Nekki, the publishing brand behind the successful Shadow Fight franchise, has announced that it has surpassed one billion installs across its roster of games. As part of the announcement, the Cyprus-based company also revealed details of its latest project titled "Shades". Set to launch at the end of 2023, the game will be set in the "Shadow Fight" universe, continuing the stories of “Shadow Fight 2” but before the events of “Shadow Fight 3”. It will include new narratives and fan-favourite characters set to appear, a roguelike twist, and features a comic book of the storyline to convey the narrative in a fresh way.
While developing its upcoming title, the studio is also looking back at past projects and revitalising them to keep its growing player base engaged.
A continuing legacy
Nekki has been making its mark within the mobile industry over the past decades with a special focus on action and strategy games. Now on its 20th anniversary, the studio continues to build on the success of both "Shadow Fight" and "Vector", the former being a mobile fighting game and the latter a parkour runner.
The studio boasts a most impressive record that 95 percent of their one billion installs are organic, an unusual proportion for a portfolio of mid-core games. Of these, “Shadow Fight 2” accounts for 420 million and still increasing by over 100,000 per day, and “Shadow Fight 3” for 210 million, while "Shadow Fight 4: Arena" has surpassed 50 million installs and is still rising.
Nekki’s second-most popular series is Vector, which has seen over 330 million installs. The game has recently received its first major update in ten years with enhancements to the visuals and graphics, and players also now have new modes, features and quality-of-life improvements.
What’s Next?
Players can expect to dive into another new title on PC and consoles with "Spine". Dubbed the studio's "cinematic gun-fu action game", it features top-notch graphics powered by Unreal Engine 5. There is also the web3 project with evolving NFT collectables “Fight.me”.
Future outlook and beyond
According to founder Dmitry Terekhin, "Nekki has always aimed to create transcendent gameplay experiences by exploring new platforms, pushing the boundaries of game genres, and introducing unique gameplay innovations. This approach has enabled us to generate a powerful word-of-mouth effect and sustain organic growth."
Nekki has also been hard at work perfecting Cascadeur, the software responsible for Nekki's outstanding realistic 3D character animation. Suffice it to say that the studio aims to dabble even further into uncharted territory for the sake of innovation, and players can expect more pleasant surprises in the years to come.
