It has been nine years since Mike Rose founded the indie publishing house No More Robots. Over that period 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 gearing up to launch its very first self‑developed title, a cruise‑ship management and puzzle hybrid called Cruise Control. The road to this release was anything but straight‑forward.
The seed of the project was a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a veteran of Team 17 who had joined No More Robots to handle console ports and bring multiplayer expertise to the table. Their chat sparked the idea of a team‑based online shooter, a project that consumed three years of development and eventually attracted interest from a "big company" – a partner Rose says he knows very well.
Unfortunately that partner pulled out, claiming the concept wasn’t the right fit. The timing coincided with the rapid rise and abrupt removal of the game Concord, a development that hinted at broader turbulence in the online‑shooter market. "As you can imagine, a tiny studio like ours can’t just launch a multiplayer shooter on its own," Rose explains. "I was crushed – it was one of the most unpleasant feelings I’ve ever had in this industry, especially because it came from a partner I deeply respect." With the shooter on the back‑burner, Rose and his five‑person team had to decide what to tackle next.
The answer was Cruise Control. Rose recalls that the name came first, followed by a simple premise: "a game we could make quickly, in a PC genre that consistently performs well." Initially conceived as a cruise‑ship management sim in the vein of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, the concept gradually morphed into a more puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles like Mini Motorways. Releasing a game that the company itself has built feels dramatically different from publishing someone else’s work. The stakes feel higher, the anxiety more acute, but the potential upside is also far greater.
"I’m treating Cruise Control as a title that could earn roughly three times what a typical published game does for us, because we own 100 % of the revenue," Rose says. "Normally we take a modest cut of a third‑party title; every sale of Cruise Control is worth three or four times as much to us. If it matches the performance of one of our existing hits, that would be massive." Should Cruise Control prove successful, Rose hints that the shelved shooter might be resurrected, 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 full‑blown PvP arena.
"PvP shooters are not a viable path for a small studio," he admits. "Entering that space would be insane.
Repurposing it into something more manageable makes sense." Reflecting on the broader industry, Rose describes recent years as a "massacre" for many developers. No More Robots, however, did not expand dramatically during the COVID‑driven video‑game boom – a decision Rose says was driven by fear of over‑extending. Because the company stayed lean, it avoided the deep layoffs that forced many larger studios to downsize. Rose also confesses that some of his financial decisions have been almost accidental strokes of genius.
At the end of 2021 he split the year’s profits evenly among all staff, giving everyone a substantial bonus and assuming the same would happen again in 2022. When the expected windfall didn’t materialise, the company was still financially stable because it had not over‑expanded. "We just break even again. We don’t need to make huge profits – everyone gets paid, we release games, we have fun.
I know it sounds naive and stupid, but somehow it works," he says. The publishing model at No More Robots has remained fairly consistent. Their flagship Descenders was built on a five‑figure budget, as were most of their other releases, including 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, an upcoming multiplayer roguelike funded with $180,000. Rose recounts a conversation with his wife when they decided to green‑light Another Door: "I was so sure about this one," he says.
"She just said go for it. We announced it and it’s already generating buzz.
Of course we still have to launch, but my intuition feels right. Apart from that, our budgets remain low, usually five figures." One reason for staying frugal is the unpredictable nature of indie success.
"I have to assume every game will just do fine," Rose explains. "If we happen to be the flavour of the month, that’s fantastic, but we can’t count on it. When we signed Thank You for Your Application, I loved the document‑checking genre and thought it had the right ingredients to succeed. If it hadn’t, we would have needed the maths to still work out.
You survive by planning for ‘if this launch is okay we’re fine, if it’s amazing we’re great.’" Descenders remains the studio’s biggest triumph, having generated over $35 million in revenue – a remarkable figure given its modest budget. Intriguingly, about half of those sales occurred in the last year alone, with a sudden surge 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: "Any kid can fire up Descenders, hold the trigger and the bike just goes. Kids spend hours in the lobby riding ramps.
We never marketed it to them; we aimed at mountain‑bike enthusiasts in their 30s. Yet 99 % of Steam reviews are from kids saying ‘bike goes brrrr.’" The Roblox angle even led to talks about creating a Roblox‑specific version of Descenders. After a six‑month, ten‑step approval process, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki ultimately rejected the proposal, saying the game was too different from anything on the platform and would confuse users. Rose reflects that while he semi‑regrets not pursuing the port – Roblox’s audience is massive – the risk of venturing into an unfamiliar ecosystem without experience could have been disastrous.
Today No More Robots focuses on PC releases, having shifted away from a period of console‑centric titles delivered via Game Pass – deals Rose describes as "huge" for the scale of games they publish. While wishlists and pre‑orders have traditionally been seen as predictors of success, Rose now looks for organic, steady growth in Steam wishlist graphs rather than spikes tied only to marketing pushes.
That organic momentum is evident with Another Door. "Without any effort, it’s racking up thousands of wishlists daily," Rose says.
"When we add a small influencer push, the numbers quadruple. It’s rare for us to feel that confident six months out from launch – the sky is the limit if we execute correctly." Despite the excitement, Rose admits he feels drained after nine years of nonstop launches.
"I don’t want to keep doing this forever. I want a new challenge and have a few ideas brewing," he confides. The company remains small, with Rose still handling many operational tasks himself, and the stress of recent launches – even those he knew would succeed – has taken its toll.
"I’m moving toward being 100 % done," he concludes, leaving the exact timeline open-ended.