GDC Europe's Indie Summit adds Ridiculous Fishing, Badland postmortems

Organizers have confirmed a triple pack of postmortems for the Independent Games Summit at August's GDC Europe in Cologne, featuring the tales of two indie iOS games that went on to receive Apple Design Awards, and one that boldly took on being a Wii U eShop launch title. These talks are part of GDC Europe 2013's Independent Games Summit, which will take place Tuesday, August 20th, during the three-day conference at Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event. These talks are accessible via the reduced-price Independent Games Summit pass for the show, but also available for all GDC Europe passholders via their All Access or VIP Passes. In the first highlighted session, Vlambeer's 'Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing' is one with a happy ending, as the studio has recently received the highly prestigious Apple Design Award for the game. Here, the Super Crate Box and LUFTRAUSERS developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman will discuss the long road their unconventional fishing game faced since 2010, including the highs and lows of working remotely during stressful times and their approach to the sensitive subjects of cloning and IAP. In another mobile game postmortem with a much shorter development schedule, entitled 'How to Launch a Premium Priced Indie Game in the App Store,' Trials Evolution lead programmer turned Frogmind co-founder Johannes Vuorinen will discuss what he believes led to his Apple Design Award winner Badland selling over 100,000 copies in its first week. Along with its two-men, one-year development story, Vuorinen will share the choices made to launch the game successfully on the App Store while staying completely independent. Finally comes the story from Broken Rules' co-founders Felix Bohatsch and Martin Pichlmair, who, with the critical success of And Yet It Moves on Nintendo's WiiWare service under their belt, decided to make a launch game for the Wii U eShop. In 'Chasing Aurora: The Indie Console Launch Title Postmortem,' the two will discuss the technical, business, and design challenges the team faced with its local multiplayer flying game. More talks will be revealed throughout the weeks leading up to GDC Europe in August. The schedule builder is live with a rapidly increasing list of talks already available. Early bird registration for GDC Europe 2013 is also live, with discounts up to 20% off admission. Group admission discounts are also available. For all the latest news on GDC Europe, subscribe for updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.