REPO is this year's Balatro. It's a phenomenally successful indie that shot to the top of the Steam charts and has stayed in the top 10 for a long while. But, it was make or break for the devs that created it.
Semiwork's previous game Voidigo had taken six long years to develop, and it hadn't done as well as the team had hoped. Making REPO "was a big risk to take, as Voidigo hadn't been successful enough to guarantee a next step," explains Semiwork marketer Pontus Sundström, who recently facilitated a documentary about making REPO.
"We can't take this next step. We did it anyway," says Walter Tischkewitz, co-CEO, artist, and programmer at Semiwork. "Let's just fail quickly this time. We took all the money from Voidigo and we put it all into this game REPO."
It was a bold strategy, and it paid off big time. But, REPO didn't start life as what we know and love today.
Originally, it was a single-player cleaning game, which then got a multiplayer component added. When the devs put in the flappy-headed characters, they knew they were onto a winner.
"We just played around with that and we realized this is pretty funny," remembers Tischkewitz.
However, cleaning didn't work for them. When the devs realized nothing was keeping players together, they changed it to a moving game. From there, it became a tax-collection game where you have to go into these haunted houses and work as a team to carry out all the valuable goods you can.
They built it quickly, tested it regularly, and simply followed the fun. The results speak for themselves, as REPO is one of the most-successful games of the year.
While you're here, check out our list of the best indie games of 2024 and play any you may have missed.
