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Playstack and Laser Dog Games have come together to launch a new Leeds-based micro-studio, Playstack Leeds, in an exciting collaboration. The new micro-studio brings award-winning Laser Dog Games’ developers, Simon Renshaw and Rob Allison, into the fold at leading publisher Playstack, reigniting a previous partnership to launch a new independent development wing that will create a catalogue of charming and fun new games.

The prestigious Laser Dog Games has seen its titles enjoyed by millions since the studio was founded by Simon and Rob in 2012. The pair had an instant bond when they met. They quickly found their skills complemented each other perfectly, deciding to build a studio with Rob as programmer and composer and Simon as artist and game designer. After a year of making games in their spare time around day jobs, they finally got their big break with debut Alone and made the decision to devote themselves to Laser Dog full time.

Simon and Rob’s skills in creating stunning art and catchy music, engaging gameplay and innovative coding, led to the development of many successful titles including PKTBALL, Don’t Grind and HoPiKo. Renowned for their charming style, the talented pair have won numerous accolades, including the iTunes Editors Choice Worldwide (PKTBLL), the iTunes Indie Game Showcase (Alone) and the Editors’ Choice on the Apple App store (Ava Airborne).

Headquartered in London, Playstack is a leading video games publisher partnering with external and internal studios to deliver a stack of games people want to play, priding itself on packing as much fun as possible into its titles. A previous successful collaboration with Laser Dog in 2017 led to the release of Ava Airbourne and 2 Grind 2 Furious, which have had over an incredible 13.5 million downloads to date.

Harvey Elliott, CEO of Playstack, said: “We’re so happy to welcome Rob and Simon to Playstack as full-time members of our team, and delighted to launch our first micro-studio Playstack Leeds. One of our core goals is to enable developers to focus on their passion for creating great games. Simon and Rob have already brought their boundless energy to Playstack showing a passion for creating, crafting, and shaping a new wave of games for our line-up. They bring so much joy to players and we cannot wait to work with them more and more.”

Under the umbrella of Playstack Leeds, Simon and Rob will focus on making great entertaining titles using beautiful art styles, with Playstack providing expertise in a host of tools and services, including monetisation, UA services, QA, and data analysis. Together they will work on captivating and quirky IPs.

Simon and Rob, founders of Laser Dog, said: “Before we met Playstack, we were finding it difficult to focus on doing what we truly love, developing unique and quirky fun games. There are only two of us at Laser Dog and we found the day-to-day of running a studio a bit overwhelming, but with Playstack’s help, now we have the freedom to spend our time on creating the games we want to make.”

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