Square Enix Montreal hires Bédard and Dief

Square Enix Montreal has scooped up two indie developers to join its team, Teddy Dief and Renaud Bédard.

Dief is best known for developing Hyper Light Drifter and Kyoto Wild and Bédard was the programmer for Polytron Corporation's Fez.

"On a personal note, to me there is a poetry in this next chapter of my life. Hyper Light Drifter was a vessel for me to pour my love of many Square(soft) games I loved as a child ~ Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 7, Super Mario RPG. I've also been running Square Bowl with Adriel Wallick for two years now -- a charity event born of our love for Square games. Plus, I get to collaborate with Renaud -- the two of us have shared a composer (Disasterpeace scored Fez and Hyper Light), and a genre (Below and Hyper Light are weird cousins, cut from a similar cloth)," said Dief in a personal blog post.

"This means that I am leaving Heart Machine when I move to Montréal in a few weeks. Hyper Light Drifter is great, and everything is on schedule! No worries! I'm ushering through our co-op feature before I go, and console ports are well underway. Alx Preston continues to lead Heart Machine with relentless energy and focus. I'll continue to be involved in decisions we make about Hyper Light Drifter, and Heart Machine has a bright exciting future ahead!"

Square Enix Montreal is home to Hitman GO, Hitman: Sniper and Lara Croft GO.