No More Robots' Nine-Year Journey to Releasing Their First Self-Developed IP: "This Sounds So Naive and Stupid, But Somehow It's Working"

It has been nine years since Mike Rose founded the indie game publisher No More Robots. The company has achieved considerable success, partly thanks to its back catalog, which includes the popular bike-riding game Descenders, the inaugural release under the No More Robots banner and a consistent top seller.

Now, No More Robots is poised to launch its first self-developed game, the cruise liner simulator Cruise Control. This endeavor marks a significant shift for the company. The concept for Cruise Control originated from a discussion between Rose and Dan Foster, who joined No More Robots to handle console ports and brought extensive online multiplayer experience from his time at Team 17. Their conversation led to the development of a team-based online shooter, which took three years and garnered interest from a prominent company, though ultimately the partnership fell through, citing a lack of fit. This setback coincided with the market's reaction to similar titles like Concord, which was quickly removed from sale, potentially signaling challenges in the online shooter genre.

'As you'd imagine, there's no way that we as a tiny company could just launch an online multiplayer shooter by ourselves,' Rose stated. 'Maybe I could just find someone else. But also I was just crushed. It was one of the most unpleasant things I've felt in this industry. And it was from a partner who I massively respect.'

Why Cruise Control?

The shooter project was put on hold, and Rose tasked the five-person development team with finding their next project. The name Cruise Control emerged first, followed by a game idea that Rose believed they could "make quickly... and it's a genre on PC that we know does well." Initially conceived as a cruise ship management game akin to titles like Two Point Hospital, it has since evolved into a more puzzle-oriented experience, drawing inspiration from games such as Mini Motorways.

Rose acknowledges that releasing a game developed in-house is a profoundly different experience from publishing another studio's work. Despite increased anxiety, he believes the potential rewards for Cruise Control's success are significantly higher. 'The way that I'm treating Cruise Control is this game is going to do roughly three times as well for us as a normal game, because we're making 100% of it,' he explained. 'Normally we're taking a small cut of a game we're working with. Every sale of Cruise Control is worth three or four times as much to us. If we manage to make it do as well as one of our other games, that would be massive for us.'

Should Cruise Control prove successful, No More Robots might revisit the shooter project. A demo already exists, though the final version could be altered or scaled back. Rose commented, 'I think that PvP shooters are not a viable thing for us. As a small company, to enter that space would be insane. I've started to think about repurposing it into a PvE thing.'

Bloodbath

Rose describes the recent years in the gaming industry as a 'massacre.' However, No More Robots experienced minimal growth during the COVID-19 video game boom, as Rose was hesitant to expand significantly, thus avoiding the extensive layoffs that have affected other companies.

Rose attributes this cautious approach to "accidental genius." He shared, 'At the end of 2021, I just split all the profits between all the staff. I gave our staff lots of money and rolled into 2022 thinking that that would just happen again. When it didn't, we were fine as we hadn't expanded. We just broke even again. We don't need to make loads of money, because who needs it? Everyone's getting paid. We're putting out a bunch of games; we're having fun. I know this sounds so naive and stupid, but somehow it's working.'

The publisher's model has largely remained consistent. The hit game Descenders had a five-figure budget, a figure that applies to most of the company's releases, including Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace. While a few games received larger budgets during the COVID era, Rose admits to being "caught up a little bit in what was happening" and "bit a couple of times for that." The company has since returned to five-figure budgets, with the sole exception being Another Door, an upcoming multiplayer roguelike with a $180,000 budget. Rose expressed strong confidence in Another Door, noting its significant wishlist numbers, and anticipates it could be a major success.

A primary reason for Rose's preference for lower budgets is the inherent unpredictability of the indie game market. He stated, 'I have to assume that every game will just do fine. I have to assume that we're not going to be the flavour of the month; but if we are, that's fantastic. We just had Thank You for Your Application and were the flavour of the week. That was amazing. I didn't know that was going to happen. I signed that game because I love this kind of document-checking genre.' He continued, 'Thank You for Your Application was a Chinese student team, which I thought sounded fun. I didn't sign it knowing that it would pop off, but I thought it had the ingredients that meant it would. If it hadn't, I needed to make sure the maths worked and that they were still going to be fine. If you build launches around 'If this launch is fine, we'll be good, and if it's amazing, we'll be very good', that's how you survive this thing.'

