Hello friends! Solo developer of SISYPHE, Lucas Ljunggren, here, Long time no see!
SISYPHE was a huge project for me, in comparison with other indie devs, this might seem like a small project, but personally, it was a great undertaking that took a lot of mental strength. SISYPHE is a game about getting a flow and enjoying every single rock on the ground beneath you, so designing, drawing, implementing, and generally producing every single part of this game was a very... drawn out process.
I originally promised to release the game during the autumn of 2024, but the rising outside pressure from college, and the monotonous (yet satisfying) work of drawing and expanding the game after the original jam game, made a release so soon impossible. I struggled a lot with balancing this passion project, school, my personal life, and my other interests.
Making a game is hard. The hardest part for me was the marketing. I'm at my happiest when I can sit and focus on things I can control. Programming, simple line art, music. The marketing aspect of making games is something I feel is just so inauthentic, and I just can't force myself to work on things I don't believe in. I believed in this game, and still do, but spending 50% of my dev time making videos, posts, and other things pretending I'm some master game maker, or sneakily promoting the game while talking about some brainrotted, useless information about game making in general, is just not my jam.
On to some news! SISYPHE is profitable! I set my sights on about 15 copies sold for this, which is a quite low target. It has sold well above that, and reached so many more players than I expected. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for purchasing this game, reviewing it, playing it, or just spending any amount of time thinking about it in general.
Then what's this other great news? I hear you ask! Well, I'm ready to start making games again. Since releasing SISYPHE around a year ago, I've been feeling very uninspired, unmotivated, and just burnt out. I spent hundreds of hours working on the game, and wasted so much time on problems I would fix quickly now. It took a long time, but I've regained the spark, and set up some plans for how to reach more people than ever, organically, honestly, authentically.
My plan is to have released 3 games by the end of next year. I can't really go into what these games are, but my strategy will focus on making much more system-oriented, gameplay-focused games. SISYPHE had no reused content, and pretty much only the movement was reused in the gameplay loop, that took lots of energy and is also just a really inefficient way to make games. I'm going to be focusing more on fun, deep, memorable experiences, with that signature SISYPHE polish and feel that you remember.
These games (including SISYPHE) will be priced much lower than SISYPHE originally was. I went back and forth on the pricing for SISPYHE, and came up with the naive number of 14€/$14/£13 for the launch. This number was based on the fact that I wanted the price to reflect the quality of the experience, and I wanted people to feel that they actually bought the piece of art I intended the game to be. From now on, my games will be priced lower. SISYPHE will today go down to 4.99€/$4.99/£4.29 permanently, Don't expect a sale for a while. I think the nearest sale I can join right now is the Steam Summer Sale, so if you haven't bought the game yet, this is a great opportunity!
So for a short summary:
I'm back to making games again! As always you can find my shorter experiences here: https://lucasljunggren.itch.io/
SISYPHE is profitable! Thanks to everyone who's played, reviewed, watched, or thought about the game. It's been awesome seeing the support, the videos, the reviews, everything!
My plan is to release 3 original games by the end of next year. These will be focused on gameplay but still carry that style. For more of an idea of the vibe, check out my itch site!
These games, including SISYPHE, will be priced closer to similar games. SISYPHE will today go down to 4.99€/$4.99/£4.29 permanently. Feel free to check it out if you're interested!
Thank you for reading, supporting and just being here in general. I hope to share more good news soon!
If you wanna follow the journey, please check out:
My itch.io site: https://lucasljunggren.itch.io/
My twitter/X: https://x.com/ZuperLucaZ/
This site! I'll continue updating here