Three years ago the founders of Rose City Games embarked on a strategy they hoped would give them the autonomy they wanted to produce their own games while also allowing for the financial stability to focus on those games without taking on outside contract work.
Two games later and two more in development, it seems to be working.
Rose City Games was co-founded in 2015 by Corey Warning and Will Lewis, who are also organizers of the group Portland Indie Game Squad. Their first game, The World Next Door, was released in 2019 and set the foundation for where they are now.
At the end of this month it’s latest game Floppy Knights will be released on the Steam game platform as well as on XBox and PC Game Pass from Microsoft.
Getting on Game Pass is new for the studio, and a big boost as the platform pays an advance on the game once it launches and that offers the studio a level of assurance of sales.
“It’s a huge weight off our shoulders,” said Warning. “We know we have X dollars as soon as the game ships, it relieves some of the pressure to see huge profit. We are able to plan for the future and feel less scared about it. We know we at lease make X amount of money and are able to grow a bit and plan the next project.”
Typically, game studios are funded through huge hit games so the pressure for a hit is high.
The studio’s other titles, The World Next Door and Garden Story, which is published with developer Picogram, are on Nintendo eShop, Steam and Epic Games Store.
Floppy Knights is slated for release May 24. The game is a turn-based strategy game with cards. Warning described it as a mashup of deck-building and tactics games. Players follow the character Phoebe in her journey to not only win, but save the science fair and prove to her parents she can create a career with her inventions, according to the studio news release. The Floppy referenced in the title is a nod to the character’s use of floppy disks.
“Floppy Knights is a wholesome adventure about becoming a hero when you least expect it,” said Marlowe Dobbe, creative director of Floppy Knights, in a written statement. “We all experience ups and downs and Phoebe’s story is an example of that.”
The idea for Floppy Knights emerged years ago but the studio wasn’t able to focus on it until 2020. Work on this game was the main project through the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The team at Rose City Games fluctuates based on projects. At the height of work on Floppy Knights the studio had 10 to 12 people working on the game. Now, it’s a smaller skeleton crew focused on that game to help get it released.
The studio has a team of roughly 12 full-time and part-time employees working on its next project, said Warning. Details on this project could come later this year. The studio also signed a second upcoming project and is expected to start preproduction this year.
“We have the next two to three years, we know what we are working on,” he said.
The studio is owned by Lewis and Warning and they don’t expect to bring on equity investors. The funding of projects with project-specific partners is working pretty well, Warning said.
“We have a certain vision on how we want the studio to grow and when to stop,” he said. “We don’t want to be 100 people. We like making smaller games with a smaller team. That is what we are good at.”
