Indie developer Witch Beam’s simple video game Unpacking has won a swag of awards

A small indie Brisbane video game developer has just won a BAFTA for its smash hit Unpacking and shown that even the simplest of ideas can spark a worldwide sensation.

Wren Brier and Tim Dawson and their BAFTA awards at their Brisbane home.f

Moving house is something that can be viewed with trepidation. But a Brisbane couple have turned their experiences into a multi award-winning video game.

When Wren Brier had the initial idea about developing a video game about unpacking your belongings she didn’t realise she would need a few extra shelves for all the awards it’s earned.

From the simplest of ideas can grow the biggest of journeys with the video game Unpacking taking her, and partner and co-founder of small indie Brisbane based game developer Witch Beam Tim Dawson around the world.

Ms Brier started working on the game almost four years ago after moving into an apartment with Mr Dawson.

“The initial spark was from me and I mentioned to Tim that this could work as a game. We started brain storming it on the spot. A few days later Tim brought it up again and I said OK let’s keep going,” she said.

“A couple of days later I said I had a story idea and he said it sounded really good and we came up with the ending. We figured out all the details together.”

Unpacking is a gentle contemplative block-fitting puzzle about moving house, slowly telling a story about our living spaces at different stages of life from a female perspective.

Each stage comprises unpacking possessions from boxes into a new dwelling, representing significant life events. The player is tasked with fitting each unpacked item into the living space, learning the protagonist’s life story through her items and the places she lives.

Witch Beam’s Unpacking video game has won a swag of awards.

After more than three years of development through Witch Beam, Unpacking was released last year and took out Australian Game of the Year and Eurogamer’s 2021 Game of the Year.

In April the Witch Beam team travelled to Britain to collect two of the top gongs at the BAFTA Game Awards – Best Narrative and Game of the Year, beating top studios like Sony and Electronic Arts and major productions such as Psychonauts 2 Returnal and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Unpacking’s US-based publishers Tumblr Games is not releasing any specific figures on downloads but within 10 days of Unpacking’s release 100,000 units were sold.

Originally from Israel, Ms Brien, who was Unpacking’s creative director at Witch Beam, said it was a very relatable game.

“Moving is something that I have a fair bit of experience with and every time it feels like a life change,” she said.

“Unpacking is about the things we go through in our life. Moving generally coincides with big life events. Unpacking is about making the most of what you have.

“I think at a time where there is so much happening in the world that we don’t have a lot of control over and especially with us being so cooped up in our homes with lockdowns our home is one of the only places that we feel like we have power to affect thing – organise them to our likening and make them feel like the space is ours.”

Tim Dawson and Wren Brier who created the unpacking video game with Witch Beam.

Australia punches well above its weight in the video game development industry which goes back 50 to 60 years and seen hundreds of games gain a worldwide audience including Fruit Ninja, the Goose, Hollow Knight and BioShock.

Currently Australian-based video game development studios employ about 1500 people who generated a $226m return in 2020/21, with the past three years recording a 20 per cent year-on-year growth.

Studios range from two people to 200 but there is plenty of room for growth if the local sector is compared to countries like Canada which has 17,000 people employed in the industry.

Originally from Adelaide where he cut his games teeth at Ratbag Games, Mr Dawson moved to Sydney before making his way to Queensland, starting Witch Beam in 2013 with co-founders Sanatana Mishra and Jeff Van Dyck.

Unpacking is Witch Beam’s second game with their first release being the award-winning arcade-style action game Assault Android Cactus which the trio created funded through a combination of personal savings and grants.

Wren Brier and Tim Dawson with their BAFTA awards at their Brisbane apartment.

Mr Dawson said it was very different from Unpacking.

“The first one had did had huge amount of robots on the screen, was very action packed and won awards but it has been much less commercially successful than Unpacking, although it did allow Unpacking to exist,” he said.

Despite the success of Unpacking, Mr Dawson said Witch Beam was not established to make a fortune.

“I see Witch Beam as a vehicle to make cool stuff happen and hope to do that for as long as I can. We expect to grow but not suddenly. The first game we made was with the three of us and Unpacking bought in contractors and we got bigger,” he said.

“I’d like to continue that trajectory but we’re looking at slow and steady growth, nothing explosive.

“You don’t go into games if you want to make lots of money. It’s not a great area for that. Your skills can be transferred to other areas. You go into games because you want to create games and the success of Unpacking means we can continue to make games.”