DFT Games Studios is an independent game development studio in County Galway, Ireland. It has been trading since February 2009.
What we make
Original games, developed in-house and owned outright by the studio. The current project is Alembix TCG, a free-to-play card game where every creature is a chemical element and every fusion is a real reaction. It is coming to Steam Early Access, with an open playtest running now. Alongside its own titles the studio takes on selected client work in development and technical art, where the brief fits the direction the studio is already going in. Some of that work is covered by non-disclosure agreements and does not appear anywhere on this site. The projects we are free to name are on the past work page.
We also publish apps. Wiccan Planetary Hours Clock is on Google Play: it computes planetary hours from the real sunrise and sunset at your position, works offline, and collects nothing. It is not a game, but it is ours, it is maintained, and it is the kind of small precise tool the studio enjoys building.
How we work
Small team, direct contact, no account managers between you and the people doing the work. On commissioned projects the client keeps full ownership of their intellectual property, without exception.
We would rather say no to a project than take one we cannot do well. That has kept the studio small and kept it going.
Engines and tools
Mainly Unreal Engine 5, with some projects built in Unity 6. Materials and texturing work is done in Substance. The studio has shipped to mobile, desktop and console over its history.
Teaching
A substantial part of what the studio does is teaching: courses, tutorials and training built on the same work that goes into its games. More about the teaching side. For what the studio has built before, see the past work archive.
Who runs the studio
DFT Games Studios was founded in February 2009 by Giuseppe “Pino” and Marinella De Francesco, and is still run by them.
Pino is an Unreal Authorized Instructor, lectures on game development and computing at college level, and brings four decades of software architecture behind him, seventeen of those years in the games industry. That background is why the studio approaches games as engineering as much as art, and why the teaching side exists at all.
Company details
DFT Games Studios, business name registration 746018, and DFT Game Studios, registration 763525, are both registered business names of The DFT Initiative Limited, a company registered in Ireland under number 628202, with its registered office in County Galway. VAT registration number IE3546764IH. The studio is an IGDA Studio Affiliate.