Turn a Text-Only Game Into A Steam Hit

0:00 Intro 0:56 Why WARSIM worked 1:52 From tiny sales to quitting the day job 3:09 Sticking with a "failed" game 5:06 Obsessive Updates 10:10 Procedural Generation and Emergent Stories 12:17 The Throne Room’s Birth 17:11 Roleplaying a ruler: many playstyles 20:59 A 700k-line monolith 26:56 Follow-the-fun workflow, 500 co-designers 31:16 Moving beyond ASCII: new studio, higher stakes 33:12 Text games: should you make them? 37:59 Marketing a game with no graphics 42:42 Word-of-mouth and biggest wins 46:39 Slumbox reveal: city vs wasteland 50:18 Choosing GameMaker over Unity 51:46 Timeline, team, delegation, funding paths 55:56 Life outside dev: band, GDC adventures, merging music and games 58:11 Becoming a “real” game dev and balancing identities 1:00:10 Advice for devs: persistence, build what you love, design smart, community 1:04:02 Proc-gen principles and writing tips 1:10:09 Jonas’ advice for Slumbox 1:12:01 Jonas’ next project and goodbye