Celebrating our awards as Studio of the Year and Best Game from Portugal!

In a surprising double-combo, at DevGAMM Lisbon, our team at Whales And Games won the award for Studio of the Year during the Spotlight Awards by Game Dev Lisbon! The very next day, Townseek won the prize for Best Game from Portugal at the DevGAMM Awards! 🏆 Receiving both these awards fills us with immense honour, and we’re incredibly proud to receive them as a team! 🐳

To commemorate the occasion, we’ve drawn a special artwork to celebrate both of these awards! Whalechan, Capt. Jawline and Watt Zapp dressed in their fanciest outfits and were overjoyed to walk on stage to receive the awards! ⚡

An artwork celebrating Whales And Games and their awards as Studio of the Year and Best Game from Portugal during DevGAMM Lisbon! The art shows Whales And Games and Townseek characters celebrating their accolades atop a purple-coloured stage. On the right side of the artwork, Whalechan, dressed in a starry blue dress and top hat, holds a glowing trophy shaped like a lightbulb with the label "Studio of the Year" with a radiant smile. Watt Zapp, the electric town host from Amperion, glows with electricity and excitement around the trophy while wearing an orange-colored dress. On the left, Capt. Jawline, dressed with a big brown coat, red shirt and yellow bowtie joyfully raises a parallelogram glass trophy marked "Best Game From Portugal" while Dapperfish sits on his hat with a gleeful smile and crossed-eyes. At the bottom, Polite Whale blows a party horn in celebration while wearing a starry blue bowtie and top hat. The Whales And Games signature is signed at the bottom right corner.
The Whales And Games and Townseek crew walk on stage to receive the awards!

To explain the background to these awards, earlier last month, our team attended DevGAMM Lisbon, a local conference focused on talks, networking, and its award show! Being two days long, it was a fantastic couple of days where we got to hang out with our colleagues, friends and meet even more developers from all over. It just so happens that networking with other developers is one of our favourite things to do! We also took the opportunity to attend some talks, take notes, and play some games. ✨

This year, our team was nominated for two different award shows happening during the event. The first of these was the Spotlight Awards, organised by the local collective of game developers at Game Dev Lisbon. In previous years, Townseek and our team received nominations in different categories but didn’t win any awards. This time, our team earned the nomination for Studio of the Year. Alongside us as nominees, were the talented teams at Massive Galaxy Studios, Funcom ZPX, and Digitality Games.

Much to our surprise, Whales And Games won Studio of the Year! 💡

A photograph from the Spotlight Awards taken as Jorge delivered the speech for Studio of the Year. Our studio's logo is projected on the background, with Polite Whale and our studio's name over a blue background, showcasing that we won the award for Studio of the Year. Jorge is delivering a thank-you speech, while John stands by his side, alongside Commander Bonny, who was presenting the award show. Both John and Jorge are wearing Whales And Games and Townseek-themed hats.
A photograph from the Spotlight Awards taken at the end of the show, with all the winners from the different categories standing on stage holding their trophy lightbulbs. The Spotlight Awards logo is shown on a screen behind us. In the picture, John and Jorge can be seen wearing their Whales And Games and Townseek-themed hats, while Jorge holds the trophy lightbulb in the air in a victory fist motion.

Being around our local community for many years, we’re really grateful for the jury for having picked us among our colleagues! Until our nomination, we hadn’t stopped and reflected on the amount of work our studio did this past year. Between our trips and booths at GDC and gamescom, to the continuous events we put together, to all the work we’ve been doing towards bringing Townseek to its completion, we’ve really had a packed year! We’re proud to be part of the Portuguese community and grateful for its vote of confidence for the year ahead.

The second award show of the event was the DevGAMM Awards, put together by the conference’s main organizer. Being an international contest, this marked the first time we participated with Townseek in an award show of its scale. We were very surprised when the international jury nominated us as one of the candidates for Best Game in Portugal. Alongside us, we shared our nomination with the excellent ARC SEED, Demon Spore, Gloomy Juncture and The Night is Gray, all of which have their own Steam page! Our bets were on some of the other games receiving the award, as all of them rightfully deserved to earn it themselves.

Against all our expectations, to the point it left us shaking in shock, Townseek won Best Game from Portugal! 🏆

A photograph from the DevGAMM Awards taken after Townseek received the award for Best Game from Portugal. The photograph shows John and Jorge with their arms around each other while they hold the award check with the Portuguese flag colours on it. Diogo Rato and Jeferson Valadares from Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses stand alongside them.
A photo from the DevGAMM Awards taken at the end of the show, with all the winners from the different categories standing on stage while holding their award checks. The DevGAMM Awards logo is shown on a screen behind the winners. In the picture, John and Jorge can be seen wearing their Whales And Games and Townseek-themed hats while holding the award check for the Best Game from Portugal.

We’re incredibly thankful to both the judges and event organisers for considering our game a worthy winner. We also really appreciate the feedback they’ve shared with us! Likewise, we also have to extend our thanks to Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses and Scorewarrior for delivering and making this award possible.

