Ska Studios is an independent game development studio founded by James Silva in 2007 after winning a contract to publish The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai to Xbox Live Arcade. Ska Studios has released four Metacritic-aggregated console games since then, more than any similarly sized studio. Ska Studios currently consists of Silva.
The studio is well known in indie gaming for its art style, which is described as cartoonish, grim, and gory, and its games' tight controls. Many of the studio's games are strongly inspired by modern action titles, such as Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden Black, and Dark Souls.
History Silva began making games as a hobby in 2001, starting with Zombie Smashers X, a River City Ransom style beat-em'-up game, but the title was financially unsuccessful, selling fewer than 100 units. James went on to develop more similarly unsuccessful titles, including Blood Zero, Zombie Smashers X2, and Survival Crisis Z, but didn't achieve viable commercial success until 8 years later, with 2009's The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
Development All of Ska Studios' currently released games are built using the XNA framework or its open-source cross platform counterpart, MonoGame. When Xbox One launched with no XNA support, Ska Studios made the switch to PlayStation 4, with Salt and Sanctuary being the studio's first title to launch on a non-Microsoft console. Regarding the change, James said:"The engineering side of it was an issue. All of our code is .NET/XNA, and, even though XNA support has ended, .NET games can use open source wrappers like MonoGame and FNA to carry the torch. But Xbox One has no .NET support. PS4 does, with titles like Towerfall: Ascension and Transistor using MonoGame in one form or another to deploy to PS4."
Games
Year TitlePlatformDevelopersMetacritic Score 2009 ZP2K9 XBLIGJames Silva 2009 The Dishwasher: Dead SamuraiXBLAJames Silva75 2009 I Made a Game with Zombies in It! XBLIGJames Silva 2010 ZP2KXXBLIGJames Silva, Dustin Burg 2011 The Dishwasher: Vampire SmileXBLA/PCJames Silva, Dustin Burg81 2012 Z0MB1ES (on ph0ne)WP7James Silva 2013 Charlie MurderXBLA/PCJames Silva, Michelle Juett Silva78 2014 TIME VIKING!!!!!ANDSPACERAPTORXBLIGJames Silva, Michelle Juett Silva 2016 Salt and SanctuaryPS4/PC/PS VITA/Switch/XB1James Silva, Michelle Juett Silva852022Salt and SacrificePS5/PS4/PC/SwitchJames Silva, Shane Lynch 72
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