Ex-Firemint employees form new Aussie studio

Three senior developers from EA's former Australian mobile development studio Firemint--which merged with EA's Iron Monkey studio in July last year--have teamed up to form a new studio titled Loveshack Entertainment.

Based in Melbourne, the new development studio is founded by Joshua Boggs, Adrian Moore and Ollie Browne, who together have combined experience working on mobile and PC titles including Firemint's Spy Mouse and Real Racing 2 and 3, Lionhead Studios's The Movies, Populous, Theme Hospital, Bullfrog's Syndicate Wars, and Namco Bandai's Rolling with Katamari.

"Josh and I really clicked when we worked together on Spy Mouse," Moore said.

"But we [found] that whilst we loved working at Firemint, we wanted to stretch our creative muscles outside of a larger company. With Ollie joining the team, we're now ready to unleash our love on the world."

Loveshack also revealed its debut project Framed, a narrative-based puzzle game in which players must rewrite the story using an animated storyboard.

The game is scheduled for release on tablets and PC in late 2013. Loveshack also plan to show off the game at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco later this month.

According to the developers, Framed has received funding from Screen Australia and Film Victoria.

Firemint was acquired by EA in 2011.