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Vampire Survivors studio Poncle was originally just one designer, Luca Galante, throwing everything he had at his dream roguelike. On the back of the game's meteoric success, which has spawned a whole wave of Survivors-likes, it's become a team that now includes publishing arm Poncle Presents. Like the Among Us-backed Outersloth and Palworld-funded Pocketpair Publishing, Galante says he wanted to leverage his mega-hit as a way to "give back" to the industry and help more indie games get made.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Galante, who is still getting used to all the business fuss that comes with a larger team and publishing responsibilities, reflects on the role and responsibility of a game publisher today.
"I see a lot of publishers I don't like," he begins, "and I think that's my way to define what a good publisher should be, probably. I see a lot of publishers that try to exploit the platforms just to make money, basically, because the video game industry is very obviously an industry that makes a lot of money. There is a lot of money to make. I see that these publishers will try and just exploit platforms for money. Put out games that are incomplete or in early access that actually never get completed, games that are put out there and left to die, basically. Does not make money, left in a broken state, and so on.
"So my point of view for what a publisher should do is, first of all, make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value, and then understand that not everything can be a breakout hit. For me, it's very important that we keep supporting games post-launch, regardless of how the game would go, just because once you put the game out there, you have an audience, and as big or small as it is that audience deserves to be treated fairly. So post-launch support is definitely a big thing from my point of view that publishers should be able to offer."
So far, Poncle Presents has published developer Doonutsaur's Kill the Brickman and developer Nao Games' Berserk or Die – respectively, a $5 roguelike brick breaker, and a $4 2D action game with (optional) keyboard-smashing controls. Both were received reasonably well on Steam, but neither are in the "breakout hit" territory of Vampire Survivors, and that's just fine.
Galante says he loves cheap and compact games, and Poncle wants to focus on very small teams, so his gut often leads him toward that kind of loosely defined "price to gameplay ratio," even if the company is open to varying scopes as it scouts games. His priority is to find developers "that are very transparent in what they do, they want to talk with their community, and they have a real, genuine passion for making games."
No matter the scope or success of a game, real or projected, Galante says it's key for a publisher "to try and let the developer realize their vision by enriching their vision in a way, and not by trying to force a developer's vision in a direction so that the game can make more money."
"Talking about stuff like microtransactions and whatnot, they want their seasonal stuff," he says of publisher railroading. "So, again, I may be a bit idealistic, but I definitely see the publishing business more from the point of view of making games, making the developers and the players happy, rather than just a business.
Galante started to consider publishing a few months after Vampire Survivors became successful, and as he added people to Poncle to help support the game, he began to ponder it more seriously.
As it happens, the folks at Poncle have actually spoken to Outersloth and Pocketpair "specifically because we had a similar idea about trying to fund other indies" even if they "work on very different scales." (I spoke to Pocketpair comms director and publishing manager John Buckley earlier this year, and he said the company was getting pitches "minutes after Palworld released" even from "some really big names.")
"Basically, we got very lucky with Vampire Survivors," Galante says. "The game has been so successful that – we definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies. It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck."
