Blankhans

Blankhans was an independent German game developer founded in April 2021. Based legally in Munich, it operated as a remote-first boutique studio with an international team. Its work focused on social survival sandbox games, persistent multiplayer worlds and live game operations. The company ceased operations at the end of 2024.

Its debut title, Coreborn: Nations of the Ultracore, brought players into Tormentosia, a fantasy setting derived from Hauke Gerdes’s Ultracore Pen & Paper roleplaying series on Rocket Beans TV. Developed and published by Blankhans for PC through Steam, the game combined survival sandbox play with a social, shared-world focus. Building towns, meeting other players and restoring the world formed part of its central premise.

Development and release

Coreborn entered Steam Early Access on July 18, 2023, followed by its full 1.0 release in June 2024. The project brought together game design, Unreal Engine development and cloud-based multiplayer infrastructure. Persistent-world mechanics and ongoing live operations were central to the studio’s development work, alongside community-driven game design.

Blankhans pursued this technically ambitious project through a lean development model, using external backend infrastructure to support a relatively small engineering team. Its approach connected proprietary game development with integrated online services rather than treating the multiplayer backend as a separate product.

Final development period

Following the full release, Coreborn struggled with player retention and commercial performance. It did not attract the concurrent player population needed to sustain its ongoing live-service model. On July 8, 2024, co-founder Hauke Gerdes announced that Blankhans would close by the end of that year.

Before winding down, the team implemented an offline single-player mode for remaining players. The studio’s operations ended in late 2024, bringing its development and live-service activity to a close.