“I’ve lost my appetite for launching games.”
Image credit: Eurogamer / Tomas Sala
Like many independent developers, Falconeer and Bulwark creator Tomas Sala faces a problem: how does he get recognition for his games in an overcrowded market that prefers, paradoxically, hits?
His old answer used to be ‘to make new games and hope’. To beaver away on something for a few years and then release it, doing everything he could - crossing every finger and toe - in the hope his game would find a way to stick, and capture an audience and succeed. And he has had some success this way.
Birdy aerial combat game The Falconeer was well-timed with the release of Xbox Series S/X, su…
“I’ve lost my appetite for launching games.”
Image credit: Eurogamer / Tomas Sala
Like many independent developers, Falconeer and Bulwark creator Tomas Sala faces a problem: how does he get recognition for his games in an overcrowded market that prefers, paradoxically, hits?
His old answer used to be ‘to make new games and hope’. To beaver away on something for a few years and then release it, doing everything he could - crossing every finger and toe - in the hope his game would find a way to stick, and capture an audience and succeed. And he has had some success this way.
Birdy aerial combat game The Falconeer was well-timed with the release of Xbox Series S/X, such that it became an unlikely launch title, earning it a lot of exposure as well as “an inhuman amount of expectation”, Sala tells me in a video call. Feedback was fierce, both positively and negatively.
The launch of chill sea-town building game Bulwark last year went more smoothly, but again Sala divided the audience. Some people told him “I’ve never played anything like this - it makes me reconnect with a how game like this could be”, whereas other people said, “this makes me relearn everything; I fucking hate it,” Sala reflects. Suffice to say, he didn’t enjoy the launch of either game very much.
But moreso, in the 10 years he’s been making his own games, the market has changed in dramatic ways. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this,” Sala says, “and 2025 is mean-gaming. You’re trying to get on the viral flywheel.
“Everything ever since Balatro,” he explains, “you see that viral hits, they get bigger - it’s that eternal [upwards] curve. We end up with algorithmic systems where the masses get nothing, so the thousands of games released on a day get next to nothing, then there’s a very small middle-ground and an ever-expanding top that gains more and more and more. That’s how Steam works: if your game sells, they’ll show it to more people, who will buy it so *they’ll *show it to more people. It’s a flywheel. Once it goes faster and faster and faster, you can go stratospheric.”
We’ve seen many examples of this in effect, with games like Escape from Duckov - a PvE single-player extraction shooter - currently enjoying hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. Duckov amassed 2 million sales in under two weeks. Then there’s 3D Vampire Survivors-alike Megabonk, which had a massive moment earlier in October, and co-op climbing game Peak, which was everywhere in late-summer. These small-team or solo games seem to appear from nowhere, blaze briefly like magnesium fire, leaving the rest of the more traditional gaming industry dazed and mystified by their success.
It’s a conscious shift, says Sala. “In 2025, you’re seeing games made to go viral. It’s what you’re seeing happening on Roblox. It’s a certain easily digestible viral sensation.” TikTok and its short-form video are another huge influencing factor, Sala acknowledges. Mix AI in as well, and you see the potential for potentially endless amounts of quick-made games, which can respond in a heartbeat to whatever’s currently trending. But Sala refuses to be swayed.
“I am not a believer in that,” he says. “I am on the opposite saying that’s not tenable; you don’t want to be part of that. Everything in my gut says to run away from that and try to build sustainable.” His great pivot, then, has been to look at what games like Dwarf Fortress and mech-shooter Brigador do, which is double-down on their communities, and nurture them.
“Those are small teams that have persevered in making a sustainable business out of their game, their franchise, their universe,” Sala says. Crucially: “Those are the people I know that have the most fun. They’re the least stressed because they’re not releasing hit singles, they’re selling out arenas, because people are just coming for them. They’re coming for the fact the game will be there in five years, and it’ll have changed.
“I want to be there,” Sala tells me. “And with Bulwark, I did it.”
Both The Falconeer and Bulwark required fixing and additional development - things that daunted a tired Sala at the time, but which have retrospectively played a key part in where he finds himself now. This kind of work energises him. “You need people to shit over your work otherwise you can’t improve,” he says. “It’s so painful. It’s emotionally damaging. But if people don’t come out and say this fucking sucks, I can’t get arsed to fix it.”
Taking the time to improve his games after launch enables him to leave them in a much better place, and build a community. Especially for games like Bulwark, which has a larger presence on Steam. That’s why you see him so transparently interacting with the players of his games there, candidly telling them what he’s up to while asking for their ideas about what to do next. They appreciate it and he appreciates the work. And Bulwark is a much better game now because of it.
All of which has led Sala to - and this is the caveat I mentioned above - embarking on a huge overhaul for The Falconeer, the Revolution Remaster, which launched this week. For free. (And there’s currently a free-play weekend underway.) He’s used Bulwark’s town-tech to beef-out the world and enlarge the settlements; he’s also remodelled the giant falcons you fly around on; and he’s structurally condensed the world so there’s distance to travel. “I think you were the one that said it could have done being a more condensed experience,” Sala tells me, “and I thought, yeah, that’s fucking right.” And he’s finally added proper mouse and keyboard controls. Really, it’s a top-to-bottom rework, and it’s worth reiterating that it’s free.
All that work for no monetary gain? That’s part of the point. The bigger reward is building trust and support from a community - a stable base of players who can support his work now and into the future. This way he doesn’t have to play the “casino”, as he calls it, when releasing a new game on Steam. He’s happier, his community is happier, and The Falconeer and Bulwark have never been better. It’s a virtuous cycle.
That, in turn, means his Ursee trilogy - to which those two games belong - represent an up-to-date body of work, rather than games he left alone five years ago. And that’s important when you consider there’s still one more game to come - a third, ship-based game called Ancient Waves that he’s going to make a proper start on in January. He’s actually going to openly test a lot of ideas for it in Bulwark.
It’s the most relaxed I think I’ve seen Sala, and we’ve talked a few times over the years, which suggests to me he really has found a more enjoyable way of working. “I’ve lost my appetite for launching games because, but I’ve gained an appetite of working with players to make games better,” he says. “I’ve grown into someone who wants to not release games, but make games sustainably.” And given the state the industry’s in, I wonder if it’s a template we could adopt more widely.