Founded 2011
Employees 10
Key staff Andrew James, Ed Orman, Ryan Lancaster (co-founders & directors)
Selected softography Epoch, City Of Brass, Submerged: Hidden Depths
Current projects TBA
When Andrew James, Ryan Lancaster and Ed Orman walked away from their jobs at 2K Australia, they had spent the previous seven years making the same game. Forming Uppercut Games in 2011, with just eight months’ worth of money to fund their debut, they were determined to go the opposite way. And they did: by the time that former project eventually released in 2013, as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Uppercut already had three releases under its belt and was approaching its first major pivot. A somewhat breakneck change of pace, perhaps, but it’s not hard to see why this might have appealed.
“We talk about like it’s our PTSD,” Orman says, his manner suggesting he’s only half joking. By the time the trio left 2K, the project had already existed as “five distinguishably different games”. Orman rattles through them all from memory: “ was . Then it was -ish. Then asymmetric multiplayer – that was the best version. became: that 1950s, FBI, almost noir thing.” These games were all developed to various degrees of completion. “And then we chucked ’em.”
