history
2007 - 2009: And Yet It Moves
The prototype for Broken Rules' first original title And Yet It Moves originated at the Vienna University of Technology in 2007. It gained international recognition when it won the Student Showcase Award at the Independent Games Festival 2007 in San Francisco initiating the development of the full game.
And Yet It Moves was released in 2009 for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.
Simultaneously to the release, Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH was officially founded by the authors of And Yet It Moves, Peter Vorlaufer, Jan Hackl and Felix Bohatsch.
2009 - 2010: Studio Growth
The company was initially founded by Felix Bohatsch, Jan Hackl and Peter Vorlaufer. During the launch of And Yet It Moves, Broken Rules merged with one half of their indie friends and office neighbors studio radiolaris, Martin Pichlmair.
At the same time Clemens Scott joined the company as an visual artist.
After the merging, the new team started working on Ginkgo, an in-house engine. Simultaneously, they started the develpoment of Chasing Aurora, an areal action game about the dream of flight.
2010 - 2012: Chasing Aurora
Chasing Aurora started out as a bird-flying racing game prototyped in late 2010.
By spring 2011, Broken Rules managed to secure public funding from the city of Vienna to develop a series of games set in the Alps.
Soon afterwards, a first multiplayer prototype based on the children’s game of tag was implemented. The multiplayer mode was supplemented by a single player campaign and racing made place for exploration and brawling.
In mid 2011 the company received the offer to bring the game to the recently announced Nintendo Wii U console as a launch title. The team decided to split the multiplayer mode from it's singleplayer campaign and release it as a local multiplayer standalone.
Chasing Aurora was released for the Wii U at the console's launch date on November 18th, 2012.
2012 - 2014: Secrets of Raetikon
After releasing the launch title for Nintendo Wii U, the team returned to the singeplayer campaign of Chasing Aurora.
They renamed it to Secrets of Raetikon and secured additional funding through a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo.
In January 2014, the game entered and Open Alpha phase on Steam Early Access and finally was released for PC, Mac and Linux on April 17th, 2014.
2014 - 2015: Ports & Collaborations
After Secrets of Raetikon, the team started to pick up work for hire.
Leveraging their experience with the Wii U a range of ports spawned during this period.
Additionally, individual team members collaborated on smaller projects with independent developers around the globe.
During this time, DeNA hired Broken Rules to port And Yet It Moves to iOS.
2015 - 2017: Old Man's Journey
In early 2015, Felix and Clemens started thinking about creating a new original game. After winning the Subotron Live Pitch they managed to secure funding for the project from IndieFund and the Vienna Business Agency.
In November 2015, Old Man's Journey became an full-time endeavour and went into pre-production. A team was assembled, including collaborators such as Salon Alpin and scntfc.
Old Man's Journey was released for iOS, Android and PC on May 17th, 2017 and went on to win numerous awards. In the following two years Felix, Jan and Josef ported the game to all major console platforms.
2018 - 2022: Gibbon: Beyond the Trees
In late 2018 Felix started working on a new concept, attempting to abstact the complex movement of Gibbons into a prototype with simple input. After aproaching the idea from various angles as well as developing a creative vision with Clemens in early 2019, the Gibbon: Beyond the Trees went into production in autumn of the same year. A team of previous as well as new collaborators was assembled as well and by early 2020 funding by Apple was secured for the project.
Two years later, on Feburary 25th 2022, the game was released on Apple Arcade, followed by the Nintendo Switch and Steam in May. Only few weeks later, the game went to win the Apple Design Award in the category 'Social Impact'.
Other notable events during that period include the collaboration of Peter and Jan with Kunabi Brother on Lifelike released in 2018, Martin's collaboration with Char on VITRIOL released in 2019 and Old Man's Journey+ released by Jan, Josef and Felix on Apple Arcade in 2022.