Co-founded a four-person studio and shipped a narrative game to a million downloads. Everything outside the code was mine to solve.
CyberCoconut · Co-founder · 2015–2016 · Milan, Italy
An independent studio has no distribution, no marketing budget and no second attempt. The team was a programmer, a designer and an animator. Everything else, from company paperwork to funding, game design decisions, store presence and players, had to be covered by someone, and that someone was me. The game itself is a narrative title about the choices of three characters at different ages, dealing with subjects most commercial games avoid.
Co-founder. Game design alongside the team, crowdfunding, administration and the commercial side of getting the title in front of players.
Game design and narrative structure, the crowdfunding campaign, company administration and legal paperwork, Steam store presence and launch, localisation planning, press and community management. Engine and gameplay programming and art production belonged to the rest of the team.
Co-founders and the development team, crowdfunding backers, gaming press and events, the Steam player community.
Unity, Steam, Eppela crowdfunding, community and press management.
One million downloads on Steam from a self-funded team of four. The Free Edition shipped on 31 May 2016 and still holds 72% positive across more than 3,800 player reviews, in five languages (English, Italian, French, German, Russian) with full English voice-over. Crowdfunding raised 10k EUR on Eppela. I answered player reviews personally from my own Steam account, and what came back from those exchanges fed into the game. A Definitive Edition followed in 2018, after my exit from the company.