Ardán and Imirt are delighted to announce that we have selected the 12 Galway participants and the 12 Dublin participants who will take part in a 12-week Games Incubator coast-to-coast programme from September to December 2025.
Managed by Imirt and Ardán as a part of the Screen Ireland Digital Games Portfolio, these East and West coast games talent incubation programmes are supported by CREW (Creative Enterprise West) in Galway and the GEC (Guiness Enterprise Centre) in Dublin.
Dublin Incubator 2025 Participants
David Abaya
Working Title: ‘Spacedex’.
In Spacedex, players take the role of quirky space couriers delivering parcels across galaxies. Maintain ship health, manage oxygen and fuel, dodge space pirates, and compete in interstellar parcel races in a chaotic first-person co-op adventure.
Erik Azev
Working Title: ‘Binary Star Odyssey’.
Binary Star Odyssey is a turn-based tactical RPG. Lead a customisable roster of characters enrolled in the Galactic Peace Corp academy. Venture to the core of the solar system to solve the mystery of a recurring calamity ravaging the galaxy.
Hazel Blackwood
Working Title: ‘One Ear Up.’
One Ear Up is an action/adventure game where players take on the role of a dog they get to create in a magical, fantasy world. When Gramundu, the God of Nature, awakens to find his world defiled by humans, he wraps every village in a cage of thorns. As the nimble village dog, you’re the only one able to escape, but you find more than you bargained for. As the god of magic heads off to sleep, she gifts you with a magical collar that will help you bring Gramundu to peace. Now, it’s up to you to save the world, and hopefully make a few new friends along the way.
Jane Tan
Working Title: ‘Good Folk Cafe.’
Wild Narrative is currently developing Good Folk Cafe, a cosy, atmospheric management game, set in Ireland, where you forage for wild plants, craft bespoke dishes, and delight your mysterious otherworldly clientele.
Inspired by the tales that myth-keepers, storytellers, and Sean-nós singers have kindly shared with us, Good Folk Cafe will immerse you in the Irish landscape and its folklore.
James Smith
Working Title: ‘Veil of the Tuatha’.
Every god has secrets. One of them has blood on their hands. Veil of the Tuatha is a narrative murder mystery where Celtic deities gather after the shocking death of the healer Airmid. Every god is a suspect — from the Morrígan to Brigid to the Dagda — and each puzzle uncovers secrets, lies, and shifting loyalties. As the mortal investigator, it’s your task to unravel contradictions and expose the true killer hidden among the gods.
Jacob McConnell
Working Title: ‘Build a Bot’.
Build a Bot is a bullet hell mecha rogue-like where you fight back against the evil mega-corporation. You play as a robot built by a humble farmer who is sick and tired of the evil corporation’s oppression. Fight through the hoards of unique enemies and choose your loot to fight your way.
Joakim Svensson
Working Title: ‘Knights of Blobbert’.
Knights of Blobbert is a physics-heavy Action RPG and RTS hybrid. Take direct control of the commander while defending your base with vast armies. Crustaceans, cephalopods, and slime knights war for survival in a doomed world.
Matthias Greferath
Working Title: ‘They Stare’.
They Stare is a horror game where the player is tasked with investigating a series of unsettling reports coming out of Clear County. The player must gather evidence and escape the horrors in the game’s story or the procedurally generated nightmare mode
Sonny O’Mahony
Working Title: ‘Arcalumis.’
Arcalumis combines frantic real-time dice management with strategic turn-based combat in a roguelite engine-builder. Command your chosen faction in battle against enemy engines. Be rewarded for constructing synergistic builds in your quest for survival.
Stefano Gatto
Working Title: ‘Looming Light’.
Looming Light is a story-driven puzzle-platformer about a masked child who wakes on a shore with no memory. You’ll explore five unique islands separated by a sea of darkness, each reflecting a different facet of depression and isolation. By helping others and understanding their struggles, you’ll slowly remember your past, rekindle lost light, and uncover the origin behind the ancient lighthouses scattered across the world.
Tiziano Coppoli
Working Title: ‘Tiny Clockworks.’
Tiny Clockworks is a tiny puzzle(ish) game for Playdate (a Game Boy with a crank! https://play.date/), about aligning gears and repairing clocks. The game is all about making the player feel like they are repairing a sophisticated clock by aligning the gears and turning them with the Playdate’s unique crank!
Wojtek Borowicz
Working Title: ‘Dziady’.
