Transatlantic indie studio Shark Punch founded by Disney vets

Newsbrief: Three former Disney developers living in Helsinki and San Francisco have founded Shark Punch, a self-funded indie studio dedicated to making games that "combine the deep gameplay of classic '90s game[s]" with contemporary user-friendly design. The studio was founded by Aarne Hunziker, Jiri Kupiainen and Leo Lannenmaki, who established a rapport working together at Disney Interactive and before that Helsinki-based Rocket Pack, which was acquired by Disney in 2011. The trio left Disney Interactive for different reasons in 2013 and decided to found Shark Punch together in 2014. They are now working on The Masterplan, a tactical heist game set in the '70s, using tools that are heavily dependent on Haxe and OpenFL. The game will be playable at GDC 2014 next week in the GDC Play area, and is expected to release on PC later this year.