Why the surprise releases strategy?

As you may know, we plan to announce our games only as they’re available.
We’ve been told pretty early how risky this kind of strategy is.
And to be honest, yeah, we’re a bit anxious as well!
That said, we think there are at least two good reasons to make it this way.

On your side, no waiting!

Who doesn’t like a nice little surprise?
In these times of endless marketing campaigns, we sure know we miss that lighthearted way of discovering a title.
Starting a game with no expectations, and even sometimes with no clue about what it really is, can be very refreshing.

But even more important… No waiting!
Should you like what you see on one of our release trailers,
hey, it’s here NOW.

On our side, less pressure.

Crafting stuff in secret is super fun!
We can be spontaneous and feel no pressure, we like this a lot.
But also, communication.

There is a very uncomfortable time for most developers, and that time is when we feel our publishers are overselling our games to you.
Please note they have to, it’s their job to push again and again to reach the biggest possible crowd and get their/our money back.

But as the trailers pile up for small games like ours, often we feel we’re artificially building some hype only to give you reasons to be disappointed on the release day.
Think about someone telling you one time this new movie could be interesting. Now think about 10 people urging you every few days to see the exact same movie cause it’s fantastic.
It will inevitably set unrealistic expectations (even maybe make you grumpy) and nobody will be happy at the end of the day.

Hey, but we want you to be happy!
And we also want to be happy ourselves!

That’s why NanoPiko have a (terrific) distributor but no publisher, this way we can speak to you in a more natural tone.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy our first game enough to be there for our next projects!