Southlogic Studios

The Brazilian development studio Southlogic Studios was founded in July of 1996 by Christian Lykawka, in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul.

During its first year of operation, Southlogic Studios produced a 2D platform shooter game called Guimo. It was published in Brazil and Europe in 1997.

After that, the company went into hibernation for a year, until Christian had the opportunity to join an "incubation" program for new companies at UFRGS (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul). Christian took advantage of this opportunity by laying out a long-term plan for creating a proprietary 3D engine.

Thus, in 1998, the Aspen Engine’ was born, a full-fledged development environment that includes an object-oriented game engine, a 3D MAX exporter, and a level editing tool. The engine handles all of the graphics, physics, sound, networking, etc., allowing applications to be easily built on top of it. To prove the technology's worth, a prototype for a game called Aquarius was developed concurrently, as a multiplayer combination of action and strategy. It combined typical real-time-strategy elements such as tech trees and resource collection with the ability to enter and control any unit as in a first-person shooter.

In early 2001, the engine was finished and Southlogic Studios produced the Jungle Demo, which proved that it was possible to create a dense jungle environment in a videogame, on a scale never before seen. The demo attracted the attention of Infogrames, Inc. and Southlogic was asked to make another prototype, this time for a hunting simulation, to show Infogrames how the Aspen Engine technology could be applied to a hunting game.

Infogrames then contracted Southlogic Studios to create a hunting game using that outdoor technology, which became Trophy Hunter 2003 (2002). In 2002, the company also doubled in size and created the game in only eight months, on time and on budget.

Since then, Southlogic has created two more hunting games: Deer Hunter 2004 (2003) and Deer Hunter 2005 (2004). In 2006, for the World Cup Football 2006, they created the football game Football Tigers, aimed at a young audience, for Kellogs/Microtime.

Southlogic also outsources art and technology to various publishers and developers. They did the graphics for the Xbox game Hummer: Badlands (2004) and ported Xiaolin Showdown (2006) to the Xbox. Art assets were provided for Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet (2005 - PS2/GameCube), Curious George (2006 - PS2/Xbox/GameCube/Windows), Scooby-Doo!: Who's Watching Who? (2006 - PSP) and Flushed Away (2006 - PS2). The studio also contributed to the movie Meu tio matou um cara (2004).

On 20th January 2008 Ubisoft Entertainment SA announced to have acquired the company. At that time, the team consisted of about 20 developers. The studio was integrated into Ubisoft São Paulo, with Southlogic management reporting to Bertrand Chaverot, managing director of Ubisoft's Brazilian studio. Southlogic, however, kept its facilities in Porto Alegre, operating as a satellite office.