Legends.😁 For board games, we get together regularly and play really anything and everything, but I would say that as a team we like association-based games the most, such as Dixit, So Clover! or more recently DaDaDa.

SGA: You have participated in several co-dev projects. What can you tell us about them and are we expecting news in this regard soon?

Danko: Co-dev projects are never as exciting as working on an IP that is, as you said, ours and ours alone. However, we currently have two of them and I’m actually very proud of the fact that one of them started as a pure outsourcing story, where the client was so satisfied with the cooperation that after the initial release, he offered us a stake in the game itself. The game is called Ancient Allies Tower Defense and is available for Android and iOS (in Serbia only for Android, though). This is also a live ops game, so we regularly release new functionality and content. Fans of the tower defense genre as well as military nerds will definitely find something to like here.😄

The second game is nearing the end of its development cycle and we expect to release it in a month and a half, also on Android and iOS. This game is from the HOPA genre, which is not really our cup of tea, but the partner had a relatively innovative idea for the genre, so we decided to try our luck.🤞

Mobile gaming is generally not a market we’re interested in in terms of the games we want to make ourselves, but it turned out to be convenient for a co-dev story, so here we do a bit of it, too.🙂

SGA: Among your outsourcing projects are platforms others avoid, such as the Nintendo Switch, but you even worked on exercise bike games (what a Black Mirror moment, btw!)! What interesting thing can you share with us about your diverse portfolio?

Danko: By far the best thing I can say about our portfolio is what I already mentioned my the first answer: it has built us into a team that is not afraid of the unknown. It’s also nice when someone asks us what kind of games we make – we can decorate ourselves with anything and everything.😁Joking aside, I think there are few studios in our country that can boast with their diversity either in terms of platform, genre or art style of the games they’ve worked on. This diversity can paralyze us when deciding what kind of game to make next, but it also allows us to dive into almost anything we can think of, and we definitely owe that to our colorful portfolio.

Of course, dealing with such diverse projects was not without its challenges, but the good thing about crazy challenges is that over time they turn into interesting stories that are then retold in pubs.😁

SGA: What’s next for Ingenious Studios?

Danko: Since we only started focusing on the development of our own games last year, in the coming period we are waiting for a gradual transition towards a product-based work model. This means that we will slowly reduce the share of outsourcing and co-dev projects in our business and proportionally increase the share of work on our own IPs.

And since we aim to make more traditional games, the second game we are planning is a couch co-op 2D platformer. Our art team is small but exceptional (Shopenkraft received a lot of praise for its art quality at Games.con), so we aim to make a truly visually impressive game. Of course, we also have interesting core mechanics in mind that will (hopefully🤞) also offer players something unusual in terms of gameplay.

SGA: Danko, thank you very much for the chat! We wish you much success with everything that follows!

Danko: Thank you for the opportunity to tell the gaming community a little more about ourselves! There aren’t many studios in Nis, and all of them are small compared to some of the giants in Belgrade, so people often forget about us. But we also make games here and we also love what we do.😄