Cyberwave

Overview

Cyberwave is the independent game development studio behind Solarpunk. The team consists of two people: Ben Brass (artist) and Patrick de Rijk (programmer). The company is sometimes also referred to as "DoubleBee", Ben's artist alias. Solarpunk is published by rokaplay.

Team members

Ben Brass (artist)

Ben Brass, also known as "DoubleBee," handles the art direction, 3D modeling, and visual design for Solarpunk. Before founding Cyberwave, Ben interned at Mimimi Games, the Munich-based studio known for real-time tactics games. During that internship, he contributed to Desperados III, which released in 2020.

Patrick de Rijk (programmer)

Patrick de Rijk is responsible for all programming and technical development of Solarpunk. Before Cyberwave, Patrick worked at Astragon Entertainment in Dusseldorf, the company that publishes the Bus Simulator series. Outside of professional game development, Patrick is known as the Twitch streamer "Clym", where he has built a community of over 130,000 followers primarily in the Minecraft space.

How they met

Ben and Patrick met while studying at Mediadesign Hochschule Dusseldorf, a design university in Dusseldorf, Germany. Their shared interest in game development led to the founding of Cyberwave, where they combined Ben's art skills with Patrick's programming background to create Solarpunk.

A Game About Digging A Hole

While developing Solarpunk, Cyberwave created a second game: A Game About Digging A Hole (abbreviated AGADAH). The game originated during a vacation taken by Ben, who was experimenting with voxel-based terraforming techniques being explored for Solarpunk. The prototype was built in under a month using licensed assets.

AGADAH released on February 7, 2025, at a price of 4.99 EUR. The game became an unexpected hit:

• 250,000 copies sold in the first week

• Over 1 million copies sold in total

• Console versions planned for December 2025

The success of AGADAH provided additional financial resources and visibility for the studio as they continue work on Solarpunk. Despite being a small side project, it became one of the most commercially successful indie games of early 2025.

Studio profile