I know, I know, you’re looking at that title and thinking, why on earth would I want to look back on this year?! And yes, the world is uh, not doing so well, but we’re at least going to take a look back at the year from the perspective of Lunar Chippy Games.
But first, if you’re reading this and haven’t bought Iron Village yet – it’s 30% off for the rest of the year! Get it on Steam or Itch.io, or on Google Play (although it’s not on sale there yet – it’s already effectively 40% off for Android, you have to wait a little longer before I start the sales there 🙂 )
The biggest date of course was March 24th, but I’ll backtrack a little bit first. Iron Village was at BostonFIG on December 15th, so after that and holiday shenanigans, the year started off with implementing the crazy amount of feedback from then. (Not all of it of course, feedback is super useful but not 100% correct.) Levels 4 & 5 hadn’t even been fully implemented yet, so there was still a big chunk of work to cram into two and a half months.
Somehow I pulled it off, all while holding a full time day job at the same time, launching to mostly positive reviews. Was it a huge launch? No, but Iron Village was well received, contrary to what part of my brain had tricked itself into believing, and it turns out I could in fact make and finish a game!
A lot of initial feedback from the game came to make the basis of version 1.1: Additional rotations of buildings, a Royal Ceremony to give the game a soft ending, as well as some other goodies and quality of life fixes. 1.1 released in June, and along with the corresponding sale, another big boost of sales came along.
Meanwhile, at some point during the early summer, the “Voluntary Exit Program” was announced at my day job (at least for the department which I worked in). I signed up for that so fast lol, the only delay was me getting lunch and calling my wife to double check. (She was more excited than I was!) Based on what other big tech companies were doing, getting to actually voluntary leave with severance was huge, and most likely thanks to our union. (If you can, join a union!) I’m tempted to rant about my manager here as well, buuut that can wait for another time, if ever.
After signing up for that, but before actually ending my job, the 1.2 release came out, a.k.a. the Workers and Resources update. This was another hefty update, and included some charts for deeper analysis, some new buildings, and a bunch of other improvements.
Since then it’s been full speed ahead on Project OY, the unannounced new game I’m working on. It is a wee bit terrifying going full time right now (in this economy?!), and it’ll be awhile until anything actually comes out, but the way things are planned it should work for at least the duration of development. (If you’re interested, there is a Patreon that gets you some sneak peeks, but at this early stage I also totally get not wanting to drop cash on that!)
Some Stats
Finally, I wanted to drop some unsorted statistics, some of which I found pretty interesting:
Net Sales on Steam: 1,643
Users on Google Play: 113
Of 1679 total units on Steam, 72 are from Mac and 46 from Linux (I’m not sure how precise the OS assignment is though)
5,608 outstanding wishlists
Median time played: 1 hour 23 minutes
56 reviews on Steam, 91% Positive
Top Countries:
- 438 units (26%) in the US
- 347 (21%) in Germany
- 102 (6%) in the UK
- 89 (5%) in China (PRC)
- 83 (5%) in Japan
- 58 (3%) in Canada
- 57 (3%) in France
- 55 (3%) in Taiwan
- 50 (3%) in Australia
- 44 (3%) in Russia
- 356 (21%) Other
In Closing
That just about sums up 2025 for Lunar Chippy Games, hope you all have a Happy New Year! At the very least, I hope that 2026 ends up being at least slightly better? 🤞
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