tinyBuild Acquires We're Five Games, Hungry Couch, and Moon Moose

tinyBuild acquires 3 studios, including Totally Reliable Delivery Services devs as the title crosses 14 million downloads

The Seattle-based publisher has announced the development studio acquisitions of We’re Five Games (Totally Reliable Delivery Service), Hungry Couch (Black Skylands), and Moon Moose (Cartel Tycoon).

Seattle, February 9, 2021 — Today, publisher and developer tinyBuild has announced a series of development studio acquisitions.

We’re Five Games (Totally Reliable Delivery Service), Hungry Couch (Black Skylands), and Moon Moose (Cartel Tycoon) have joined the ranks of tinyBuild’s first-party developers, adding to previous acquisitions of the Dynamic Pixels dev team (Hello Neighbor), HakJak Studios (Guts & Glory and newly announced Pigeon Simulator reboot), and Hologryph (co-developers of Party Hard 2 and Secret Neighbor). These acquisitions bring the total number of tinyBuild-owned development studios to seven, including the Latvian tinyBuild Riga development team currently working on Hello Engineer.

“We believe that long-term thinking and long-term partnerships are the way to move forward for tinyBuild,” says Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of tinyBuild. “With We’re Five, Hungry Couch and Moon Moose all joining the orange family, our new first-party studios will have access to tinyBuild’s resources and funding while maintaining full creative control”.

We’re Five Games - developers of Totally Reliable Delivery Service; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

• Totally Reliable Delivery Service, an online multiplayer game about terrible delivery drivers, was launched on April 1, 2020, on six platforms, including Nintendo Switch and mobile, a first for tinyBuild
  

• Today, tinyBuild announced that the game has crossed 14M downloads

By joining forces with tinyBuild, the We’re Five Games team is working towards an updated version of the original game (Steam release planned for April 1, 2021) and has started pre-production on the next installment in the Totally Reliable Universe, expected to be revealed later this year.

Hungry Couch - developers of Black Skylands; Moscow, Russia

• tinyBuild spotted a talented solo developer during a showcase, allowing Black Skylands to grow into an open-world RPG with 11 people working on the project

• Black Skylands is set to release on PC in Q2 2021

A full statement from Alex Nichiporchik:

“In 2019, we spotted a web designer posting videos of a great-looking top-down shooter where you travel around floating islands. It was quite a shock to realize it was just one person working on it part-time so we partnered up with the developer to deliver the original version of the game. Today, the team is 11 people working on what has scaled into an open-world RPG set in a world of floating islands.”

With Hungry Couch joining tinyBuild, the studio will remain fully independent, and the acquisition allows it to continue scaling and working on more projects.

Moon Moose - Developers of Cartel Tycoon; Saint Petersburg, Russia

• A team of five working on Cartel Tycoon, a cartel management sim slated to release on PС in early 2021

“We were impressed by the quality level the team could produce, and after seeing the first visual of Cartel Tycoon and the unique pitch of ‘SimCity/Cities Skylines + X,’ we determined they would be a good fit with us,” says Alex Nichiporchik.

About Totally Reliable Delivery Service

We’re Five Games pitched their initial idea in 2018, showing a physics-based character control scheme and fun co-op mechanics. Together with tinyBuild, they developed a vision for an open-world physics sandbox.

The concept has evolved into an online multiplayer game about terrible delivery drivers. During its Beta in the summer of 2019, Totally Reliable Delivery Service was played by over 700,000 players worldwide.

About Alex Nichiporchik

Alex Nichiporchik was born in Latvia and bounces between the US and the Netherlands. His games industry career started in 2002 at the age of 14 when he dropped out of high school to become a pro-gamer. He worked as a games journalist, marketeer, and game producer across casual games and web games before starting tinyBuild in 2013.

At the end of 2013, together with Tom Brien and Luke Burtis, he co-founded tinyBuild -- with an office in his living room. They launched a Kickstarter for No Time To Explain and hit a funding goal within hours. Since then, the company has organically grown. Now, tinyBuild is an indie game development & publishing company known for No Time To Explain, SpeedRunners, and Hello Neighbor.

About tinyBuild

tinyBuild is a Seattle-based publisher and developer behind the Hello Neighbor franchise and over 40 other renowned titles, including Graveyard Keeper, SpeedRunners, and Party Hard. With seven development studios, tinyBuild is rapidly building a portfolio of fun, high-quality games across multiple platforms.