Descenders' Ascent

No More Robots' most significant success to date is Descenders, its debut release in 2017, which has generated over $35 million in revenue. Rose noted, "on a small budget, it's not bad at all." Surprisingly, half of Descenders' sales occurred in the past year, with a notable surge between April and September 2025, without any apparent cause.

Rose believes Descenders' appeal is partly due to it being "accidentally a Roblox game." He explained, 'We didn't mean to do it, but what I mean by that is that any kid right now can boot Descenders up, and the game literally just goes: 'Hey, ride a bike', and that's all it does. You literally hold the trigger, and the bike goes forward, and then you go left, and you go right, and it goes left and right. We have kids who literally sit in the lobby for hours and days, not doing anything other than just riding on the little ramps that are in the lobby.'

'99% of the reviews on Steam are kids saying 'bike goes brrrr''

'[Developer] Rage Squid did not make that game for those people. When we were trying to sell the game, we wanted mountain bikers and hardcore people to play, people in their 30s. People in their 30s don't mind the game. They're kind of into it. But 99% of the reviews on Steam are kids saying 'bike goes brrrr'.'

Descenders' resemblance to a Roblox experience led to discussions with Roblox about developing and funding a version for their platform. After a six-month process involving ten approval stages, the project was ultimately rejected by Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki, who felt it was too dissimilar to existing content and might confuse users.

Although No More Robots could have funded the port themselves, Rose deemed it "too much of a gamble" due to their lack of experience with the Roblox platform. He admitted to "semi-regret[ting] not doing it" given Roblox's massive reach.

The company has maintained its focus on PC releases, shifting away from console titles primarily delivered through Game Pass, deals for which Rose described as "huge" for the smaller-scale games No More Robots publishes.

Reading the Runes

Traditionally, wishlists and pre-orders have been considered key indicators of a game's potential success. However, recent insights suggest a broader range of metrics for gauging player interest.

For Rose, "the best sign is when a game is organically getting interest, and we're not having to force it." He recommends observing the Steam wishlist graph: a steady upward trend is more favorable than a flat line with spikes occurring only around marketing activities. 'Those will happen when they're doing an influencer push or something,' Rose explained. 'That's great, but when they're not doing anything, no one cares. I don't mean that in a mean way; I mean that they're just not getting organic interest. It's not a good sign when, on a normal day, ten wishlists trickle in, and there's just generally not much interest.'

Wishlists are a significant factor in Rose's confidence regarding Another Door, which he believes could rival Descenders in success. 'Organically, this game, without us doing anything, is just getting thousands and thousands of wishlists every day,' Rose stated. 'And then when I do something, like a little influencer push for it, we get four times as many wishlists as we normally do. That's a good sign. I know that seems like a very preemptive thing to say, but even now we're at least six months away from launch, and I just kind of know already. It's very rare to have that. I've never had that in the history of No More Robots. The sky is the limit on this if we do this correctly. When we get to launch, this could be insane.'

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As No More Robots anticipates what might be its most successful game yet, Rose reflects on his nine years in the industry, admitting to feeling "a drained person" despite enjoying the work. 'I don't want to do it for much longer. I want to do something new soon. I think I want a new challenge, and I've got some ideas of things I want to do.'

'I don't want to do it for much longer'

This sentiment stems partly from No More Robots' modest scale, with Rose still managing a significant portion of the label's operations himself. Even with the release of Thank You for Your Application, he experienced "many sleepless nights" and considerable stress, unrelated to the game's anticipated success. 'It had nothing to do with the game; I knew it was going to do well. It was just like, I've done so many launches now.'

'I'm moving towards 100% done,' he concluded. 'I don't know when that's going to be.'