One common request of the Unity development team is that they start developing games in-house, like their rival Epic Games does with Unreal Engine. This dog fooding will help them discover issues and pain points that developers using their tools daily commonly encounter. Back at GDC 2022 with the announcement of the Gigaya project it seemed that Unity finally agreed… then promptly discovered that creating games from end to end is difficult and time consuming and quickly shut down the Gigaya project to the disappointment of many.
Now under new management it seems that Unity have taken this advice to heart and have finally created a game from concept to publishing, a launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2 called Survival Kids.
Details from the press release:
Unity, the leading platform to create and grow games and interactive experiences, today announced it has developed a day-one release title for Nintendo Switch™ 2, Survival Kids, in close partnership with Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. (KONAMI), and built entirely on Unity 6 for Nintendo Switch 2.
“The opportunity to develop Survival Kids with KONAMI has been an invaluable experience, giving us insights that will help us keep improving the performance and stability of the Unity Engine for all our customers,” said Adam Smith, Unity.
“The opportunity to develop Survival Kids with KONAMI has been an invaluable experience, giving us insights that will help us keep improving the performance and stability of the Unity Engine for all our customers,” said Adam Smith, VP of Unity Engine Product Management. “Testing of our own technology aligns with a recent shift in our development approach to ensure our tools are production-tested first so game developers can confidently create beautiful games that run smoothly.”
Survival Kids represents the first time Unity has designed and developed a game end-to-end in collaboration with a publisher partner.
The project enabled the Unity team to improve the performance and stability of the engine. Survival Kids uses a wide range of Unity capabilities, from core engine features like URP and Netcode, to live services like Lobby and Relay.
Survival Kids represents a landmark collaboration between KONAMI and Unity, blending classic survival gameplay with modern innovation. Introducing new co-op mechanics and multiplayer functionality, the game stays true to its roots while also evolving for today’s players.
Check out the newly released announcement trailer for more information about Survival Kids.
Key Links
Unity Survival Kids Press Release
This personally in my opinion is a very positive development and hopefully is a path Unity continues to follow into the future. You can learn more about why I think this is such a good development in the video below.