The Year In Review 2022

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Wow, what a year! So much happened that it took us a while to piece it together. We announced new titles, ported games and DLCs, released updates, and launched a game across 4 different platforms. We gave talks, took part in panels, wrote blog posts, and appeared on podcasts. We raised money for charity, ran 5km as a studio, and got very muddy in the process. We grew in size hugely, both with the number of projects we are working on, and the number of Aurochs in our herd. 

It’s been an incredible journey thank you for joining us on it. Let’s take a dive into 2022 at Auroch Digital to look back at all the things we achieved this year. 

January 

We started the year off with the launch of our free Mars Horizon update Daring Expeditions on all platforms. 🚀This update included new flags, plenty of Spacepedia updates and new dangerous missions, including the Philae / Rosetta Mission. This is an ESA cornerstone mission to chase, go into orbit around, and land on a comet. Watch our stream of this update here. 

Next up, for January was the release of our latest podcast season. If you are an avid listener of our podcast you’ll know this was our 7th season which which covered topics such as: 

Lastly, we ended the month with the announcement of our port of the Megaquarium DLC Freshwater Frenzy coming to consoles! We were delighted to share with everyone that we were bringing it to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox later in the year. 

Our giant free Mars horizon dlc Daring expeditions

February 

With January being such a launch heavy month, February seemed so much quieter with our podcast season ending, but with some amazing topics still being covered, including a special Ogre double bill to get everyone prepped for a special surprise later in the year... 

March 

Finally, at the start of March, Megaquarium DLC Freshwater Frenzy launched onto everyone’s consoles after an unexpected delay in February. As always, we thank the community for being so patient and understanding with us ♥ We know it was worth the wait! 

Next up in March, Some of our devs wanted to share why it is important to #BreakTheBias surrounding the games industry on International Woman’s Day. We wanted to #BreakTheBias on: 

Next up in this jam packed month was a big Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator celebration of our partnership with Moor Beer in Bristol. Working with a real-life brewery to make our game was a dream come true and getting to visit them was a real highlight. 

What better way to round off such a busy month than with our very own steam festival, Steam Simfest: Hobby Edition from March 28 – April 4 🎮🔨 

We hosted and organise the whole festival, including and incredible line up of panels, talks, and lets plays from huge studios and publishers. We also took part in lots of panels and let’s plays ourselves including 

April 

With April, came warmer weather and more lockdown restrictions lifting. This meant our team were starting to attend more events in person to give talks and join panels. The first one of this year was at W.A.S.D Live where we gave two talks 

Following this we were featured in Nintendo Life indie spotlight for Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator showcasing our latest trailer for the game.  

To finish off April we were proud to announce that we had won the “The Queens Award for Enterprise for International Trade” as a part of the wider Sumo Group!  

May 

After announcing our Moor Beer partnership back in March, we just had to take some of the team down to visit the brewery so that they can see life imitating art? Art imitating life? Either way, they all enjoyed it and we learnt so much from the visit too. Check out Moor Beer and make sure to visit their taproom if you’re in the area, we had a brilliant time! 

While we have been busy working on our games, Jess took a moment to chat about the importance of mental health and wellbeing within games too. This is an important pillar to us as a studio, the well being of our staff and our players is always key.  

Towards the end of May we dropped a big surprise for Steve Jackson Ogre fans. A massive PC update for Ogre Steam users and we announced and released our port of Ogre on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch on the same day! It was very busy and exciting. 

June 

Talking of surprises, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun was revealed as part of the Warhammer Skulls showcase as our next game launch in 2023! The fan reaction was spectacular and there was loads of hype for our game across socials. This game is very close to our hearts as a studio full of Warhammer fans. In particular our Studio director Tomas, who spoke about what the game and franchise means to him in this blog post.  

But we weren’t finished there, we had one more awesome announcement for our players. 

Next we announced another brilliant partnership for Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator, this time with Next Glass, the leading global provider of software, eCommerce solutions, content, and experiences in the beverage alcohol industry. This allowed us to include BeerAdvocate, Hop Culture, and Untappd in our game. 

