There aren't very many games industry successes that look like Peak, the comedic co-op climber developed as a collaboration between indie studios Aggro Crab and Landfall during a manic month-long game jam in a Korean Airbnb. Less than a week after launch, it's already made over a million sales. For lead devs at both studios, Peak is a clear lesson: Shorter is often better, especially when you're dealing with burnout.
Before Aggro Crab and Landfall dispatched their devs to Korea for their game jam collab, the studios had been iterating on Peak's core concept for months. Aggro Crab creative director Caelan Rashby-Pollock said the game initially looked "much closer to an open-world survival thingy," but Landfall's collaborators urged the team to tighten its scope.
