It has been nine years since Mike Rose founded the indie publishing house No More Robots. In that time the company has carved out a respectable niche, largely thanks to a back‑catalog that includes the wildly popular bike‑racing title Descenders – the first game released under the No More Robots banner and still a strong seller today. Now the studio is preparing to launch its inaugural self‑developed title, a cruise‑ship management simulator called Cruise Control.
The road to that release has been anything but straight. The idea originated during a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a developer hired to handle console ports who also brought multiplayer expertise from his stint at Team 17. Their chat sparked the concept of a team‑based online shooter, a project that consumed three years of work and eventually attracted the interest of a "big company" – someone Rose says he knows well. The partnership, however, fell apart when the prospective partner decided the shooter wasn’t the right fit.
The timing coincided with the brief launch and rapid removal of Concord, a signal that the online‑shooter market was becoming treacherous. "As you can imagine, a tiny studio like ours can’t simply release a multiplayer shooter on its own," Rose explained. "I was crushed – it was one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve had in this industry, especially because it came from a partner I deeply respect." With the shooter shelved, Rose had to decide what his five‑person team would tackle next.
The answer was Cruise Control. He recalled the name first, then attached a game concept he believed could be built quickly and would fit a PC genre that historically sells well. The original vision was a cruise‑ship management sim in the vein of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, but it gradually morphed into a puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles such as Mini Motorways.
Releasing a game that the studio itself has built feels radically different from publishing someone else’s work. Rose admits the anxiety level is higher, but the upside is also far greater. "Every sale of Cruise Control is worth three or four times as much to us as a typical published title," he said.
"If it performs as well as our other hits, the impact would be massive because we own 100 % of the revenue." Should Cruise Control succeed, Rose hinted that No More Robots might revive the abandoned shooter. A demo already exists, but any public version would likely be scaled back or re‑imagined as a PvE experience rather than a pure PvP arena.
"PvP shooters aren’t viable for a small studio – it would be insane to jump into that space," he noted. Reflecting on the broader industry, Rose described the recent years as a "massacre" for many developers.
Yet No More Robots didn’t over‑expand during the pandemic‑driven video‑game boom; the very thought of rapid growth terrified Rose, which inadvertently saved the company from the deep cuts that felled numerous peers. He calls that cautious approach an "accidental bit of genius." At the end of 2021 Rose split the year’s profits evenly among the staff, assuming the same would happen again in 2022. When revenues fell short, the company simply broke even – no layoffs, no panic. "We don’t need to make huge sums; everyone gets paid, we keep releasing games and having fun.
It sounds naive and stupid, but somehow it works," he laughed. The publishing model has remained fairly consistent.
Descenders, their flagship, was produced on a five‑figure budget, as were most of the label’s other releases like Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace. A few titles received larger budgets during the COVID surge – a period Rose admits he got a bit caught up in – but the studio has since returned to modest five‑figure allocations, with the notable exception of Another Door, a multiplayer roguelike slated for a $180,000 budget. Rose recalled a conversation with his wife when the budget for Another Door was set: "I was so sure about this one," he said. "She just told me to go for it.
We announced it and it’s already generating buzz. Of course we still need to launch, but my gut feels right." Sticking to low budgets is a deliberate strategy because the indie market is notoriously unpredictable. "I have to assume every game will do okay," Rose explained.
"If we happen to be the flavour of the month, that’s fantastic, but we can survive on modest successes. When we signed Thank You for Your Application, I loved the document‑checking genre, not because I knew it would explode, but because it had the right ingredients. If it hadn’t, we would still need the maths to work out." Descenders remains the studio’s biggest triumph, having generated over $35 million in revenue. Remarkably, half of those sales occurred in the last year, with a sudden spike between April and September 2025 that Rose can’t fully explain.
He attributes part of the success to the game’s accidental similarity to Roblox experiences: simple controls, endless riding, and a lobby that kids treat like a playground. "We didn’t design it for kids, we aimed at mountain‑bike enthusiasts in their 30s, but 99 % of Steam reviews are from kids saying ‘bike goes brrrr,’" he observed.
The Roblox angle even led to talks about a port, lasting about six months and involving a ten‑step approval process. At the final stage, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki rejected the idea, saying the game was too different from anything on the platform and would confuse users. Rose admits he might regret not pushing forward, given Roblox’s massive audience, but acknowledges the risk: "We had no experience with Roblox; it could have been a disaster." No More Robots has refocused on PC releases after a period of console‑centric titles delivered through Game Pass – a deal Rose describes as "huge" for the scale of games the label publishes. While wishlists and pre‑orders have traditionally been seen as success predictors, Rose now emphasizes organic interest.
He watches Steam wishlist graphs closely; a steady upward trend is far more encouraging than a flat line punctuated by occasional spikes from influencer pushes. That organic momentum is exactly why Rose feels confident about Another Door.
"Without any marketing, it’s racking up thousands of wishlists daily," he said. "When we add a small influencer push, the numbers quadruple. It’s rare for us to have that level of pre‑launch enthusiasm – the sky could be the limit if we execute correctly." Despite the excitement, Rose admits he feels drained after nine years of constant launches.
"I don’t want to keep doing this forever," he confessed. "I’m looking for a new challenge and have a few ideas I want to explore." The company remains small; Rose still handles many operational tasks himself.
Even the success of Thank You for Your Application came with sleepless nights and high stress, not because the game was difficult, but because of the cumulative pressure of repeated launches. "I’m moving toward being 100 % done," he concluded, leaving the timeline open-ended.