If you’d like to review the award ceremony by itself, you can watch the video here! You can also read a recap of the event by the organizers through this post. You can spot the photos featuring us because of our Whales And Games themed hats! 🎩

A photograph showing the trophy lightbulb and our awards envelope in better detail. The Spotlight Award trophy consists of a lightbulb that can actually be turned on, with the inscriptions of Spotlight Awards and Studio of the Year written below it. Next to the trophy, there's a ticket we were awarded for a future event from the organisation, and the letter that reads Studio of the Year to Whales And Games.
A photograph from the Best Game from Portugal trophy award, standing on top of Jorge's trousers, taken immediately after Townseek received the award. The trophy is a glass parallelogram with white letters with the name of the award and an etched metal base with the award's logo on it. Additionally, the glass also has a blue texture on the back.

Lastly, but not least, alongside the Spotlight Awards and the DevGAMM Awards, another long-running Portuguese showcase, Indie X Online, now in its sixth edition, also nominated us for Best Portuguese Game earlier this month! For that showcase, the award was won by Digitality Games for their upcoming game Floatylands. Still, we’re thankful to Indie X and once again to Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses for including our game. It’s been quite an eventful month!

We‘re truly at a loss of words to express the gratitude we’ve felt over these past weeks. With everything that happened this year, we’re privileged to have such overwhelming love and support from our friends, family, peers, colleagues, community, supporters and from such a diverse industry. These awards inspire us to push forward with our work. We aim to make the industry and the world a better place, even if just by a little. ✨

A photo of the team and José Castanheira standing by the Townseek and Exophobia booth at the GDC Expo, with a Townseek-themed hat on top of the chair, and the Wales booth behind in the background. The game booth features artwork of both games, with us standing on the side of our respective games.
A photo of the team visiting the booth from the developers of Constance with Florian Köhne and Siba Gasser during the Day Of The Devs during GDC. Jorge and Moski are to the right of the picture, with Moski wearing his Whales And Games themed top hat. The photo is taken in a dark room, with purple and green lights illuminating the people in the photo.
A photo of the team in front of the Townseek booth during gamescom. From left to right, Jorge, John, and Moski are posing in front of the Townseek stand while wearing blue shirts with the Whales And Games emblem on it. Jorge is wearing a Whales And Games themed top hat with a crab on it while doing a victory gesture with his arm, while John and Moski are wearing Townseek-themed hats and giving thumbs-up. The booth's artwork features the logo of the game, four of its characters, and the game's airship.
A photo of Moski taken in front of the Townseek booth during gamescom. In the picture, Moski is wearing a Townseek-themed hat and wearing his blue shirt with the Whales And Games emblem. He has two furries in fursuits to his side. with two furries in fursuits in front of the Townseek booth. The left furry is called Blu and is a dog with blue and black fur. The right furry has gray and white fur as well as heterochromia yellow and blue eyes.
A photo from DevGAMM taken during the main party of the event. The photo features both John and Jorge, with Jorge with his arm wrapped around John while doing a thinking pose. Both are smiling at the camera while wearing their Whales And Games and Townseek-themed hats and their blue shirts with the Whales And Games emblem on them.
A photo from DevGAMM taken immediately after the DevGAMM Awards, showing a big group of people celebrating the achievement and their time at the event. The group is composed of both the team, other developers, and Portuguese content creators and media. Jorge is on the left of the picture doing a victory fist, while John holds the award check for Best Game from Portugal in the back.

While we have one last surprise related to the events we’ve attended throughout the year that we’ll be posting on our social media channels fairly soon, this pretty much closes out our event season for the year. It’s time for our team to prepare for the holidays. We want to take some time to focus primarily on the game and on our community. ☃️

Finally, we wanted to close with a note for what’s ahead, and we can confirm that Townseek will release in 2025! 🧭 As we head into next year, we’ll confirm a proper release date. We would rather not go through the irony of submitting our game to these award shows again next year. 😅

A collage of screenshots featuring tweaks and new features of Townseek. The first one shows the player's airship leaving a group of tourists at a giant mushroom landmark, providing additional visual feedback. The second shows a female anthropomorphic blue cat who looks a lot like Whiskey, another character from the game. The last screenshot shows a cave that's being visited by bodybuilding cats. There is a lot of fitness equipment and a big sign displaying a muscular car flexing, with the said muscular cat standing below the sign, also flexing.
A look into what we’ve been working in Townseek!

We’ve been wrapping up pending tasks for the game and made great strides despite some challenges these last months. From improving the narrative, improving mouse controls, adding achievements, random events, and overall rounding off the game, we’ve been really busy! We’re also addressing some of the last issues raised in previous demos. We’re really thrilled with how the game has been shaping up!

We’ll be diving back into action and showing you more of the characters, locations, and details we have spread across Explora soon! As always, you can keep up with us by joining us on either our Discord server or by following us on any of our social media channels!

Join our Discord Server!

Well then, it’s time for us to respond to these awards in kind, seek onwards, and finish charting Townseek! Cheers! 🦈