How Rabbit & Steel raided its way to 125k+ sales in two weeks

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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Ye gods, is it time to write to you again? We’ve been slaving over candlelight on this latest newsletter, using our quill to painstakingly scratch out 1,500 words before we fax it to our AI OCR app. (And you thought we typed this all into a CMS? No way.)

Today’s lead is about a hit indie game inspired by Final Fantasy XIV’s mechanics. That’s funny, because our ‘novelty’ intro story is about FFXIV introducing an NPC called Big Sippin’ (?!) as part of a Mountain Dew co-promo. So let’s go ahead and, uhh… do the dew?

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How Rabbit & Steel solo-dev-ed to 125k+ sales

In some ways, our job at GameDiscoverCo is deceptively simple. We go look at the latest new Steam games in our Plus back-end, see which ones are performing super-well, and go talk to them to find out why. (This is both fun and educational!)

What’s funny about solo developer mino_dev’s hit co-op action roguelite Rabbit & Steel, though, is that he actually pinged us just before the game’s May 9th release. Much drooled-over ARPG Hades 2 - which has some genre adjacency - had just surprise-released, and he wondered whether his game’s numbers would be affected.

The answer? Heck, no - if you were worried about downside. Rabbit & Steel is the #8 new debut of May 2024 by max concurrent Steam users (5,300), and actually #6 for max CCU in the last 24 hours, even beating Animal Well on that (not always like-for-like) stat.

Did we know this was going to happen? Not 100%. Rabbit & Steel was #10 in our ‘most Hyped on Steam’ debuts for the week it came out - good, but not giant. But the $15 title converted at 13x our expected rate, thanks to hyper-strong ‘word of mouth’ and influencer videos like the above from Retromation & friends.

And here’s Rabbit and Steel’s real LTD Steam sales (>125k units), refunds (4.3%, low!) & median playtime (4 hours 6 minutes - pretty good?) after just under two weeks on sale:

So what happened here? We chatted to mino_dev, who is based in the U.S. and in his early 30s, by the way. He’s been doing the ‘solo indie’ thing since 2017, and he explained: “my last game, Maiden & Spell, was released in 2020 and sold around 20k copies total; which was enough to skirt by until I released this game.”

Maiden & Spell is a 1 on 1 fighter that’s closer to the niche subgenre of bullet hell, and: “For that game I developed a lot of systems for doing bullet-hell kind of things over the internet, with very little lag.” (Players were impressed - this is very difficult to do, btw.)

Some of the frantic ‘bullets going everywhere’ mechanics also translated to Rabbit & Steel, but as mino_dev notes: “I figured it wouldn't be too hard to bring [my tech] up from 1v1 to a 4-player co-op game, and to have "raid mechanics" instead of bullet hell.”

And that’s the key USP (unique selling point) here. You may find people playing the game a little visually intimidating, but for Final Fantasy XIV MMO players who are accustomed to boss fights in that game, a lot of the mechanics are familiar. (There’s even discussions comparing the two games on the FFXIV sub-Reddit.)

As mino_dev told us of the two and a half year development of Rabbit & Steel: “Once I decided on the flow of the game - quickly moving from room to room, opening treasure chests with attacks, how the upgrades/loot would work - development was very smooth…

There's a number of inspirations I could list; the way the roguelike items work is probably closest to something like Hades. But really the main inspiration was ‘what if my last game, but roguelike and MMO raid mechanics?’”

And that’s how you get 97% Positive Steam reviews: a clever subverting of MMO raid mechanics (with patterns to dodge enemies) with lightning-fast online co-op, and all the ‘random loot grabbing and upgrades’ of the tightest gameplay-loop roguelites.

It’s another example of games that ‘feel’ niche because of their complexity or legibility actually being relatively mainstream (also see: Souls-likes). It’s also a great example of hybridizing genre twists with existing, proven systems like ‘moar stats, moar weapons’.

As for regional interest in Rabbit & Steel? The game launched with English, Chinese and Japanese localizations, and the U.S., Japan and China ended up making up 70% of the LTD units:

Finally, we asked mino_dev about how the pre-release marketing went for the game. He noted there was definitely some early interest: “My trailer got around 8k likes on Twitter, and a few GIFs that I posted leading up to launch got around 4k apiece.” There was also a demo and Steam Next Fest appearance in late 2023 which helped:

But it’s been consistent ‘word of mouth’ after release that have swelled numbers: “I don't think there was any moment of ‘this big YouTuber covered my game’ that sent things into overdrive. Just people playing the game, then getting their friends to play it with them, then those people getting their friends.”

And “The launch trailer was only sitting at around 20k views on YouTube when I released, but now it's closer to 75k.” This makes sense - we’ve talked about ‘the cold start problem’ with PvP games before, but co-op games can smoothly scale in increments of 3 or 4.

Finally, although we don’t think it’s the main reason for the game’s success, mino_dev notes: “Many Final Fantasy XIV players are awaiting the new expansion, which is scheduled to release at the end of June. For many of them, they have exhausted all of the content in the game that they're interested in doing, so my game would be a good distraction.”

But it’s also this ‘less intimidating raiding’ that makes Rabbit & Steel really work. mino_dev concludes: “A frequent story I hear is of one person who plays FF14, and has been trying really hard to get their friends into it, but can't convince them to dive into a giant MMO. And then that friend will say "well, here's something kind of like it that's easy to start, try playing this with me!" and the friends will capitulate and they'll have a fun time.”

So yes, ease of entry is key: Rabbit & Steel has made it simple to drop in and out of raid-like experiences, at a fraction of ‘sunk hours’ for those who don’t want to ‘main’ an MMO. And that clever hook has really paid off.

