Indietopia is a non-profit foundation. We are an incubator, accelerator and publisher of games. Our mission is making sure that everyone passionate about game development has a chance at becoming a self-supporting developer. This starts small in Groningen, the Netherlands. However, as the game industry is a global industry, we create global visibility for our teams through social media, our game store and by organising and visiting events.

Game developers can join our Indietopia Citizenship. We have crafted a membership of five tiers, featuring perks such as help with subsidy application, marketing and expert coaching to create the game of your dreams. Furthermore, we give workshops about analogue and digital game design, boardgames, gamification and more.

Our vision is that at one point the world sports multiple Indietopias: Indietopia Hamburg, Indietopia Tokyo, Indietopia New York etc. We’ll strive to make Indietopia the place where game developers easily share knowledge, learn from and inspire each other. A place where customers know they always get the serious game that they want. A place where aspiring developers know they at least have a fair shot at earning money with game development.

Before Indietopia, there was Indie Gameleon, an Indie Game Conference, Showcase, and Game jam, held from 2013-2015. The first two editions were held in Groningen, the last one in Hamburg. The first edition of Indie Gameleon was such a big success that event founder Mendel Bouman decided there was enough serious interest for something more permanent. Thus, Indietopia was born.

Indietopia was founded by Mendel on April 1st 2014 (no joke), with the purpose to function as a hub for many (at the time) isolated indie game development studios in the North of the Netherlands. Indietopia opened up in an abandoned building. By supplying Indietopia with this building, the municipality of Groningen gave the Northern Indie Game Scene a place to thrive, while they did not have to worry about the building being squatted.

Seeing that many indie game devs were struggling with marketing and publishing of their games, Mendel enlisted the help of Shan Poon as one of the few talented individuals in the north with a background in marketing and publishing video games.

Together they founded Indie friendly video game publishing label Indietopia Games.

They started publishing with the simple yet elegant Twin Stick Shooter Pulstar. Pulstar sold over 20K copies in the first couple of months and was considered a succes for a first title launched on Steam.

A year later Indietopia Games released Convoy, made by Convoy Games in Leeuwarden. It became a cult hit, selling 50K units in its first month and going well over 100K units in the following year.

From 2014 – 2016, Indietopia managed to grow the Northern Dutch Game industry from 8 indie dev studios to 24 indie game studios while the industry had been stagnant in the years before Indietopia’s entry into the industry.

Despite the growth of the regional industry it became painfully clear In 2016 that many indies not only had trouble with their marketing, but also with their business development and raising funds. For this purpose, Mendel Bouman managed to secure government funding to start the foundation, the Indietopia Accelerator. An accelerator that provides funding and business coaching for Indie Game Developers that are serious about turning their studio into a business.

After the first board that was established fell apart due to a mismatch in expectations, Mendel attracted Indie Game Developer and writer Merijn de Boer as executive director of operations and fellow board member. Together they hired a team and kickstarted the foundation in to action.

On March 1st 2020, Mendel handed over the reigns of the Accelerator Program (the foundation) to Merijn and stepped down as board member. He’s gone on to do other cool things in the music space and indie game space.

The Accelerator Program has since then coached several studios. Thanks to the program, Tweetal Studios received government funding to develop their title Crimson Resonance, Pilot Perils got ported to Switch after releasing on iOS and Android, and Fringe Planet found a private investor due to Indietopia’s presence at Slush in Finland.

Several new studios have since been accepted in the program. Time will tell how they will write history.