One of the highest-rated strategy games of 2025 comes from Tommy McKay and Patrick Bell of developer Dystopian, who worked on roguelike tower defense game Gnomes for about 10 months. It's sitting at the coveted "Overwhelmingly Positive" review mark on Steam, where it's grossed over $360,000 since its April launch.
That's according to a recent report from marketing and Steam expert Chris Zukowski, who profiled Gnomes and McKay. As of August 13, Gnomes had grossed $367,484 before Valve's 30% cut (of around $108,000 if we use this figure as a base) comes out. The game's budget – apart from the whole labor thing, which is handily the biggest expense in game development – was about $700, it seems, covering both the Steam fee and listing art commission.