Escaping ‘game coverage limbo’ with streamers..

From time to time, leading YouTube PC ‘variety’ streamer Wanderbot updates his blog section with a giant - and very handy - article. We’ve previously covered his email & presskit templates for creators, as well as how he picks games to cover.

Anyhow, his latest blog post, on how to ‘escape game coverage limbo’ with your game, is up. It starts by referencing a social media chat with the devs of ARPG Bridgebourn(above) over why it didn’t get a yes/no from Wanderbot about possible streaming.

In this case, as he notes, the game “is in the really awkward spot for me where I’d like to cover it when I have a free slot, but other tasks/games keep taking up those slots.” (We have similar issues for some newsletter articles, btw.)

Anyhow, if your game is getting ‘friendzoned’ by creators, Wanderbot explains how why this happens - citing more urgent release dates, other games with time-limited embargos, not being in the right niche for the creator, (lack of) ease of coverage in terms of ‘learning’ the game, and more.

He then goes on to suggest ways you can escape this ‘coverage limbo’ - besides ‘just have a really high-hook, interesting game people want to play’, haha, as follows:

• Do a major release or DLC update:“Creators might have more space in their schedule to cover a milestone update… the update may also provide enough content or fixes to lower the barrier for entry.”

• Reach out during major lulls: it’s incredibly busy for demo showcases during Next Fest, duh. But Wanderbot notes: “Steam sales are absolute doldrums when it comes to new game releases, which makes them an incredibly good time to reach out to creators for coverage.” He also cites June (around ‘not-E3’) and Dec-Jan as quieter.

• You can just wait: your day in the sun may not be instantaneous - “there’s always a chance that a creator will get around to your game… it might just take some time.”

Of course, you can also jump the queue by simply sponsoring that creator to run a video on your game. (Just make sure they’re a really good direct or adjacent market for the game you are making, and try to calculate the ROI.)

You should read the full piece for more details and nuance. But one final note we 100% agree with from Wanderbot - don’t be mean to the influencers! As he says:

“I get that creators tend to be a critical part of games marketing nowadays, and that we quite literally can end up boost obscure indie games into becoming bestsellers (sometimes). But that in turn has convinced some developers that their lack of success can be blamed entirely on creators for their lack of coverage, which almost always translates to them lashing out about it.”

The game discovery & platform news round-up…

Finishing up, we found a lot more platform & discovery news, and we’re going to wave it in your general direction. It goes a little something like this:

• The leading ‘traditional media’ game mentions this week, per Footprints.gg (above), are led by Ubisoft’s just unveiled Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the ‘new on PC’ Ghost Of Tsushima, the freshly launched Hellblade 2, and Elden Ring’s upcoming DLC, which got a new story trailer. (All makes AAA sense!)

• Surprising news of the week? That’d be Nintendo buying Florida-based Shiver from Embracer. The studio’s known for its Switch ports of Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1, and will continue to take “commissions that port and develop software for multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch.” (PS5 to Switch 2 porting may also need help, rite?)

• Talking of trad media, B2B site GamesIndustry.biz was part of the tranche of ReedPop / Gamer Network websites sold to IGN yesterday, with layoffs unfortunately built in. (But IGN seems to want to run all the sites as a going concern, post-cuts. Good luck?)

• We don’t get many public Xbox/PC Game Pass player milestones, so Little Kitty, Big City revealing 1 million Game Pass players, 11 days in, is a useful benchmark. (We think that’s in the top 10% or so of Game Pass releases, obviously - it’s a hot game.)

• Microlinks, Pt.1: Microsoft's Copilot AI will be inside Minecraft, and other Xbox, PC games; UEFN standout & streamer TypicalGamer raised $2 million to do the UGC thing more; did you know that ARK: Survival Ascended has premium (paid!) mods, and companies are launching into that space? Curious.

• TweakTown spotted a job ad from PlayStation which asks for a ‘platform architect’ “to design PlayStation's platform for developing, publishing, and operating free-to-play mobile games”, which looks more likely to be internal and PSN-ish than a store - it’s about “internal teams… connect[ing] mobile games to PlayStation services.”

• Fortnite is big on ‘getting external IP into player-created levels’ right now, and this Disney blog appears to confirm that the partnership will “not only give users the chance to play and interact with Disney content but will offer them the opportunity to create their own wholly unique Disney-themed gaming experiences, too.” Interesting!

• Thinking about Kickstarting your game? The Crowdfunding Agency continues its article series by looking at marketing strategies for crowdfunding: “Reddit and other networks can be an interesting avenue for testing, but… I’d still advise you to place at least 70% of your social media advertising budget on Meta.”

• Thanks to Daniel Camilo for highlighting new Chinese F2P ARPG Wuthering Worlds, which is “hyped as a potential/serious competitor to Genshin Impact”, and has 32 million pre-regs (!). The game looks good, and PS4/PS5 versions are expected. (Related: did you know Genshin Impact is a Top 15 DAU game on PlayStation, per GameDiscoverCo estimates, with ~500k DAU?)

• Microlinks: somebody grabbed SensorTower data on the Quest companion mobile app to estimate country (& overall?) usage; this curious Quantic Foundry research claims “gamers have become less interested in strategic planning & thinking”; oh no, Tesla is dropping its in-car Steam support in new Model S/X cars?

Finally, in video game cross-media: when you say ‘The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone x The Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt x a Sonic the Hedgehog-related live-action musical’, you’ll either get a) a GameDiscoverco fever dream b) a new episode of‘Sonic’s sidekick’ show Knuckles on Paramount Plus. In this case, we’re guessing it’s the latter:

[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide consulting services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]