League of Geeks has a special place in the Australian games industry. A pioneer of the indie scene with Armello back in the early 2010s, the Melbourne-based studio has followed a profitable path for over a decade, always lending a helping hand to other Australian indies along the way.
“Our [aim] as a studio is to take strategy games and crack them originate for wider audiences thru a signature aesthetic, thru topic matters that are substandard-cultural and appeal to a far wider number of audiences than your typical hardcore fans [of the genre],” says studio director and co-founder Trent Kusters, who unbiased won the Adam Lancman Award at the AGDAs, for his ongoing make stronger to indies and being “a great ambassador for the Australian games industry locally and abroad.”
“We are publishing and marketing in one of the busiest months I’ve ever considered in my existence in games”
Kusters says League of Geeks wants to watch in Paradox’s footsteps, making strategy games and their usually opaque UX “far extra accessible.”
The mission was extra than profitable with Armello, supported by the developer for four years after its 2015 release, and the developer is at the 2d hard at work on its remake of cult classic Solium Infernum (due subsequent year), and Jumplight Odyssey, a sci-fi sim with an anime aesthetic.
The latter released in Early Access on Steam this August. Kusters says the traction has been “amazing,” with “wishlists in the six figures, up unless [the] early access launch.” Then things acquired a bit extra complicated.
“The early access launch came out and we are publishing and marketing in one of the busiest months I’ve ever considered in my existence in games. We punched into the head ten for a few hours there on Steam, and then we hovered around 15 or one thing for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the game had some bugs that slipped thru that have been a bit extra prevalent than we conception. So, we cocked it in the Steam reports, and rightly so, [because of] that.
“And also because we went so large… It be been a long time since we have been in early access, . We have been one of the trailblazers of early access with Armello however the scene has changed a lot since.”
Back in the early days of Steam’s Early Access, the expectations have been wildly various – the product may very neatly be very rough, whereas now “of us are waiting unless the games are almost finished,” Kusters notes.
“I positively mediate we underestimated unbiased how worthy that had changed but then also, because our publishing and marketing efforts have been so profitable, we pulled in a worthy broader range of of us than we probably will have to composed have for early access. Because we have of us reach to the game and be fancy, ‘This game is no longer always really finished’. And that’s various from seasoned early access players saying, ‘Oh this game is maybe a bit too early for early access’ or whatever.
“I mediate in reality it was a bit of a bucket of frosty water that the studio wanted to be fancy, ‘okay, shit, why did we pass over those bugs? How carry out they sneak thru?’ The accurate news is all the flaws that of us talked about have been on our roadmap already and so we’re absolutely aligned with the community and that stuff is being actively developed.”
The team build aside together a “delicate aggressive patch time table” and managed an spectacular feat: turning the reports around, from ‘Combined’ at launch to ‘Very certain’ at the time of writing, for original reports.
Kusters says honesty with the community was at the core of the strategy for coming back from ‘Combined’ territory, with the studio communicating regularly and even publishing a ‘What we have learned in Early Access (so far)‘ post to share some lessons.
This also meant explaining the place the company stood from a commercial point of view.
“We unbiased straight up said to our community: we’re an indie developer. This game had to head out in August because we have to mediate about the AAA release time table and everything. We pushed the game out in August because we have been fancy: that’s our last chance to catch out before all these planes are coming into landing and there is no longer any room on the runway.
“But what we didn’t realise is that we have been already in the thick of the AAA madness. We conception shall we gallop between [Baldur’s Gate 3] and Starfield and reduce thru some of the indie noise with our publishing efforts and marketing efforts. And we did it, we nailed it. But it was unbiased composed fancy… we may as neatly have released in November and take another two months to proceed sprucing the game.”
Navigating the original challenges of the market can be an ordeal as an indie,