Dziady is a narrative puzzle game where you play as a huslar, a village elder capable of communicating with spirits. On the day of the dead, wandering souls come to your table. Learn their stories and choose the right food and drink to grant them salvation but beware of evil spirits trying to trick you. In Dziady, Polish culture, history, and myth meet gameplay inspired by Papers, Please! and Phoenix Wright. The game is inspired by a 19th century poetic drama that became the foundational work of Polish romanticism.
Galway Incubator 2025 Participants
Alejandra Vargas
Working Title: ‘Lease & Desist’.
This game is set in an apartment building trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over. As a player you control a cat that can disrupt the lives of the residents and alter the course of events, uncovering different hidden stories within the loop.
Brent Mitchell
Working Title: ‘Hoverderg’.
This is a cozy adventure game of a dog getting their first hovership. Fly a bouncy hovership and blast around an alien planet looking for your mother and uncovering the secrets behind the strange world. Meet the locals, repair alien technology, search for treasure, race the canyons and wear lots of great hats.
Chris Madden
Working Title: ‘Starlight’.
Hollow Moon Studios is developing a 2D cyberpunk-noir roguelite where memory itself can’t be trusted. Players step into detective Blitz Mathers’ fractured mind, reliving broken memories to uncover the truth in a city consumed by corruption.
Dave Ryley
Working Title: ‘The Pig-Keepers Dice’.
Top-down local multiplayer brawler where two wizards (Bristle & Grunt, the pig-keepers from the prologue of the Irish Saga _The Táin_) battle each other using magic dice thrown into the arena that determine the rules of the brawl.
Jamie Clarke
Working Title: ‘Next Day’.
Clarke Games is a development studio focused on co-operative play! We are making a cooperative party game called Next Day! Which will be delivered to your door step with non next day delivery!
Josef Olsson
Working Title: ‘Alltarach’.
An adventure game set in a fantastical version of Ireland, a generation after the death of Saint Patrick. In a time of myth and magic, a young woman leaves her small island behind in search of her missing brother. She finds a disunited Ireland, where the old customs have new rivals and the barrier between the worlds is thin.
Katie Canning
Working Title: ‘Alltarach’.
An adventure game set in a fantastical version of Ireland, a generation after the death of Saint Patrick. In a time of myth and magic, a young woman leaves her small island behind in search of her missing brother. She finds a disunited Ireland, where the old customs have new rivals and the barrier between the worlds is thin.
Lydia C. Fleischer
Working Title: ‘Parish Hopping’.
Plug in your paper shredder! In this narrative-driven puzzle game, you play the church’s marketing manager on a mission to cover up all of your clerics’ little and not so little misdemeanours before an investigative journalist can ruin your reputation. A satirical 2D game for sociocritical people with humour as dark as the devil’s soul.
Max Prediger
Working Title: ‘King’s Palette’.
Deduce who you can trust in a kingdom ruled by a corrupt king and work with them to restore order. Be careful, each character’s personality may not align with their real goals and lead to them betraying you. Avoid the king’s guard and traitors to prevent your network of rebels being discovered.
Sonny O’Kennedy
Working Title: ‘Apocalypse Dogs’.
In this game you play as a dog in a post-apocalyptic city after the humans have fled. spend your days finding supplies, meeting other intelligent dogs to join your pack, and fighting the different effects of the apocalypse… (zombies, robots, aliens, any apocalyptic event you can think of).
Thomas Jacob
Working Title: ‘Chronicler’.
Chronicler is an Isometric Action-Adventure game about exploring and preserving the history and culture of a civilisation as it collapses.
Tuathlaith de Búrca
Working Title: ‘Cluiche Ríomhaire:
Via.’ It is an an Irish-language video game in which you have to explore the world, talk to NPCs, and interact with various puzzles to proceed.
About Irish Games Talent Incubator 2025
The programme will provide game devs with support in both Development and Business Modelling. Participants will have access to dedicated working space at Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin and CREW in Galway for the duration of the programme, to work alongside like-minded, early-stage businesses. The programme will develop participants’ entrepreneurial skills, game development skills and portfolios, which will help them on their journey towards sustainable careers in the Irish video game industry.
Participants will leave the programme with the experience necessary to turn their creative skills into a revenue-generating business endeavour. Each of the 24 participants will be paired with an industry mentor, who will meet with them throughout the programme and guide them through the experience, using their professional insights to advise them.
The Irish Games Talent Incubator 2025 is managed by Imirt and Ardán with the support of Screen Ireland’s Digital Games Portfolio, in collaboration with CREW and GEC.
Please email eoin@ardan.ie in Galway or eoghan@imirt.ie in Dublin if you have programme questions. Please email kathryn@ardan.ie if you have press or media queries.