We took part in Next Fest following this announcement, with a brand new demo for players to try. During the festival we did 2 streams with our partners and were joined by Kenny Gould from Hop culture, as well as Justin Hawke, Head Brewer and owner of Moor Beer Company. 

But that wasn’t all, the end of June involved celebrating Juneteenth, pets in our game and meeting up with the wider Sumo Group. June was a busy month! 

July 

Our surprises didn’t stop coming with regards to Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator. We did the unexpected and launched our very own limited edition Auroch Digit-ale Beer with Moor Beer! This beer recipe was created in the game so you could brew your own beer and then enjoy it in real life. 

In the heatwaves, Nina, our Operations Director did a talk at Develop called "Signing your Game and what to avoid” and we couldn’t be prouder of her.  

We did need to cool down though... 

Auroch Digital takes on tough mudder, the muddy victors

August 

So we decided to do Tough Mudder for the Grand Appeal, specifically raising money for Sunflower Ward which Auroch Digital is a patron of. We worked hard, supported eachother, got wet, got very muddy and we raised over £3,500 for the ward. At least all that mud helped us cool down. 

Just intime for us to announce the launch date of Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator and introduce you to the team you meet in story mode; Jeff, Pat, Mei, Rosa, and Kristoff. 

September 

September was a huge month for us, we launched Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator! We had been working so hard on the game, for so long, that it felt amazing to finally see it in players hands.  

We sent out awesome packs to content creators and enjoyed seeing people with our beer , wearing our custom aprons, and brewing the recipe we sent them. We also had some special aprons made for furry friends. 

We also took Brewmaster on the road and took the game, plus a load of badges, to EGX!  

the Auroch Digital team visiting Sunflower Ward at Bristol Children’s hospital. Featuring previous patient mae, and isaac one of the play assistants in the ward

October 

We wanted to keep giving the community more Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator greatness, so just before our console launch, we had Garrett Oliver, the renowned real life Brewmaster, play our game and drink our beer on the official Xbox On channel.  

That wasn’t all, the Brewmaster gifts kept coming, next up we also treated everyone to some special in-game posters from our some friends of the Studio. You could now put in posters from all these awesome games into your brewing space: Silt, Shadows of Doubt, Core Keeper, Fights in Tight Spaces, The Colonists, Kenshi, Megaquarium, Wildermyth, Warborn, Kitaria Fables, Wobbledogs, Loddlenaut, Snake Pass, Zool Redimensioned, Hundred Days - Winemaking Simulator, Unpacking. 

Remember Tough Mudder that we ran back in August? We were invited to go a visit the Sunflower Ward to give them the donations we had raised and met some amazing children including Mae. 

November 

After such a busy year, we started to wind down in November. It gave us time to tell people more about our Studio. Check out this article to learn 5 things about Auroch Digital, which tells you that we are 

  • 🎲 Never bored of board games 🎲

  • 👩‍🚀 We have friends in high spaces 👩‍🚀 

  • 🏡 We may be based in Bristol, but operate from everywhere 🏡

  • 🌎 We are experts in real-world ideas 🌎

  • 🐕 Plus we are a studio of animal lovers 🐈

We also had two of our producers give a great insight into neurodiversity and the games industry, which shows how as a studio we are always working to become more inclusive.  

To finish off the month, our beloved Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun was featured in an article about exciting shooters for 2023!  

December 

Even though it seems like things have been quiet during December for Auroch Digital, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We have loads of awesome projects going on behind the scenes and we are working very hard on lots of games and events. Some you know about, but quite a lot you don’t! 

We can’t wait to share these with you in 2023, it is going to be our biggest and best year ever. 

Thanks to our publishers, developers, and partners who we’ve worked with on some amazing projects in 2022. Thanks so much as well to all our players and community for supporting us throughout the year, playing our games, and talking with us on socials and in Discord. 

Make sure to join our community to be the first to hear about our next exciting announcements.  You can find us on: 

And if you like the sound of working at Auroch Digital make sure to check out our jobs page to see what we are currently hiring for. 

On to a brilliant 2023

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Ladell Smith