The Iconfactory wants to bring fun back to your fingers
Longtime design and software firm The Iconfactory has a new Kickstarter where they’re hoping to bring some more classic games back to the App Store as well as offer it for free to everyone. Ollie’s Arcade started as a home for minigames, including ones the Iconfactory had included in its app Twitterrific (which died when Twitter killed support for all third-party Twitter apps). Ged Maheux of The Iconfactory writes:
This week we announced a new Kickstarter that’s aimed at expanding the game offerings of Ollie’s Arcade, the fun, ad-free retro gaming app we introduced back in 2023. Ollie’s Arcade has always been a great way to escape doomscrolling, even if just for a little while, and now we have an opportunity to bring these retro games to even more people on iOS.
The Iconfactory has been hit hard by a rise of AI artwork that has really harmed its design business. The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry is working hard to recover from an Annus horribilis of his own. As Maheux writes:
We’ve struggled to pay our salaries, keep up with the rising cost of health care and to compete against the onslaught of AI driven design solutions. The new KS won’t be enough to solve all our revenue problems, but it will help give us runway to keep the lights on while we find new ways to stick around and serve you. The more we raise now, the longer and safer that runway gets.
If there’s anyone who deserves more runway, it’s The Iconfactory.