Today, Lucky Frame founder, director, and all around pleasant dude Yann Seznec announced that his company was no longer in the business of making videogames. Lucky Frame made its name on the iOS scene with Bad Hotel ($1.99), a mash-up of procedural music-making and tower defense, and then followed it up with well-received games like Wave Trip ($0.99), Gentlemen! ($1.99), and, most recently, The Nightmare Cooperative ($0.99). The timing of Seznec’s post is particularly bittersweet, given that The Nightmare Cooperative is free on the App Store today, down from $3.99.
Seznec points out that Lucky Frame has been “successful" in that they made good games that were popular among those that played them. Their early games in particular used music and rhythm in smart, subtle ways to elevate other mechanics, while their most recent was a refreshing, if not daunting, take on touch-screens and roguelikes. Still, the unfortunately reality is that The Nightmare Cooperative simply didn’t sell well enough.
“For three years we outsold the average game releases on the market, which was enough to sustain us and allow us to make the games we wanted to make," Seznec writes. “Some of those games sold well (Bad Hotel is owned by around 100,000 people) some of them sold very little (Nightmare Cooperative has sold around 7,000 copies across all platforms)."
“And now, we’ve decided to move on. Lucky Frame is no longer working on any games, and won’t be releasing anything in the foreseeable future."
Lucky Frame weren’t exclusively mobile game developers, but putting a game on the App Store in its current form is still a huge gamble for small teams. In the volatile and pernicious discussions about so-called “premium" apps, the idea that quality always wins out is a common one, but its merit is becoming increasingly dubious.
Our reviews for Bad Hotel, Wave Trip, Gentlemen!, and The Nightmare Cooperative are effusive, and those games’ forum threads were active and enthusiastic. The next time someone tells you that good design, striking art direction, and a fair market price are guarantees for success, consider Lucky Frame.
While most of Lucky Frame’s designers and developers are off to greener pastures, Seznec is keeping the company alive by organizing experimental workshops and indie festivals. Their games will also continue to be sold on the App Store and Steam.
It’s always a bummer to have fewer talented developers on the App Store, but Seznec seems remarkably zen about exiting gracefully: " I would like to stress that this is not a tragedy, or even a failure," he writes. “Though we did not make a lot of money, we definitely did what we set out to do. Lucky Frame absolutely fulfilled my vision of success, in fact in many ways it surpassed it beyond my wildest dreams."
“We spoke our minds, refused to make violent or sexist games, we avoided exploitative design models and we paid all our bills on time. … And most importantly for three years we made our own games and released them to the world. I would call that success."
