Neowiz will publish Wind Up Deadman, a new title from domestic indie developer Sain Nuts Studio.
Neowiz said on the 23rd that it signed a publishing deal for Wind Up Deadman, a narrative computer role-playing game (CRPG) that Sain Nuts Studio is developing.
Wind Up Deadman is a game set in a "cassette futurism" universe that fuses the analog device of the 1980s, the cassette tape, with futuristic imagination. It features text-centered storytelling and depictions of characters' inner psychology.
The game follows survivors who lost their memories after a bio-catastrophe, living in a lone container tower in the desert while relying on a single cassette tape for their memories. Like "wind up," meaning to rewind a cassette tape, the protagonist Zephyr entrusts a soul to a robot and tracks down the traces of a lost past.
Sain Nuts Studio, the developer, is a domestic indie studio that delivers the fun of role-playing based on an original universe and a deeply layered story. Its previous mobile RPG, Metro Blossom, was selected for the 2021 Google Play Indie Game Festival TOP10, earning recognition for its gameplay. In addition, by publishing the spinoff novel Mal-Se Coffee, which tells a story set 13 years later, it also demonstrated the potential to expand its intellectual property (IP) beyond games.
Through this deal, Neowiz aims to secure a global IP with long-term growth potential. A Neowiz official said, "Through this encounter, we will deliver the deep narrative and role-playing fun offered by Wind Up Deadman to gamers worldwide," adding, "Going forward, Neowiz will continue efforts to secure original IPs whose value deepens over time."