Bridgeside Interactive

Factsheet

Developer:
Bridgeside Interactive
Based in Stockholm, Sweden

Founding date:
November 14, 2014

Website:
bridgeside-interactive.com

Press / Business contact:
press@bridgeside-interactive.com

Social:
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

Releases:
Clapper

Address:
Visiting adress:
Lejonvagen 14
181 33
Stockholm, Sweden
Mail to:
Vårvägen 4
181 33
Stockholm, Sweden

Phone:
+46 727 44 79 89

Description

Bridgeside Interactive is a small independent game studio founded in 2014 and located in Stockholm. Our goal is to build truly unique and inclusive games that explore new game mechanics and new ways of playing games. We who work at Bridgeside all have many different interests spanning everything from rock climbing and horseback riding to music, pen-and-paper RPGs and modern pedagogy in schools. This mixture of different interests and talents is the “primordial soup” from which our game ideas crawl onto land and evolve into unique and sprawling life forms. We hope that you would like to crawl and sprawl with us! Our first title will be a rhythm game for kids, parents, grandparents and music teachers.

History

Early history

Daniel Polgar and Lee Kåberg met in 2012 during their game design studies at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland. Polgar started his studies because he had an idea for a new type of rhythm game and because of that wanted to learn more about the technical aspects of game design as well as to get to know some like minded people to create the game with.

Polgar and Kåberg quickly learned that they shared the same philosophies regarding what makes up a great rhythm game, and how they could cooperate to bring some new ideas into the genre. Polgars theoretical designs and Kåbergs fast and prototype oriented work method turned out to be a perfect match and together with four other students, as well as Kåbergs childhood friend Marcus Brännfors, they created Team Clapper.

Team Clapper wanted to develop a rhythm game that wasn't a lesser imitation of a musical activity, but instead truly was that activity, a cooperative game that you do not only play at the same time as a friend but instead a game that you play together with a friend, a game that could be played cross generations and that could help anyone regarding of previous musical experience to interact with each other via music.

During eight weeks team Clapper worked on a prototype for their game Clapper, a rhythm and clap game most easily visualized as a mix between older digital music games and traditional hand clapping games. The prototype was shown at the 2012 Gotland Game Conference where it was well received and awarded with several prices, one of them being for Best First Year Project.

Post Prototype

After the initial work on the Clapper prototype the game was put on hiatus while Polgar, Kåberg and Brännfors finished their studies. Regardless, Clapper was still their dream game and they never stopped thinking about a commercial release of Clapper. Fast forward to 2014.

In 2014 Polgar, Kåberg and Brännfors graduated from the university with the goal of starting their own game studio and continue where they had left off on Clapper. The team was expanded with two of Polgars childhood friends, Linus Berglund and Daniel Linder, that would complement the team on the business side and help bring finances into the project. Added to the team was also Daniel Kvarfordt, a multi-talented programmer that Polgar and Kåberg got to know during their time at the university. Kvarfordt joined as main programmer and after almost a year of working double jobs the team had collectively saved enough money to start their company - Bridgeside Interactive. With all savings gone into funding the start of the company more money was needed to finance the project, but due to some tenacious burning of the midnight oil Bridgeside already had a new working prototype of Clapper, which would help immensely during the upcoming pitch phase.

Bridgeside

After a whole lot of hard work from Berglund and Linder, Bridgeside managed to get an investment that secured the finances for the company and made it possible for the development side of Bridgeside to quit their day jobs and work full time at Bridgeside. Because of this the team relatively quickly managed to secure extra funding that enabled Bridgeside to add two extra artists to the team. Ylva Ljunqvist, who just had finished her studies from Uppsala joined as a Technical Artist and Daniel Hansen, seasoned Art Director, joined as Animator and Art Director.

Projects

• Clapper