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 mountain‑bike title Descenders – the first game released under the No More Robots banner and still a strong seller today.
Now the studio is poised to launch its very first self‑developed title, a cruise‑ship management simulation called Cruise Control. The road to that release was anything but straightforward. The idea originally sprang from a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a developer who joined No More Robots to handle console ports and brought with him a wealth of experience in online multiplayer from his days at Team 17. Their discussion sparked the concept of a team‑based online shooter.
The shooter project consumed roughly three years of work and eventually attracted the attention of a “big company” – someone Rose says he knows well. Unfortunately, that potential partner pulled out, claiming the project wasn’t a good fit. The timing coincided with the brief, troubled launch of Concord, which was quickly removed from stores and hinted at broader challenges in the online‑shooter market. Rose admits that, as a tiny studio, No More Robots could not realistically launch a multiplayer shooter on its own.
"I was crushed," he recalls, describing the episode as one of the most unpleasant moments of his career, especially because it came from a partner he deeply respected. With the shooter shelved, Rose faced a decision: what should his five‑person team work on next?
The answer arrived in the form of Cruise Control. Rose explains that the name came first, followed by a simple game concept that he believed could be produced quickly and would sit comfortably in a PC genre that historically performs well. The initial pitch was a cruise‑ship management game reminiscent of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, but the design gradually morphed into a more puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles such as Mini Motorways. Publishing a game that you have built yourself feels dramatically different from publishing someone else’s work, Rose says.
The anxiety is higher, but so is the upside. "Every sale of Cruise Control is worth three or four times as much to us," he notes, because No More Robots retains 100 % of the revenue rather than taking a modest cut of a third‑party title.
If Cruise Control can match the performance of one of the company’s earlier hits, the financial impact would be massive. Should Cruise Control succeed, Rose hints that the shelved shooter might be resurrected – albeit in a more modest form.
A demo already exists, but the final product would likely be scaled back or re‑imagined as a PvE experience rather than a pure PvP shooter. "Entering the PvP shooter space as a small studio would be insane," he says, acknowledging the steep competition and high development costs. Reflecting on the broader industry, Rose describes the past few years as a "massacre" for many developers.
Yet No More Robots avoided the dramatic expansion that many companies pursued during the COVID‑driven video‑game boom. Rose admits that the prospect of rapid growth terrified him, which in turn spared the studio from having to make deep layoffs later on. He calls the result an "accidental bit of genius." At the end of 2021 he divided all profits among staff, giving everyone a generous bonus and entering 2022 expecting the same. When the anticipated windfall didn’t materialise, the company simply broke even, having kept its headcount low.
"We don’t need to make loads of money, because who needs it? Everyone’s getting paid, we’re putting out games, we’re having fun. I know this sounds naïve and stupid, but somehow it’s working," Rose says. The publishing model itself has remained fairly consistent.
Descenders, which was built on a five‑figure budget, remains the label’s flagship. Most of the studio’s releases – including Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace – have operated within similar budget constraints.
A handful of titles received larger allocations during the pandemic, a period Rose concedes he got caught up in, and the company felt the sting of a few missed bets. Today the budget ceiling has returned to five figures, with the notable exception of Another Door, an upcoming multiplayer roguelike funded with $180,000.
Rose recalls telling his wife he was confident about the project; she simply said, "Go for it." The game has generated strong early buzz, and Rose hopes his intuition proves correct. One of the reasons Rose prefers modest budgets is the inherent unpredictability of the indie market. "I have to assume every game will just do fine," he explains. "If we happen to be the flavour of the month, that’s fantastic, but we can’t count on it." He cites the surprise hit Thank You for Your Application as an example: a Chinese student‑team project that fit his taste for document‑checking games.
He didn’t sign it expecting a breakout, but he believed it had the right ingredients. When the game performed well, the financial math worked out, reinforcing his philosophy of building a portfolio that can survive both modest and extraordinary launches. Descenders remains the studio’s crown jewel, having surpassed $35 million in revenue. Remarkably, half of those earnings arrived in the last year, with a sudden sales spike between April and September 2025 that Rose cannot fully explain.
He attributes part of the success to the game’s accidental similarity to Roblox experiences: simple controls, endless replayability, and a lobby that kids can sit in for hours just riding ramps. Although the developers originally targeted hardcore mountain‑bike enthusiasts in their thirties, the majority of Steam reviews now come from younger players who describe the game as "bike goes brrrr." The Roblox connection went further when No More Robots entered talks with the platform about a dedicated port.
After a six‑month, ten‑step approval process, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki ultimately rejected the proposal, saying the game was too different from existing content and would confuse users. Rose admits he semi‑regrets not pursuing the port, recognizing Roblox’s massive audience but also acknowledging the studio’s lack of experience in that ecosystem would have made the venture risky. Today the company focuses on PC releases, having shifted away from a period of console‑centric titles delivered through Game Pass – a channel Rose describes as "huge" for the scale of games No More Robots publishes. While wishlists and pre‑orders have traditionally been seen as barometers of future success, Rose now looks for organic, steady growth in Steam wishlist graphs rather than short spikes tied to influencer pushes.
This organic momentum is a key reason he feels confident about Another Door, which is already accumulating thousands of wishlists daily without any marketing spend. A modest influencer boost multiplies that number fourfold, and Rose believes the game could become a Descenders‑level phenomenon. 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 recalls sleepless nights surrounding the launch of Thank You for Your Application, not because of the game’s performance but because of the cumulative stress of repeated launches. "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.