October the 26th, 2023 – The well known Lithuanian Nordcurrent Labs has invested in the Novska gaming studio, more precisely in the Croatian startup Misfit Village.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, the Croatian startup Misfit Village from the Pismo Business Incubator has received an investment from no less than the Lithuanian Nordcurrent Labs. This investment will enable the release of their game called Go Home Annie, otherwise the largest project created within the Novska startup incubator. According to current announcements, the game should be available on the market as early as next year.
The horror adventure game Go Home Annie recently got a new trailer that showcases more of the details of this video game, and also confirms that the Croatian startup Misfit Village now has a publisher. The team led by Mladen Bošnjak has been working on the development of Go Home Annie for the past few years, and their work has clearly has its value recognised by the Lithuania-based Nordcurrent Labs.
A game set in the Žumberak mountains
The cooperation agreement was signed earlier this year, and the release of the video game was announced for 2024 on both PC and consoles. This is a new foreign investment in Start UP, which operates in the Novska Business Incubator (Pismo) powered by A1. Last year, their companies ranked a very impressive 5th in the Croatian gaming industry in terms of their combined revenue.
The action of this horror game takes place in a house in the area of the Žumberak mountains located in the world of the SCP Foundation. The main character is Annie, whose role the player assumes by testing paranormal entities, solving different puzzles and exploring various paths to reach their end goal.
“We’re big fans of the fiction that has been created in the SCP Universe over the years and we wanted to offer our own contribution through this game,” said Mladen Bošnjak, the director of the Croatian startup Misfit Village.
“Don’t worry if you are not familiar with SCP fiction, because Go Home Annie offers an independent horror adventure that will raise the hairs on the neck of every single horror fan,” claimed Bošnjak, who signed the cooperation agreement with Nordcurrent Labs this year and thus ensured the release of the video game. More promising for the Croatian gaming scene yet, according to the million views on social media, it is being keenly awaited by a very large number of players.
Nordcurrent’s first Croatian investment
Nordcurrent Labs is otherwise part of the well-known and wider Nordcurrent Group, which publishes mobile games, and is headquartered in Lithuania. The subsidiary Nordcurrent Labs has released five extremely popular video games to date, and this is their first investment in a company headquartered in the Republic of Croatia. “We were immediately blown away by the imagination and execution of Go Home Annie,” said Andrius Mackevičius, head of publishing at Nordcurrent Labs. “It quickly became clear to us that Misfit Village are in fact crazy geniuses who understand horror well and have an original way of looking at a genre that is otherwise full of surprises, enthusiasm and creative energy,” they stated from Nordcurrent Labs.
Pismo has around 80 companies operating out of it
The Novska based Pismo Business Incubator (powered by A1) has been in function for the past five years, with around 80 companies operating out of it. The much anticipated video game Go Home Annie is one of the largest projects created so far in this, otherwise the fastest growing Croatian business incubator.
