“Let's just fail quickly,” how a game meant to flop became a Steam hit. The REPO story we didn’t expect
When you don’t give up, and finish what you start, you might create the next big sensation. That’s how R.E.P.O., originally planned as a quick game, became one of Steam’s most-played titles.
Imagine being completely burned out after your hard work didn’t go the way you hoped, so you take what little cash you’ve got left and throw it into a small project, just to do something. And then you accidentally make a hit game that sells millions. That’s pretty much the origin story of R.E.P.O. The devs over at semiwork recently opened up about what things were really like for them during that time.
The unexpected success story
Semiwork is a small indie game studio based in Sweden. They spent six years working on their first title, Voidigo, a wild, action-packed roguelike with pixel art and edgy humor. But despite all that effort, the game didn’t really take off. When it was fully launched on Steam in 2023, the peak player count was just over 600.
Naturally, after pouring so much time into it, the team was ready for a long, well-earned break. But after only three weeks, one of the devs, Axel Landén, started getting that familiar itch in the fingers, as he puts it in the video, he just had to start another project. So the team decided to throw what money they had left from Voidigo into something new.
There was just one catch: this time, they wanted to use Unity and none of them had any experience with the engine. Still, as Walter Tischkewitz put it:
We did it anyway. Let’s just fail quickly this time.
The initial idea was fairly simple: a single-player cleaning game with a horror theme, where each level had one creepy thing to avoid. They went with a “Found Footage” vibe to make it feel like you were watching some old, eerie camera recording.
But then, partway through development, they realized the whole “cleaning” thing just wasn’t that fun. So they brainstormed new ideas. First, it shifted to a moving company concept… then something about collecting taxes. And somewhere along the line, they thought, what if this was multiplayer? And the rest is history.
Source: YouTube, semiwork
What was meant to be a failure turned into a surprise hit for the Swedish devs. R.E.P.O. dropped in Early Access on Steam in February 2024 for just $9.99 and quickly gained traction, peaking at nearly 27,000 players within the first few days. Two months later, it's still pulling in 100,000 peak daily players.
With 96% positive reviews on Steam, R.E.P.O. has become one of the most played games on Steam. Pretty impressive for a game the devs made just to fail fast. Now there’s even an “I love R.E.P.O.” trend going around – and unfortunately, a bunch of knockoffs are already popping up on the PlayStation Store and other platforms.
