This December marks a big step for both Galaxy Grove and me personally; a step that I have been working towards for a long time.
When I left my previous studio Ronimo in 2021 it was to found a new studio, where I would be creative director and CEO. I had lofty goals for my new studio Galaxy Grove:
- Make great games
- Stay within budget and meet deadlines
- Specialise in one genre (management games)
- Build a great team
- Be good to my employees
- Be part of the game dev community
- Multiple teams working in parallel
- Yearly releases
- Be ambitious on the business side
- Become a beloved brand among gamers
Last year with the release of our debut game Station to Station we achieved the first two: a great game (90% positive on Steam), on time and within budget.
While Station to Station was a puzzle game masquerading as a management game, the game we have in production now is a real management game, achieving #3. It also proves we are achieving #4: I am not writing a single line of code this time and the game is turning out great due to our great team!
As for #5: whether I am good to my employees is not for me to judge, but I work hard for this and I feel I provide a warm and healthy work climate without crunch.
To give back to the community (#6), I share knowledge and experience wherever I can. Some examples are that we organise the NL Unreal Meetups every quarter, that I am a mentor in the Dutch Games Association mentor program and that I do talks and projects at game schools.
That brings me to the big step forward I mentioned at the start of this post: our new colleagues Ramon Huiskamp and Jordy van Opstal joined the team this month to start prototyping on another new game. I am very hyped for what they are making and very excited that this now officially achieves #7, making us multiple teams working on multiple games in parallel. It also sets us on the path to #8: yearly releases starting 2025!
As you can tell, I have in general been very ambitious with the business of running this studio. There’s something big on that side in the works too. So I hope to have something to announce for #9 in a few months as well… fingers crossed!
