Spooky Soup and Cookies
We are getting close to Christmas and the leaves from fall are as good as gone, though our favorite moments from the past quarter live on rent free in our minds.
From horror-themed activations and wholesome indie wins to cookies (the perfect companion to a mug of hot chocolate), this edition feels like the calm before the holiday storm.
We mixed spooky season fun, a much needed seaside team escape to Denia and creative projects that reminded us why we love doing what we do. Get comfortable under your blanket, grab something warm and take a scroll through what we’ve been cooking at Black Soup before the year jingles into its final act.
Hell is Watching
When Nacon asked us to think outside the box for the promotion of Hell Is Us, one of their most anticipated releases of the year, we asked which box.
Boxes aside, we partnered up with Watcher, a production studio known for their unscripted approach to solving spooky mysteries. The challenge? To produce a special Hell is Us themed episode of their famous series Are You Scared. To bring this content to life, we worked closely with their team of writers, artists, and producers, reviewing the video script and artwork to ensure everything aligned with the game’s tone.
What we loved most about this activation is how Nacon trusted us to try something new and original - and people loved it! The video was very well received, with the majority of comments being overwhelmingly positive, and several viewers even asking Ryan and Shane to play the game. The activation allowed Nacon to reach an entirely fresh audience for Hell Is Us, which was exactly the objective given the naturally high interest from gaming creators in Hell Is Us.
C is for Cookie
Together with Riot Games Germany we celebrated the start of Season 3 by painting handmade cookies of the most beloved residents of Runeterra - Poros. We invited the community to come together in two locations, at XPERION Berlin as well as Cologne, to spend a wholesome and relaxed day with their favorite League of Legends creators.
“Sometimes me think, what is friend? And then me say: a friend is someone to share last cookie with."
- Cookie Monster
Absolutely Absolum
In October we saw the release of one of the best indie games of the year, Absolum, a fantastic roguelite beat 'em up by Dotemu, Guard Crush Games, and Supamonks. Our adventures actually started back in May already, when we kicked off the excitement by offering Maximilian Dood an exclusive first look at Absolum. He was such a fan of the game, that we simply had to invite him again for release. Yet this time Dotemu wanted to make it a bit more special, so they invited Mick Gordon, the legendary composer known for his work on DOOM, to join Max during his stream for an interview. This created one of the most wholesome moments we’ve seen in a long time as Mick shows his appreciation for Max. Watch the full interview here.
Mick created an absolute beast of a track for Absolum by the way, titled The Underking. Nine out of ten doctors prescribe a daily dose of listening to it to cure any neck stiffness. The other one out of ten are likely German doctors who prescribe “Tee trinken”.
Other content pieces worth highlighting come from Gohjoe, who did an entire series on Absolum as it became one of his favorite games of the year, as well as Pazos64, whose video had the highest engagement rate of the entire campaign. Respeto. Though if you want the full scoop, go check out our highlight reel.
Absolum went on to be nominated at The Game Awards for Best Independent Game, something we obviously cannot take credit for, yet are super proud of!
Clipped It!
We worked on plenty of fresh indie games this past quarter. Here are some of our favorite clips:
Brew
I don’t know what Ezekiel III was on when playing Brew, but I can’t wait for the Schmoyoho remix to come out. Meanwhile Patstaresat thought he was playing Teemo Simulator. Wrong game, but close. Speaking of which, CrReam got so close, yet so far. Better luck next time!
Fish Stick Protocol
If you need an excuse as to why your dev team should save some time for custom content, check out this clip from Dish being utterly delighted at how the devs of Fish Stick Protocol put one of her favorite items in the game, a frog hat 🐸
Tabletop Game Shop Simulator
Did your addiction to painting miniature figurines cause your partner to file for a divorce? Fear not! Time to turn that frown upside down and begin a new life as the owner of a tabletop game shop. Hilarious clip by Brush and Banner.
Runeborn
Maybe it’s a good thing that ImCade is playing video games. Imagine all the people he’d murder by numbers if Runeborn were not a thing. Nevertheless an S-tier video intro.
Pax Dei
Kusa really needs to place some guardrails when building his house. Yet no amount of guardrails could protect the Mainframe Industries devs on what Danneh’s kid had to say about Pax Dei. Zara on the other hand had plenty of fun playing Pax Dei.
Highlight Reels
Aside from collecting highlight clips, we started creating highlight reels to add an extra sparkle to some of our case studies. We already shared the one for Absolum up above, but are proud to announce that we also have highlight reels for Space Marine 2, The Planet Crafter and SnowRunner, with more in the works! All montages were done by Vasiliy Most, who is currently taking on more video editing gigs. Make sure to hit him up if you’re looking for an S-tier editor.
Denia Team Event
Working in a team where half of the people live abroad, you sometimes miss that personal touch. This is why every year we make an effort to bring everyone together during one big team event. This year we picked Denia as our meeting spot, a beautiful seaside town off the Spanish coast.
We hosted workshops on How to host a Subathon, AI Guidelines, Principles of Good Communication, Values & Mission, and last but not least, Burnout Prevention.
Aside from workshops, we explored seaside caves as we went kayaking, we fired up the barbecue on more than one occasion, and hosted a ping pong doubles tournament. Pics or it didn’t happen.
Spooky Soup
We take Halloween seriously at Black Soup. So much so, that we even had a custom logo on our website for it. However, for the first time this year, we organized a remote Spooky Soup event. Think office space meets escape room - sounds like a proper horror setting, right? Luckily it was far from it as our remote team gently hinted our office team in the right direction to locate missing parts of a custom controller. The end result you can see below.
That’s all folks
If you made it this far, you’re either an OG, a soup aficionado, a stalker, or all the above. In any case, we appreciate you. Enjoy the holidays and catch you on the next one!
- Black Soup Newsletter Monkeys
