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Wednesday, Wed, 14 MayMay 2025
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Christchurch studio's new online game plays to huge global audience

A small gaming design studio in Christchurch has hit the big time with its video game Dread Hunger.

Digital Confectioners - which has its headquarters on Manchester St - has already sold more than a million copies of the game worldwide since it was released in April.

Currently, 260,000 people log in each day to play the whodunnit-style online game set around an 18th-century Arctic naval expedition.

As one of eight explorers, the player try to survive the unforgiving conditions.

But there's a twist: Two in the group are traitors and can call on evil powers to ruin the expedition.

Executive product designer Neil Reynolds said the game's success has exceeded all their expectations.

"We would be so happy with a 10th of the success".

He admits when the team started developing Dread Hunger, most gamers had never even heard of 'social deduction' as a genre.

The game has taken off in China, where the game genre is hugely popular.

Reynolds said the success has enabled them to reinvest back into the Christchurch company, with two new projects already in development.

- By Geoff Sloan
- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air