About LANZA

A workshop, not a museum

LANZA is where indie games show up before they are finished. You play the alpha in the browser, the developer watches it land, and together you decide what the game becomes.

Non finito

In the 1520s Michelangelo started a set of marble figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II. Four of them were never finished. Today they stand in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, and people call them the Prisoners, or the Slaves.

A shoulder breaks out of a raw block. A head is still buried in stone. The marks of the chisel are everywhere. Five centuries later, crowds still stop in front of them — not in spite of the unfinished stone, but because of it. You can see the figure fight its way out, and you can see the hand that frees it.

Michelangelo's unfinished marble Atlas, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence — Atlas

Michelangelo's unfinished marble Awakening Slave, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence — Awakening Slave

Michelangelo's unfinished marble Bearded Slave, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence — Bearded Slave

Michelangelo's unfinished marble Young Slave, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence — Young Slave

Photos: Dimitris Kamaras, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Cropped.

An alpha is the same thing. The game is already there — you can feel it — but it is still being carved.

That is why LANZA looks like a sculptor's studio: grey marble walls, gold only where it matters, and work in progress on every stand. We do not hide the chisel marks. We invite you in to watch them happen.

Made by indie humans

Every game here has a name behind it: a solo developer or a small independent team. No publisher sets the deadline, and no content mill fills the shelf. We stand for the author — whatever tools they use, a person makes the calls and signs the work.

Built to experiment

LANZA is a place for many small, bold tries. A dice game with sea-creature curses. A combat racer you steer with a guitar solo. Some ideas will grow into full games, some will stay sketches — and that is the point. An experiment that fails fast is cheaper than a sequel nobody asked for.

Carved together with players

You play the alpha before anyone else, and your wishlist is a vote. Votes and patrons move a game along its Road to Steam, and every roadmap is public. Developers see what you play, what you skip and what you ask for, and they cut the next version with that in hand.

Why "LANZA"

In Spanish, lanza is a spear, and lanzar means to launch. Both meanings are the job: a sharp point, and a game sent off to its release.

There is an older story too. The word freelance comes from the free lance of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819): a knight who served no lord. An indie developer is that knight. The players who back the work are the patrons. And the release day is the tournament.