A few months ago, a cute little game called Merchant 64 was released on Steam to modest acclaim and success. Its developer, Brent Lattery, who goes by SuitNtie online, bashed it together in just "three to four months," he tells GamesRadar+, and it was released in large part because he "needed to pay rent."
Lattery has a background in visual effects and animations – a skill set that previously landed him a role on the end credits animation for the Sonic 3 movie – and had worked on mobile games before. He'd also made his own Game Boy game, though it didn't end up selling very much. With Merchant 64, he says he wanted to tap into the nostalgic feel of inspirations like Harvest Moon, as well as a very specific corner of gaming: cozy gamers.
It's not that cozy gamers will play anything, but Lattery reckons "cozy games have a very forgiving and wonderful fan base. Your cozy game doesn't have to be super good as long as it looks nice and the vibes are there."
"I keep joking with my brother that I'm like, I can make the game look good, but I haven't been able to make it truly fun yet," he says. "So that's my ultimate goal, to make a fun game and then make it look good after that."
Lattery says he's still learning some game design fundamentals as well as finer details like UI, and is the first to say "people offer a lot of grace" to Merchant 64. "I, personally, the person who made it, would review it pretty low in terms of fun and gameplay. It's really cute, it's quaint, it invokes good energy and stuff, but there's not too much going on there. It's very simple."
"Merchant 64 is basically the turnip trading mechanic from Animal Crossing, and that's, like, the whole game," he adds, championing the type of short and condensed games he wants to make. "And that's totally fine."
Merchant 64 is $6.99 at full price, with Lattery trying to balance a reasonable base price with the knowledge that "people pretty much only buy Steam games while they're on sale." (If it "was $30, like, get out of here, don't do that" he jokes.) It's a few hours long, it nails the Nintendo 64 aesthetic, and its 'make number go up' hook is enough to fill out the experience. It isn't one of the best simulator games ever made, but it doesn't have to be.
Part of development here was balancing personal tastes with what sells, particularly what sells on Steam. Lattery's process, and recommendation, is straightforward: "Maybe you want to look at what sells, but then look at, what would you do in that area?" The art style of Merchant 64 gave it a cozy Harvest Moon vibe, he says, even when he wasn't strictly looking to make a cozy game, and he says he enjoyed the development process.
"Don't just do it cynically," he says. "Oh, you know, Steam Charts says these games sell well, like a deck building game, or visual novels still do pretty well for their tiny little review counts. It's like, how would you do a visual novel? What would you put in there and then try to have fun with?"
Lattery released Merchant 64 when he did, he says, because "I needed to pay rent, like my savings had run out. And I'm like, yeah, hopefully this makes me money, so I have to release it now."
It worked. Mostly. At first, Merchant 64 got off to a slower start than Lattery might have hoped with around $2,000 in sales in the first few days, but he showed in a video that it grossed over $4,000 within a week. Lattery says it's continued ticking along during sale or bundle opportunities, earning more than expected in the long run.
"But it slowly kept rolling in, and it made it past the mark that I wanted it to, just a little bit more over time. So in that sense, I was very pleased. In hindsight now, I'm looking and I'm like, that's great. I'm very happy with it."
The dream of many game devs is to make enough money from each game to fund the next game, and Lattery says he's working toward the dream of having a few small games cruising the Steam superhighway to fund sustainable full-time development. For the time being, he's back to a full-time dev job elsewhere, but he's still got ideas for his own projects. His story provides a fascinating look under the hood of Steam and shows one of the many ways that game development plays out.
"I think a lot of people have aspirations to make a big Stardew Valley or something," he says. "But that's definitely not it. If I was getting the exact same amount of attention that I am now, where it's like, just little stuff and cool people like yourself will maybe reach out, that's totally fine if the games are still generating money for me to keep doing them. I don't really want to grow into a studio. Some people want to make an indie studio, hire a couple of people, something like that. I wouldn't really want that. I have a couple of dream projects.
"I know I made a little cozy game, but I love action games. I grew up on God of War for PS2, Kingdom Hearts, and I recently played through the Devil May Cry games. So I would like something like that, for sure. That's kind of that background, something I can work towards."
