The world is a rather miserable place right now, but at least video games are cool. In the face of endless layoffs and AI slop, plenty of studios and small developers continue to find success, and sometimes we even come across particularly wholesome bits of news such as this one.
Do you like tower defence strategy games? I personally loved them since the early Warcraft 3 days, so Tangy TD already half-had me with its basic premise and lovely art style. Now the game is out and has found quite a bit of success. In fact, it’s made its developer, Cakez, who worked solo on it for four years, cry twice already.
GamesRadar reported on the game’s success yesterday, 17th March, while also pointing out Cakez is a streamer and youtuber who’s been paying special attention to indie games at the same time he was working on his own. Dexerto shared an article on 11th March highlighting his tearful reaction to hitting roughly $30k after only a day of the game being live. Barely a week later, it’s gone viral and crossed the $250k mark. Here’s his reaction when he found out next to his wife:
Yesterday, the net revenue was already at $197,847 with 28,078 units sold. After this second clip potentially going viral too, it’s likely the numbers are much higher today. In any case, it’s heartwarming to see someone who’s passionately been working on his own solo project and sharing steady progress with his community find success at the end of the tunnel.
Discoverability has become a bit of a problem for aspiring indie developers, so you might have a good game in your hands that just never finds its audience. Of course, in Cakez’s case, there was a previously established community who was willing to check the game out, but even then, that doesn’t guarantee a wider Steam hit. Furthermore, the game is currently sitting at 89 percent ‘very positive’ reviews on the platform, so players are actually enjoying Tangy TD, with many of them stating they made the purchase after seeing the viral clips and finding a lot to like in the game’s promised style and loop.
The witch-starring TD game is all about placing “class-based towers” and upgrading them with all sorts of mixes and synergies enabling different builds. It’s keeping things simple in spite of its recognisable roguelite structure, and according to some reviews, it doesn’t go on for longer than it needs to, at least in its current version.
