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Whether or not you consider "friendslop" a dirty word, there's no doubt that the makeshift genre is making its mark on the industry. Games with simple hooks and short development cycles have been dominating the indie scene, and one developer – Peak co-dev Landfall – is aiming to pay its success forward by funding and advising studios making similar games. While those aims might sound altruistic, the name of the company's publishing arm is named with a sinister spin: Evil Landfall.
"We have so many people pitch us games that are like, 'This is like Peak, please fund it,'" Evil Landfall CEO Kirsten-Lee Naidoo tells GamesIndustry.biz. "And I think that it's good, because I think that we really believe in making games this way. We believe that you shouldn't spend multiple years on a project, because we've noticed that we often get caught up in the spiral. Our developers have been like, 'We work on a project for years, and we keep going deeper, and it doesn't really go anywhere.' That's not a good feeling."
Article continues belowThe company had been "quietly" doing this in the past, like when it invested in a game called Voidigo from developer semiwork – a studio that would help to pioneer the friendslop spirit with co-op horror hit REPO. Now Evil Landfall plans to invest in "a few games a year," with funding levels going up to around $1 million, or even beyond, if the right project comes along. The first publicly disclosed game to get Evil Landfall support is a goofy fishing game with guns and gore called How to Fish, due out later this year.
Landfall's development philosophy, Naidoo says, has been, "'We want to find the core of the game really quickly and have a shorter development cycle, because that's really fresh and that's really interesting.' And we all think that that model is better, because it just eliminates so much risk. If you work on a project for six months and it doesn't end up being anything, you can move on. It's not a huge time and money thing."
That's why Evil Landfall is looking to work with developers making similar sorts of games: small in scope, and clear in the type of fun they're going to provide. "If you're not finding the core of the game in a few months, don't sink five, six years into this," Naidoo says. "Don't put your life savings into it. Rather, put it out there, let people play it, if it doesn't stick, move on."
She adds, "I think that too many developers develop their game secretly for several years and just go with it, without showing it to anyone, and that doesn't always go very well. But if you get your game in front of people, they'll probably give you feedback that will steer you in the right direction early on."
This hasn't just been an indie problem, as ballooning dev cycles have arguably been an even bigger problem in the AAA space. Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida has been on record lamenting how difficult it is for Final Fantasy to collect new fans as "the release intervals for new titles have gotten longer." By the time The Elder Scrolls 6 finally launches, Skyrim's likely going to be old enough to buy cigarettes.
It feels like there's an increasing pressure for games to be all things to all people, and in some cases that can work. Certainly, Crimson Desert has found its audience. But those are massive gambles funded by massive publishers. For a small studio, it might make a lot more sense to place a safer bet on something that speaks to the desires of a very specific type of player. In nothing else, Peak has proven the niche audience might be bigger than you think.
Here are the upcoming indie games you need to know about.
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