Glossbird, a Minneapolis-based mobile video game studio, is one of five companies currently participating in an accelerator program for free-to-play games in Spain.
Over the next two months, Glossbird's team will focus on developing Fitment, a mobile fitness app, at the Vitoria-Gasteiz F2P Campus accelerator.
In addition to Glossbird, the F2P Campus' third cohort includes teams from the U.S, Canada and Barcelona.
Glossbird's Fitment game is breaking into the crowded field of fitness apps by bringing micro workouts to low-fitness, casual gamers, said Founder Alina Matson.
"We're trying to get folks to go from zero minutes of exercise to one minute a day," she said.
That approach stands out from competing fitness apps that are designed for people who are already externally motivated to exercise, Matson said.
The app will sit in the so-called "cozy games" space — a genre that emphasizes cute and lighthearted games that are free of violence, according to Matson.
While making up roughly 10% of the gaming market, Matson said the genre is very overlooked by game studios that want to build shooters designed for a male audience. "We're trying to combat that with this game, and this audience," she said.
Four of Glossbird's six employees, including Matson, are participating in the accelerator, which is sponsored by the Provincial Council of Álava, the Basque Government and Euneiz University.
Prior to launching Glossbird in 2021, Matson's career revolved around startups and early-stage product development. However, she made the jump to game development after seeing how impactful games could be as a solution to solving problems.
Fitment actually started as a hardware project involving smart exercise bands.
"I quickly found out that hardware is not the solution to that and games could be a more powerful tool," she said.
Up to this point, Glossbird has been bootstrapped, but Matson is currently raising a pre-seed round of $500,000 ahead of Fitments anticipated launch next year.
During the course of the accelerator, Matson said the team's main goal is to set the foundation for the business side of Fitment, which includes user acquisition and monetization.
