Epic Games Awards VR Game ‘Emmerholt’ and Sci-Fi Film ‘Outlaws’ $15,000 and $20,000 Respectively

July 14, 2015 - Epic Games today announced the next two winners of their Unreal Dev Grants, Cherry Pie Games for their VR title Emmerholt and Nagapi Productions for their film Outlaws. Each of these ambitious projects was hand-chosen by the team at Epic to receive no-strings-attached grants in order to help them bring their projects to life with Unreal Engine 4. Cherry Pie will receive $15.000 and Nagapi is slated to receive $20,000.

Nagapi is a fledgling production company headed by Greg Meeres-Young and Jason Edwards. Their first production is Jason’s graphic novel Outlaws, a sci-fi epic about a lawless world where bounty hunter Liv Anders is propelled into a fight against a tyrannical crime lord forcing her to confront a past she has long-tried to bury. Collectively, they will create and direct this sci-fi epic pushing visual boundaries and demonstrating the full potential of UE4 in high-end film production. Greg and Jason have over 25 years of experience in the effects industry and have created award winning visual effects on multiple blockbuster movies including Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Guardians of the Galaxy.

"Full CG sci-fi epic, Outlaws, is our first production. I started the project to demonstrate my belief that games technology could revolutionize the way VFX artists work. UE4 has made this belief a reality," said Greg Meeres-Young, founder and VFX artist. "UE4 has enabled the creation of dynamic visually rich worlds, without the hours of offline rendering. I want Outlaws to smash preconceptions of what is possible in real time and prove that small teams can now solve the complex creative problems demanded by high end productions. We are honored to be awarded a dev grant by Epic. This grant has enabled us to commit full time to the project and expand the team.”

Emmerholt is a virtual reality game started as an extension of Hollow, which was Cherry Pie’s game submission to the Leap Motion 3D Jam. Emmerholt takes place in the same universe but plays as a story based free-roaming adventure with dire consequences. Each consecutive play-through will contain progress from previous achievements, but each quest area will be placed randomly throughout the world. Based in Orlando, Florida, Cherry Pie Games is an indie studio composed of six young professionals who met at the University of Central Florida and forged their synergy and skills in class projects, international competitions and game jams.

“The Unreal Dev Grant is a huge achievement for our small team. We are incredibly honored and pumped to carry forward with development of Emmerholt,” said Jeremy Boggs of Cherry Pie Games. “Emmerholt is a marriage between emerging technology and immersive gameplay all made entirely possible by Unreal Engine 4. Our goal is to build from the ground up to embrace current VR hardware, Leap Motion hand tracking, and technology yet to be explored.”

To keep up with news on Cherry Pie Games and Emmerholt, follow @cherrypie_games and visit cherrypiegames.com

Developed by Epic Games, the Unreal Engine brings high-fidelity experiences to PC, console, mobile, the Web and VR. Unreal Engine accelerates the creation of games, applications, visualizations and cinematic content. Download Unreal Engine for free at unrealengine.com, and follow @UnrealEngine for updates.