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The keen games history

keen games was founded 2005 by six game development veterans, creating video games successfully since 1992: First as Neon Studios and then from 2005 as keen games.

1992 – 2005: The time of Neon Studios

• Neon Studios was founded 1992 by Antony Christoulakis, Jan Jöckel, Peter Thierolf plus three other developers. They all knew each other from previous projects they had worked together on.
• They founded Neon Studios to realize their own ideas of perfect and fun games. The first game Neon Studios released was “Mr. Nutz” for Amiga & Sega Mega Drive. It was published by Ocean Software, one of the biggest European video game developers and publishers of the 1980s and 1990s.
• The first major success that followed was “Tunnel B1” for PlayStation1, which was also published by Ocean. At that time, Neon was one of the first European studios to work on the PlayStation1. Furthermore “Tunnel B1” received massive positive attention and coverage in the press.
• In 1998 Ocean was acquired by Infogrames and Neon lost its publisher. Furthermore the PlayStation2 replaced its forerunner which meant the end of a console cycle for the industry and new challenges for independent development studios.
• Neon maintained the focus on developing high quality games. After developing some GameBoy Color products, Neon started working on “Legend of Kay” for PlayStation2 which received fairly good critiques.
• Finally in 2000 Neon was sold to Austrian publisher JoWooD. After the whole management of Neon left, JoWooD decided to close Neon Studios in 2005.

Since 2005 – today: A new start with keen games

• After the closure of Neon, the founders decided to stay independent and purchased all assets from Neon including the name and decided for a fresh start with a new name: keen!
• With the yearlong experience of Neon and a fresh start keen games quickly established itself in the marketplace and assembled a team of more than 45 highly skilled professionals. And the studio is still growing.
• In the last years keen games has worked for different publishers, developed games of various genres and on different platforms.
• The most successful projects have been G-Force (PSP, Nintendo DS), Anno: Create a new world (Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS), Anno 1701 (Nintendo DS), What’s Cooking with Jamie Oliver (Nintendo DS) and Dance Dance Revolution – Disney Channel Edition (PlayStation 2).