Founder, Balancing Monkey Games
Sam Barham established Balancing Monkey Games in 2017. Sam began working on his first game Before We Leave as a hobby project, while balancing the other demands of full-time work and fatherhood.
As the project grew and gained recognition, the team expanded to include contracted artists, audio experts, a writer, an additional programmer and a community manager.
In May 2020, Before We Leave was released exclusively on the Epic Game Store during the first Covid pandemic lockdown in Aotearoa NZ. The launch was a success, and enabled the studio to hire two of the contractors as permanent staff and to open an office in South Dunedin.
In August 2020, Before We Leave won the New Zealand Games Festival Award for Excellence in Audio, aka The Pav for The Composed Segment.
Dunedin has a huge and unique opportunity to grow its reputation as a great gaming hub, with a strong community and excellent initiatives like the CODE – NZ’s Centre of Digital Excellence – based here. But how do we take this one step further?