Thunder Lotus
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Since 2014, Thunder Lotus has created beautiful, ambitious, and immersive experiences, electrifying gamers worldwide. A passionate collective of AAA, indie, and mobile expats with decades of combined industry experience and an impressive list of shipped titles, Thunder Lotus aspires to distill its visionary original IPs into visually and emotionally unique games that the team itself would love to play.
History
In 2014, studio founder Will Dubé quit his job as a mobile game designer with the goal of bringing an independent video game project to the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Dubé rallied a group talented friends and former colleagues to the cause, and the loose collective settled on the evocative moniker Thunder Lotus.
Their first project was Jotun, the tale a Norse warrior who has died an inglorious death and must prove herself to the Gods to enter Valhalla. The game’s unique blend of action and exploration gameplay, along with its eye-catching hand-drawn take on Norse mythology, struck a chord with the Kickstarter community in summer 2014, raising over $64,000 from 2,300 backers.
The success of the Kickstarter campaign consolidated the team and its vision, helping to secure additional external funding, as well as crucial endorsement from the gamer community writ large via the Greenlight process on Steam, the leading digital storefront for PC games.
Since then, Thunder Lotus has never looked back. Bolstered by strong reviews from critics and players alike, Jotun has gone on to attract over 3.5 million players into its hand-drawn, Norse-inspired world since its fall 2015 launch.
In the interim, Thunder Lotus developed its sophomore creation, titled Sundered. An ambitiously designed action game set in a distinctly darker universe, Sundered built on the studio’s strengths while pushing beyond Jotun’s artistic and technical scope considerably. Thunder Lotus leveraged its growing experience, resources, fanbase, and partnerships to ensure a strong launch for Sundered upon its release in summer 2017.
Over time, the team’s growing maturity coalesced into a strong vision for the studio, which they proudly see as being built upon a foundation of Respect for the Player, the Team, and for the Craft.
With its days as a fledgling enterprise now a distant memory, Thunder Lotus has recently entered its second decade in the industry with significant momentum and ambition. The team has grown substantially, and the studio has upgraded to a larger space in the vibrant Saint-Henri neighborhood of Montreal.
Thunder Lotus rose to greater prominence with the release of the award-winning Spiritfarer (2020), a cozy management game of tremendous emotional impact which has sold over 4,000,000 copies worldwide.
Thunder Lotus’ fourth production, 33 Immortals, an ambitious 33-player action-roguelike, was developed by a second production team specialized in online multiplayer games. 33 Immortals was released in Early Access in March of 2025.
Finally, the Spiritfarer Team’s highly anticipated next project, At Fate’s End, is currently in development with a release expected in 2026.
Team & Collaborators
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Founder, President, Creative Director
Will Dubé
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Chief Technical Officer
Alexandre Monette Martin
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Human Resources Director
Gaëlle Aznar
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Development Operations Director
Sebastian Ducharme
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Marketing and Communications Director
Rodrigue Duperron
Awards
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Winner: Best Indie Game (Spiritfarer)
Canadian Video Game Awards
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Winner: Best Art Direction (Spiritfarer)
Canadian Video Game Awards
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Winner: Best Score/Soundtrack (Spiritfarer)
Canadian Video Game Awards
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Winner: Best Foreign Mobile Game (Spiritfarer)
Les Pégases
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Winner: Best Mobile Game Storytelling (Spiritfarer)
Pocket Gamer Awards
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Top 50 games of 2017, #29 (Sundered)
Eurogamer
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Nominated: Best platformer, 2017 (Sundered)
IGN
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Nominated: Gamer's Voice Award (Sundered)
SXSW Gaming
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Winner: Best Debut Game (Jotun)
Canadian Video Game Awards
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Winner: Best Art Direction (Jotun)
Canadian Video Game Awards
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Nominated: Best 2D Art (Jotun)
Unity Awards
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Nominated: Best Art Direction (Jotun)
IGN