It has been nine years since Mike Rose founded the independent publishing house No More Robots. In that time the company has carved out a respectable niche, largely thanks to a back‑catalogue anchored by the wildly popular bike‑racing title Descenders.
Descenders was the very first game to bear the No More Robots label and it continues to generate strong sales, keeping the studio afloat and giving it a reputation for delivering high‑octane, physics‑driven experiences. Now the studio is poised to launch its inaugural self‑developed title, a cruise‑ship management simulation called Cruise Control. The road to that release was anything but straightforward.
The seed of the project was planted during a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a veteran who joined No More Robots to handle console ports and who brought with him a wealth of online‑multiplayer experience from his tenure at Team 17. Their dialogue initially sparked the idea for a team‑based online shooter.
The shooter entered development, consumed three years of work, and even attracted the interest of a "big company" – a partner Rose says he knows well. That partnership, however, fell apart when the prospective backer decided the project was not a good fit.
The timing coincided with the rapid rise and abrupt removal of Concord from digital stores, a development that hinted at broader turbulence in the online‑shooter market. Rose admits that as a tiny studio they simply could not launch a multiplayer shooter on their own.
"I was crushed," he recalls, describing the disappointment as one of the most unpleasant feelings he has experienced in the industry, especially because it came from a partner he deeply respected. With the shooter put on ice, Rose faced a crucial question: what should his five‑person team tackle next? The answer emerged in the form of Cruise Control. Rose wanted a project that could be built quickly, belonged to a PC genre that historically performed well, and could be developed with the modest resources at his disposal.
The original concept resembled a cruise‑ship management game in the vein of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, but as development progressed the design shifted toward a puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles such as Mini Motorways. Releasing a game that the studio itself has created feels fundamentally different from publishing someone else’s work.
While the anxiety level is higher, the potential upside is also dramatically larger. Rose explains that every sale of Cruise Control will go directly to No More Robots, effectively multiplying the revenue impact by three or four times compared with a typical publishing deal where the studio only receives a small percentage. "If Cruise Control performs as well as one of our previous hits, that would be massive for us," he says. Should Cruise Control succeed, Rose hints that the shelved shooter could be revived, albeit in a more modest form.
The team already has a demo ready, but the final product may be re‑imagined as a PvE experience rather than a competitive PvP shooter, which Rose now believes is unrealistic for a small studio to pursue. Reflecting on the broader industry, Rose describes recent years as a "massacre" for many developers. No More Robots, however, avoided the massive expansion that characterized the COVID‑era boom, largely because the prospect of scaling scared Rose. By staying small, the company sidestepped the deep cuts that forced other studios to downsize.
Rose calls this cautious approach an "accidental genius". At the end of 2021 he distributed all profits evenly among staff, assuming the same would happen the following year.
When revenues dipped, the company merely broke even, yet the staff remained paid and morale stayed high. "We don’t need to make loads of money," Rose says. "Everyone’s getting paid, we’re putting out games, we’re having fun.
I know this sounds naïve and stupid, but somehow it works." The publishing model has remained fairly consistent. Descenders was produced on a five‑figure budget, as were most of the label’s other releases, including Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace. A few titles received larger budgets during the pandemic, a period Rose admits he got caught up in, and he acknowledges that the company was "bit a couple of times" by those larger bets.
Currently, the studio has returned to five‑figure budgets, with the notable exception of Another Door, an upcoming multiplayer roguelike slated at $180,000. Rose’s cautious budgeting stems from the unpredictable nature of indie success.
He operates on the assumption that every game will perform adequately, and if one becomes a surprise hit, the studio will reap the benefits. He cites Thank You for Your Application as an example: a Chinese student‑team project that unexpectedly became the "flavour of the week".
Rose didn’t sign it expecting a breakout, but he recognized the ingredients for a solid launch and built his financial model around a "if it’s fine, we’re good; if it’s amazing, we’re great" philosophy. Descenders remains the studio’s crown jewel, having generated over $35 million in revenue on a modest budget.
Remarkably, half of those sales occurred in the last year, with a sudden surge between April and September 2025 that Rose could not fully explain. He attributes part of the game's longevity to its accidental similarity to Roblox experiences: simple, instantly accessible gameplay that appeals to younger audiences.
Kids spend hours in the lobby simply riding bikes on ramps, a usage pattern Rose never intended but which has kept the title alive. At one point No More Robots entered negotiations with Roblox to create a native version of Descenders. After a six‑month, ten‑step approval process, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki ultimately rejected the proposal, claiming the game would confuse users because it was too different from existing content.
Rose admits that, while the partnership might have opened a massive new market, the studio lacked the expertise to develop directly for Roblox and felt the risk was too high. The company has refocused on PC releases after a period of console‑centric titles delivered through Game Pass, a distribution channel Rose describes as "huge" for the scale of games No More Robots publishes.
While wishlists and pre‑orders have traditionally served as barometers of future success, Rose now places more weight on organic interest, looking for a steady upward trend in Steam wishlist graphs rather than sharp spikes tied to marketing pushes. Another Door, the upcoming roguelike, is already generating thousands of daily wishlists without any promotional effort. When Rose adds a modest influencer push, the numbers quadruple, reinforcing his confidence that the title could match Descenders’ success. He acknowledges that this level of organic traction is unprecedented for the studio.
Despite the excitement, Rose admits that after nine years he feels drained and is eager for a new challenge. He still handles many of the label’s day‑to‑day operations, and even successful launches like Thank You for Your Application have led to sleepless nights. "I’m moving towards 100 % done," he says, leaving the timeline open-ended but indicating a desire to step back once the current projects reach fruition.