Ex-Black Rock staff form ShortRound Games

A small group of ex-Black Rock staffers have formed a new micro studio in Brighton, ShortRound Games.

The team is made up of game director Andrew Hubbard, technical director Kim Burrows, technical art director Stuart Pharoah and creative and art director Steve Uphill.

ShortRound has two demos already underway and plans to release a video of footage in the next couple of weeks to highlight the projects.

"We've just been made redundant from Black Rock which has given us a great opportunity to achieve what we all came into this industry to do; make games that we want to play and in the way that we want to make them," Hubbard told GamesIndustry.biz.

"We're all really privileged to have worked on some great games like the Burnout series and Split/Second and have now got the chance to take what we've learnt and apply it to our own creations."

The company was officially formed in August last year, way before Disney made public any decisions to cut staff at racing studio Black Rock.

According to Hubbard, ShortRound is not ruling out any formats, and is eager to work on portable/handheld hardware.

"As for publishers and platforms, we're in talks with various publishers but not ruling out being self published and are keen to release on iPad or even Sony's Vita," he said. "One thing that we know is that we want to make games that really suit the platform, there's too many iOS games that don't feel natural on a touch screen and leave you yearning for a joypad."

The announcement of ShortRound comes a few weeks after Nick Baynes and Ian Monaghan left Black Rock to form RoundCube Entertainment.