Max: The Curse of Brotherhood creators form Lightbulb

Ole Teglbjærg, Rune Dittmer, and Mikkel Thorsted - the founders of Press Play (which Microsoft shut down around the same time as Lionhead) - have launched a new studio, Lightbulb. The Copenhagen-based indie studio is comprised of a team of ex-Press Play employees and is working on a new PC title called Pioneers, which is slated for release in the second half of 2017.

Pioneers is a physics-based construction title that uses simple blocks to build complex machines. "With Pioneers we want to bring out the inventor in everybody and let them have an awesome time in a unique world of playfulness. We want make the construction game genre social on a new level," the studio explains on its website.

Mikkel Thorsted, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Lightbulb, says, "Pioneers is the kind of game we love to make and play ourselves. If you look at the games we have made in the past, there's a shared theme that keeps popping up - creativity. Pioneers is all about that. It's about using your imagination to create the most awesome vehicles, aeroplanes, boats or whatever you fancy, and use them to explore a new immersive world. This is our sweet spot."

Rune Dittmer, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Lightbulb, adds, "We are excited to be back and to embark on this new challenge as Lightbulb games. We're a bunch of battle proven veterans from Press Play, who together cover all the bases needed to create Pioneers. We have been very lucky to secure the team we have and we look forward to scaling up over the next year, continuing to raise the bar for what construction games can be".

Press Play was founded back in 2006 and was known for titles like Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, Tentacles and Kalimba.