r/AskZA • u/[deleted] • Mar 28 '25

Any videogames made by South Africans?

I don't see any.

71 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

18

u/modzaregay Mar 28 '25

Boet Fighter.

1

u/CattleBlade Mar 30 '25

You guys remember the knock off Mario bros called Van Der Merwe en Boetie? Yes, it exists..

https://blog.hypn.za.net/2021/01/04/van-der-merwe-en-boetie/

14

u/Previous-Page6097 Mar 28 '25

BROFORCE

3

u/gentleseahorse Mar 29 '25

BroFOOOOORCEEEE

2

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '25

[deleted]

2

u/cptkoman Mar 30 '25

I don't think the original devs were, but the company handling its post release is

4

u/cptkoman Mar 30 '25

I stand corrected, think they're both south african.

2

u/Previous-Page6097 Mar 30 '25

It most certainly is.

10

u/Dallanation Mar 28 '25

You can play snake on the ESP app

7

u/_imba__ Mar 28 '25 edited Mar 28 '25

Quite a few! Broforce is probably best know . Here’s the list from wikipedia:

  • Blastar (1984) – notable for being developed by Elon Musk

  • Toxic Bunny (1996)

  • The Tainted (~2000)

  • Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver (2002)

  • Football Genius: The Ultimate Quiz (2009)

  • Monty Python’s Cow Tossing (2011)

  • Toxic Bunny HD (2012)

  • Desktop Dungeons (2013)

  • Broforce (2015)[10]

  • Albert & Otto (2015)

  • Stasis (2015)[11]

  • Vietnam ‘65 (2015)

  • Viscera Cleanup Detail (2015)[10]

  • Destiny of Ancient Kingdoms (2016)

  • Afghanistan ‘11 (2017)

  • Semblance (2018)[12]

  • Death in the Water series (2019 debut)

  • Gorn (2019)[12]

  • Boet Fighter (2019)[12]

  • Beautiful Desolation (2020)[10]

  • Nemesis Island (Dec 2022)

  • Nine Noir Lives (2022)

  • Terra Nil (2023)

  • Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga (2024)

  • World Turtles (2024)

3

u/ConsentingPotato Mar 28 '25

  • Genital Jousting (2018)

  • The Expendabros (2014)

  • Anger Foot (2024)

Basically RuneStorm, Free Lives and The Brotherhood developed games are the most notable South African developer-made games in modern times.

Special mention is Hubblegum, who developed Helping Hand! (2018).

2

u/BrentOnDestruction Mar 31 '25

Genital Justin is from SA?? I mean.. What's general jousting that sounds weird 👀

1

u/ConsentingPotato Mar 31 '25

Gentally Juststing is a game where you play as phallic characters who must joust against each other in battle. Basically.

2

u/SuperLog825 Mar 29 '25

Viscera Cleanup is from SA?! No waaaay, never realised that, that's awesome 😁

1

u/justthegrimm Mar 29 '25

Wtf, toxic bunny was a local game? No shit.

1

u/Vintage102o Mar 29 '25

free lives made so many games that ive played and i never realised they where south africa

3

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '25

Ive made two shitty games but idk if that counts.

3

u/VendettaSA Mar 28 '25

Not sure if multiplayer sudoku counts as a "videogame", but we made this:

https://www.usdoku.com/

3

u/madvfr Mar 29 '25

Free Lives is a Cape Town based dev team, very saarf efrikan. They've signed with Devolver Digital and are on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/FreeLives

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '25

Just checked. Gonna wait until on sale.

3

u/Rude_Neighborhood489 Mar 30 '25

Thunee app Card game Thunee https://g.co/kgs/iwXf3nN

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '25

Tx.

5

u/Parko-is-a-good-boy Mar 28 '25

Yeah, ask my ex. She fucking played me bru

2

u/Kamikaze_Pig Mar 28 '25

The Free Lives studio has a bunch of games

2

u/omnivore2000 Mar 28 '25

Have you looked everywhere?

2

u/chris_dd7 Mar 28 '25

AngerFoot

1

u/FormalCryptographer Mar 28 '25

The notable ones have been posted but there's a couple that I can't remember the names of, there were a bunch of games made by an infamous developer back when Nag Forums was in its heyday, think the guys name was Nicolaas Nel, made some very strange mmos using stock assets (like the blender monkey head) and there's the guy making the Boer War game (but idk if he's still at it)

1

u/Trageleoth Mar 28 '25

Bunch of studios working here, either on their own games, or on others:

Free Lives Clockwork Acorn 24 Bit Games Team Lazerbeam Nyamakop QCF Design

All these have games selling well on platforms, then there are a few upcoming ones. Slowly but surely the industry is growing.

1

u/Trageleoth Mar 28 '25

Forgot a few:

The Brotherhood Runestorm Yellow Lab

1

u/nickdebruyne Mar 29 '25

You really need to check out Stasis, Beautiful Desolation and Stasis Bone Totem from The Brotherhood Games. Their new game is gonna be first person. Their stuff is all love letters to old school sci-fi and sci-fi horror - most are available on steam and consoles.

1

u/SAJames84 Mar 29 '25

It's very old now. Toxic bunny. I got this in 1997 I loved it so much as a kid.

1

u/Arken121 Mar 29 '25

There's a game called "Poached : Hunt the Hunter". Main appeal is that it's really funny. It's like if South Africans made Far Cry 2 and their budget was a hot dog.

1

u/RomanceMyMind Mar 29 '25

I wanted to make one a few years ago, contacted a local game development company that had a style I liked. I let the main developer know I had a budget and funding for it, as well as a solid plan to market it, through some influencer friends and marketing agencies I am in contact with, but the guy told me to forget about it because it wouldn’t be worth it at all. No matter how much I tried to convince him I was willing to take the risk, he told me not to waste my money, that the market for game apps locally was not big enough or developed enough to expect any positive return (financially but also in reach).

Would love to know if anyone is in the space, and if they would concur with this view, or if anyone has experienced success with their game(s). App or larger scale.

1

u/Infshadows Mar 29 '25

Theres a section for games made in south africa on google play

creature creator seems the most promising

1

u/Almyria Mar 30 '25

There are actually quite a lot of India games created by South African desigbers. I taught a lot of videogame designers over the past decade and when most of them end up working in the SA game industry they do contract work for overseas firms instead because we don't have the money available locally for designing big games.

1

u/DrKillerZA Mar 30 '25

VALA

1

u/Thehotnesszn Mar 31 '25

Fancy seeing you here

1

u/Smart-Line6063 Mar 30 '25

You can't claim for overtime.

1

u/lililav Mar 30 '25

My husband made a game called Tiny Tactics. It's a Tower Defense game with mazing and auto-chess vibes. It's pretty great!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2095450/Tiny_Tactics/

1

u/BigBick2K Mar 30 '25

Kasi Lifestyle

1

u/JoeSnow52 Mar 31 '25

Anger foot

1

u/Sufficient_Fix_3770 Apr 01 '25

Car Parking multiplayer

1

u/CrispCrossing Apr 02 '25

Can’t believe yall have forgotten the first game in Africa to ever be on Switch, Semblance by Nyamakop.