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‑catalogue anchored by the bike‑racing blockbuster Descenders – the first title 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 simulation called Cruise Control. The road to that release has been anything but straight‑forward.
The seed of the project was a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a veteran who joined No More Robots to handle console ports and brought with him a solid background in online multiplayer from his days at Team 17. Their chat sparked the idea of a team‑based online shooter, a project that consumed three years of development and eventually attracted the attention of a "big company" – a partner Rose describes as someone he knows very well. The partnership initially looked promising, but the larger studio ultimately pulled out, claiming the concept wasn’t the right fit. This setback coincided with the brief, troubled life of the game Concord, which was quickly withdrawn from sale and hinted at broader challenges in the online‑shooter market.
"As you can imagine, a tiny outfit like ours can’t simply launch a multiplayer shooter on its own," Rose admits. "I was devastated – it was one of the most unpleasant feelings I’ve ever experienced in this industry, especially because it came from a partner I deeply respect." With the shooter on hold, Rose and his five‑person team had to decide on their next move. The answer was Cruise Control – or rather, the name first, then a concept that Rose believed could be produced quickly and would sit comfortably in a PC genre that historically performs well. The original vision was a cruise‑ship management game in the vein of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, but as development progressed it morphed into a more puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles like Mini Motorways.
Publishing a game that you have built yourself feels fundamentally different from distributing someone else’s work. Rose acknowledges the heightened anxiety that comes with owning every aspect of the product, but he also sees a dramatically larger upside. "I’m treating Cruise Control as a title that could earn roughly three times what a typical published game does for us, because we keep 100% of the revenue," he explains. "Usually we take a modest cut of a game we publish.
Every sale of Cruise Control is therefore worth three or four times as much to us. If it reaches the sales level of one of our previous hits, that would be massive." Should Cruise Control succeed, Rose hints that the shelved shooter might be revived, albeit in a more modest form.
A demo already exists, but the final product could be re‑imagined as a PvE experience rather than a pure PvP arena, which Rose now believes is unrealistic for a small studio to compete in. Reflecting on the broader industry, Rose describes the recent years as a "massacre" for many developers.
No More Robots, however, did not ride the COVID‑driven boom; expansion scared Rose, so the company stayed lean and avoided the deep cuts that forced many competitors to downsize. He calls this cautious approach an "accidental genius".
At the end of 2021 he split all profits among the staff, giving everyone a generous bonus. The following year the company broke even again, but because it had not over‑expanded, it never needed to make drastic layoffs. "We don’t need to make huge sums of money – everyone is paid, we release games, we have fun.
I know it sounds naïve and stupid, but somehow it works," Rose says. The publishing model at No More Robots has remained fairly consistent.
Descenders was produced on a five‑figure budget, as were most of the label’s other releases such as Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace. A few titles received larger budgets during the pandemic – Rose admits he got caught up in the hype and was "bit a couple of times for that" – but the studio has since returned to modest five‑figure allocations, with the notable exception of Another Door, a multiplayer roguelike slated for release with a $180,000 budget. Rose recounts a conversation with his wife about Another Door: "I was convinced this one would take off. She just said, ‘Go for it.’ We announced it and the response has been amazing.
Of course we still have to launch, but my gut feeling is that it could be another Descenders‑level hit." Sticking to low budgets is a deliberate strategy, given the unpredictable nature of indie success. "I have to assume every game will do okay," Rose says. "If we become the flavor of the month, great – but we can’t rely on that. We built Thank You for Your Application because we liked the document‑checking genre, not because we knew it would explode.
When it did, we made sure the math still worked. Our survival mantra is: ‘If the launch is fine, we’ll be okay; if it’s amazing, we’ll be great.’" Descenders remains the studio’s crown jewel, having generated over $35 million in revenue on a modest budget – a remarkable achievement by any standard. Surprisingly, half of those sales occurred in the most recent year, with a sudden surge between April and September 2025 that Rose can’t fully explain.
He attributes part of the game's enduring appeal to its accidental similarity to Roblox experiences. "Kids can just fire up Descenders, hold the trigger, and the bike goes ‘brrrr.’ They spend hours in the lobby riding ramps, even though the developers never intended it for that audience." The Roblox angle even led to talks about a port of Descenders onto that platform. After a six‑month, ten‑step approval process, Roblox’s CEO Dave Baszucki ultimately rejected the proposal, saying it would confuse users. Rose reflects that while they could have self‑funded a Roblox version, the lack of experience made it a risky gamble, and he now "semi‑regrets" not taking the plunge given Roblox’s massive user base.
No More Robots has refocused on PC releases after a period of console‑centric titles delivered through Game Pass – deals Rose describes as "huge" for the smaller‑scale games the label publishes. While wishlists and pre‑orders have traditionally served as barometers of future performance, Rose now looks for organic, steady growth in Steam wishlist graphs rather than spikes tied to marketing pushes. He sees that pattern in the early response to Another Door, noting that even without active promotion the game is accumulating thousands of wishlists daily, and a modest influencer boost multiplies that number fourfold. As the studio stands on the brink of what could be its biggest hit yet, Rose admits that after nine years he feels "drained" and is eager for a new challenge.
He still handles many operational tasks personally, and the stress of multiple launches – even successful ones like Thank You for Your Application – has led to sleepless nights. "I’m moving towards 100 % done," he says, leaving the timeline open but clear that a change is on the horizon.