We are delighted to confirm that the sales of Gremlins, Inc. across Steam, Humble Store, Sonkwo and GOG by now exceed 100,000 copies sold!
Where do players of Gremlins, Inc. come from?
ːfireappleː THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BELIEVING IN US! ːfireappleː
It's been quite a journey for Charlie Oscar:
ːhypnoheartː 2013
The studio is founded as a 2-man team (based in Stockholm and in Kiev); we agree on the idea of Gremlins, Inc. and we start with the first concept art. We have little clue about how the final product will look like, and our development pipeline (the process from idea to realisation) does not exist yet. A lot of work will need to be redone at a later stage.
ːhypnoheartː 2014
We are now 3 people, and pre-production on Gremlins, Inc. is in full force throughout the year. One of us visits Vilnius and loves the Old Town and the country so much that he relocates there from Stockholm. Our new colleague brings on board his own server technology, making possible to build a cross-platform multiplayer game that we wanted all along. There's a lot of prototyping as we're searching for the exact look of the playing field.
ːhypnoheartː 2015
We are now 5 people, and 3 of us have now moved to Vilnius for good – plus one more new colleague is a local. The first playable beta is produced early in the year and we work six days a week as the production stage heats up. In the middle of the year we run out of money and we are saved by our friends at TaleWorlds. In October, Gremlins, Inc. is finally released on Steam Early Access – with the sales of just a few hundred copies at first. We keep crunching, released updates first weekly, then bi-weekly. The rating of the game climbs to 91% positive.
ːhypnoheartː 2016
We are now 6 people. Gremlins, Inc. launches on Steam as a full release in March, and just in the first month sells 3 times more copies than in the whole period of 5 months in Early Access. We develop and release 3 cosmetic DLCs, which will go on to sell over 50,000 copies. We introduce free in-game items and start to see as many as 40,000 player-to-player trades every month. The studio is finally making ends meet, and we continue to add content to the game – as well as develop a standalone offline version for those without constant Internet access. We release on Sonkwo in China. The Chinese and the Russian audiences shape up to be our two most-important non-English markets.
ːhypnoheartː 2017
We are now 7 people. The new person joins to start full-time on Spire of Sorcery, our studio's next game (an open-world dark fantasy post-apocalyptic indirect control exploration strategy). We start with the concept of "seasons", adding new content and new features every three months. In February, we add special content themed after Chinese New Year – and set a sales record. In March, we release the offline edition of the game, Gremlins vs Automatons, as a free add-on to all the owners of the game, and run our first big sale, setting yet another sales record. We release Gremlins, Inc. on Humble Store with great success during their Board Game Week. We release Gremlins, Inc. on GOG, with cross-platform multiplayer.
ːhypnoheartː WHAT'S NEXT?
Our plans for 2017 and 2018 are to continue creating new content and new features for Gremlins, Inc. We keep testing new cards that will be introduced to the game over the coming seasons. When we launched in 2015, we promised that once the game sells 100,000 copies, we will start working on the second playing field – and this is what we're starting with, this month. You may have already seen its design on our YouTube channel. Now we need to find a way of actually making it happen in the game. At the same time, we are already a few weeks into the pre-production and even early production of Spire of Sorcery. This is the first time when Charlie Oscar has two games being developed at the same time, and we're thrilled with this opportunity!
And here's what we learned along the journey:
ːsteampunkː we are a small studio but we can make big things happen, because of our teamwork and how everyone has everyone's back covered;
ːsteampunkː we make games because of the pleasure that we get when we see players being happy; this motivation is the one that runs the deepest; we have over 1,500 reviews by now, and still we read each new review;
ːsteampunkː we can run our business based on the idea of creating original games; from the digital board game to the open-world indirect strategy, we want to chase our dreams – making stuff that hasn't been made before;
ːsteampunkː our games are never, ever really "finished" – there's always one more feature and a bit more content that we will make, and ship; running continuous updates is not a luxury or afterthought, this is our development model;
ːsteampunkː the community of players made a huge contribution to how the game evolved; the feedback from the community is the most valuable input that we take into account when making design and development decisions;
ːsteampunkː finally, we do not think of our games as being in just one language (English), we launched Gremlins, Inc. in 12 languages and the feedback from the Russian, Chinese and Japanese communities has been amazing; we will continue to release our games in at least 6 main languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, German and French.
Thanks for sticking with us for the ride, and we hope to see you in the game later this month when the Summer Season will kick off with new features and new content! ːsunnyemoː