Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass library is chock-full of varied and high-quality indie games to enjoy, with one of the service's most famous offerings being 2022's action roguelike Vampire Survivors. Created by solo developer Luca Galante, it quickly became a gargantuan hit soon after launch, saw immense success on Game Pass, and is now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox Ally, Windows PC and Mac, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Meta Quest, iOS, and Android.
What began as a one-man project has grown into a much larger operation, with Poncle — Galante's indie studio — having hired more staff following Vampire Survivors' performance, and recently releasing a deckbuilder spinoff of it called Vampire Crawlers.
During last week's London Game Festival, The Game Business was able to meet with Poncle's chief strategy officer Matteo Sapio for a chat — and during that interview, he revealed that the studio is working on 15 new projects, including "VS [Vampire Survivors], DLCs, free updates, our published games, etc." (Poncle clarified it's not making 15 new games).
Specifically, fans can look forward to spinoffs of Vampire Survivors like Vampire Crawlers (Poncle is using the IP "to experiment in new genres"), two brand new properties, and other "Survivors" games that are based on other franchises. For example, later this year, Auroch Digital (the dev of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun) is releasing Warhammer Survivors, an action roguelike built with the Vampire Survivors engine that features characters and enemies from Warhammer: 40,000 (sci-fi) and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (fantasy).
"If we have knowledge of the IP, we will [make the game] ourselves. But a lot of times we don’t. If you have an IP, for example Warhammer 40k, which has decades of story and lore, we don’t want to risk disappointing the fans," Sapio explained. "So, we made an engine called the Vampire Survivor Engine, which is a kind of template with all the Vampire Survivor juice inside, and we then we’re giving it to people that we consider the IP guardians. ... Obviously, we are giving them any help they need."
Sapio also announced that as a result of all these upcoming projects and collaborations with other game developers, Poncle is opening two new offices in Japan and Italy to join its UK headquarters. Notably, Japan was chosen because of "interest from Japanese companies," as well as "unique views and unique creativity" and the hope that "maybe we could work with some Japanese IPs."
Even with all this expansion, though, Poncle wants to avoid becoming an AA or AAA developer, and is structuring itself in a way that maintains the studio's "indie spirit."
“We are not talking about a gigantic remote studio. We are thinking about it like a federation of studios. Our idea is to have little teams of people — five, 10, 15 — working on different projects," Sapio said. "The structure will be, we will have a designer, a bunch of producers, and this little team that’s agile and flexible. That is how we think we will maintain this spirit. Because what is the indie spirit? It is mainly freedom and taking risk with ideas."
"We don’t want to be AAA or AA. We’re efficient with costs. We don’t take useless risks. We invest in people. So, with 15 projects, one can fail, one can go good, and you balance that," he added. "If we can have this beautiful machine that is able to have so many projects that can go good and can fail ... that’s what I want to see. We don’t want to do a gigantic studio working on a gigantic game."
Are you looking forward to seeing (and playing) all of the projects that Poncle is working on or helping with, or is the "Survivors" genre of action roguelike not really your thing? Let me know down below.
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