BBC :
A young woman with blonde hair wearing a striped cream shirt. She is smiling at the camera and is stood in front of a banner which says ‘Amber Isle’ BBC
Amber Isle was created by Jordan Bradley from her flat during lockdown
A childhood love of dinosaurs and a lockdown idea led Jordan Bradley to develop what she hopes will be a hit video game.
“Dinosaurs have been an absolute obsession of mine ever since I was a small child,” she told BBC News NI.
“Everybody found dinosaurs interesting at one point, that’s something I never really grew out of.”
Amber Isle from Belfast’s Ambertail Games, a company Ms Bradley originally set up in her flat in 2020, has just been released.
“Amber Isle is a shop-keeping and life simulation game,” she said.
“You run a shop, you go about your life, you gather resources, craft items.
“The catch is you play as a dinosaur in a world of friendly dinosaurs.”
Ambertail Games A screenshot from real game play. There are three characters engaged in an exchange. Each character is based on a dinosaur or prehistoric creature. There is a text box which reads: “Well, if it isn’t the island’s best deliveryfolk! Will you be at my farewell later, Maple?” Ambertail Games
Amber Isle uses cute dinosaur avatars to create a life simulation game structure
The development of Amber Isle has created 10 full time jobs – and 30 other contracted ones – and is the result of about £1.2m in investment.
One of the UK’s biggest video game companies, Team17, has also come on board with it.
Overall, the UK’s video games industry employs around 76,000 people and is estimated to bring £6bn a year to the UK economy.
The video games industry in Northern Ireland is also bigger than you might think.
According to NI Screen, there are about 40 gaming companies active in Northern Ireland.
‘Very meaningful to me’
Ambertail Games was set up in 2020 by Jordan and co-founder Noel Watters during lockdown.
“The studio started in the spare bedroom of my flat and I think we all kind of needed something that was lovely, quaint, non-urgent, happy at a time when we were all stuck inside,” Ms Bradley said.
So she came up with Amber Isle, and started a company to produce it, while in her 20s.
“At the time I didn’t know anything about running a business, all that I knew was I wanted to make games,” she said.
“I had an idea for one, it was very meaningful to me.
“Myself and Noel, we decided ‘let’s take a shot, what else do we have to lose?’
“It was quite tough, people maybe don’t appreciate how much work goes into just running the business.