One of South Africa’s long standing studios has resurfaced after a self imposed hiatus with a string of updates and a visual rebrand.

In a long social media post the studio said,

When we started Clockwork Acorn we made the logo and website ourselves, and back then none of us had any real visual design experience. We loved how the logo reflected our bootstrapped, figure-it-out as-we-go-along origins, but over the years as we started making sense of this whole game dev business, the website and the brand felt stuck in who we were and not who we are now.

Last year we started working with Danielle Hitchcock to update our brand and build a new website to go with it. We wanted a more modern, versatile design that would look good wherever we used it, hence the monochrome design and limited yet fun colour palette. And we wanted our new website and brand to reflect our values of timeless and chunky. Danielle was amazing to work with and if you’re ever looking for a visual designer or web developer we can highly recommend giving her a shout.

We’re super happy with the new look, so poke around and let us know what you think. Anyone keen on some stickers?

Return of the Acorn

Way back at the tail end of 2017 we said that Clockwork Acorn had reached the end of an era. While we kept working on Jetstream, and released it on Steam in 2019, the company was on an indefinite hiatus. The band had split, going our separate ways. Francois continued making games at Spry Fox, Leon explored the wider world of South African startups at OfferZen and Hilgard eventually made his way to Norway, where he is still working on the upcoming Dune MMO.

In the background we also kept on playing around with new ideas and making small games, even hiring some folks in late 2022 to work on Cave Cards, a roguelike deckbuilder prototype we were particularly excited about.
Then in 2023 we were approached by our friends at Free Lives to help with post-launch updates for their hit environmental strategy game Terra Nil. It was an opportunity too good to pass up! So we quit our jobs and came back to Clockwork Acorn full time. We built a new team, and brought all the experience we had gained over the last few years to bear with a singular focus on our long-term vision of building a studio that can be a force for good in the world.

It sure has been a wild ride since then. We put out the Vita Nova update for Terra Nil, in which we collaborated with Free Lives to reimagine the way animals function in the game. We designed many new levels for the game, doubling the amount of content, and even added a shiny new 3D world map.

The road ahead

And so we get to the present moment. To say we live in an interesting time is a bit of an understatement. The world at large feels uncertain and if you are at all connected to the games industry, you will be aware that “times are tough right now” has become a bit of a mantra.
We’re pragmatic and know that people need safety and security to do their best creative work, and so we’re set on making things here as stable as possible. To that end we’ve decided to open up our client book and we’re looking for opportunities to collaborate with others. So if you’re looking for creative partners on your project, and you think our services might be of use to you, let’s chat!

Despite the world being scary right now, we’re excited about what the future holds! We’re doing jams and prototyping many new ideas, while refining our existing games. We’re excited to share plenty of updates and releases in 2025!