Thekla doubles grant money for underrepresented devs to $100k

Thekla Inc. has doubled the amount of money available in grants for indie developers from "traditionally underrepresented groups".

Previously, the studio responsible for The Witness was offered a total of $50,000 in grants. Now, that amount is $100,000, after RAD Game Tools founder Jeff Roberts matched the original total.

"The additional funding means we can increase the number of recipients and give more to each," Thekla said in a new blog post.

The individual grants will be worth between $3,000 and $20,000, and they are available to independent designers working on "grid-based puzzle games".

"We're giving out these grants in conjunction with a game project we're developing ourselves, and that project is setting the theme," Thekla said when it first announced the initiative in March. "Puzzle games that take place on a discrete grid where the interesting gameplay comes from unique rules governing the behavior of the objects."

Thekla will receive no rights to any of the games it supports, and even ports of existing work will be considered if the designer makes a convincing enough case. The only stipulation outside of the genre is that the creator is from an "underrepresented" group in the games industry.

Thekla has suggested the following groups, but it stated that the list is "not exhaustive":

• Women
• Trans or Gender non-binary
• LGBTQIA
• People of Color
• Not from North America, Europe or another western nation
• English is not your first language
• Disabled
• People with mental health issues