Content Warning is the latest indie game to take over the gaming world, with fans flocking to the co-op title to film their friends doing all manner of weird and horrifying things (in-game!). Landfall Games has always been a popular indie developer, who regularly releases their games every year on April Fools, but this year was different.
With Content Warning far exceeding their wildest expectations, the developer was good enough to take some time and talk to us about the game’s future, their hopes going forward, and what else they have going on in the background.
[Some answers have been edited for clarity and length]
Firstly, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us! Especially in a time that is no doubt incredibly busy for all of you. For the readers out there unaware, would you be so kind as to explain who you are and what Landfall Games do/have done?
I’m Hanna Fogelberg, the head of comms at Landfall Games since 2016, I do all of our socials but also a bunch of other operational stuff at Landfall. Before the release of Content Warning Landfall was known for our whacky physics games like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, Clustertruck, and Stick Fight to name a few. We’re also known for releasing new projects on April 1st every year! This year’s game was Content Warning.
Content Warning is a 1-4 player co-op horror game where you film your friend do scary things to go viral and become SpöökTube famous – we released the game on April 1st for free for the first 24 hours and then it went paid from April 2nd. We managed to get 6.6M people to claim the game that first day and then we’ve had 1.5M+ more get the game after, so it’s been pretty hectic, to say the least!
With regards to Content Warning, what prompted the unique and ingenious launch? On a day most associate with fake offers and jokes, you offered your brand new game absolutely Free!
We’ve done this before actually! In 2018 we did a free promotion on Steam for our game Totally Accurate Battlegrounds before the game went paid, that time it went really well too, with about 3 million people claiming the game in the first day or two. We treat April 1st as a day of celebration for our community so we tend to offer free games or a new release every year. This is by far our most successful attempt at it!
As a follow-up, how are you planning on topping it next year?
Oh wow, I’m not sure what that would look like, to be honest! Content Warning already blew all of our other releases out of the water but we will see what we cook up next year.
We would have to figure out how that could work on consoles first.
Where did the idea for the game come from? It certainly seems to hit a niche in coop gaming that plays on both helping and sacrificing others for your own gain, resulting in some hilarious moments!
Wilhelm wrote the team and told us he had an idea for this year’s game, he said: “I have this really stupid idea, the old world is messed up, the air is polluted so you can’t live there anymore, instead you live up in the clouds. You play as four friends that are explorer-influencers and you get these old diving suits to go down to the old world and film spooky content for views” And that’s pretty much what we ended up making. The inspiration was influencer culture and the lengths people go to go viral.
You’ve broken the top 10 of Steam with relative ease, and in a moment of life imitating art, the game and you have gone viral. Will this change any roadmaps you had in place? For example, will you now be supporting the game with more content than you would have otherwise?
When we do these April 1st releases we always wait and see how they do before committing to more content, Content Warning did super well so we were excited to work on it more. So yes, we have more content on the way, we want the first big update to add more progression and content to the game so that’s our priority right now alongside bug fixes, then we will see.
We don’t want to be a live-game studio that only works on one game for years, so we probably won’t update it forever, but hopefully, we can update it as long as it makes sense. It’s really important to us to stay a small team and to be excited about what we’re working on, so that’s our priority over milking profit out of the same game forever.
We’re very actively looking at the feedback and suggestions the community is giving us.
I’m sure you’ve been inundated on Social Media with this question, but the fans always know best and a lot are asking if you’ll be bringing this to consoles any time soon. Or at all? And a follow-up, would the game look or play any different on consoles? If so, why and what would you change?
It’s too early to say, but it would be really cool to have it on more platforms so if it makes sense we would love to port it. Currently, the big issue is probably the way the video feature works in the game, we would have to figure out how that could work on consoles first.
What is Landfall’s approach to developing games? Prior games haven’t necessarily been as successful in regards to going viral, but they’ve all been unique and different.
For our main projects, we try to do what I call the “Throw it at the internet and see what sticks”-method, we do a lot of game jams and Wilhelm (our CEO) also makes a lot of prototypes so when something looks promising we’ll post about it and try and measure the reaction to it online before committing to it as our next project. Generally, we try to have short development cycles with smaller teams in different configurations and it’s working out well so far.
Given the opportunity is there a universe or developer in particular you‘d like to crossover with?
That’s a hard question, there are a lot of games and studios we admire and would love to collaborate with – we might have something on the backburner doing just that, who knows…
Due to the outrageously massive demand you obviously had to restrict party sizes for the time being. Any news on when we can expect that to change? Not that I have more than three friends to play with, but I’m sure some do.
We’ve scrapped the cap for mods since a few weeks back! We have no current plans to add bigger lobbies in the base game but we’re happy to see people use mods to play with all of their friends.
They won’t give you points but they make the videos so much more fun to watch. I love it when players get creative with things like the green screen and reporter mic as well.
What new mechanics and features are you working on that we’ll see in future updates? And as a follow-up to that, the community is very vocal as to what they’d like included. Do you let that inspire or inform your decisions on the direction of the game?
We want to be as vague as possible to avoid issues if content needs to be cut for some reason, but we’re working to add more progression to the game and more monsters. We’re hoping to do fixes and quality-of-life features that will improve the game for the players.
We’re very actively looking at the feedback and suggestions the community is giving us, it’s directly informing the design and content decisions we make for sure. Even if we can’t reply to everything we see we are reading it. It’s really fun when people suggest something that we’re already working to implement because then we know we’re on the right track.
What’s next for the Totally Accurate franchise?
TABS had its last content update earlier this year but is getting a Quality-of-Life update and a PS5 port sometime this year. TABG has stopped updates too but we added community servers earlier this year so that the community can keep doing cool stuff with the game. As for the franchise as a whole, we will see! Right now we’re taking a bit of a break from it but we may return to it at some point.
Is there anything you’d like to tell us that you never seem to get asked, or just something you’re bursting to announce?
One thing I’d love to talk about is that we’re also working on another game, called HASTE: Broken Worlds! HASTE is a fast-paced running game where you race to reach the portal at the end of a collapsing universe, it’s by the same team as Content Warning alongside some super-talented devs from all over the world.
Another thing I’d love to mention is since our studio has been doing well for a long time we’ve had the fortunate position of being able to fund other projects, so if you have a game that needs project funding (we’re not a publisher) and you think it might be something we’d like to see then get in touch!
Lastly, what one, little-known tip would you give fans to ensure they’re making the best of every video in Content Warning?
Intros! They won’t give you points but they make the videos so much more fun to watch. I love it when players get creative with things like the green screen and reporter mic as well. Other than that, just get as much footage of the monsters and as close up as you can, the more monsters the better.
Content Warning is further proof – not that we need it – that 2024 is going to be the year of the indie developers, the AA developers, and the ingenious, unique, and positively insane IPs, rather than the bloated and boring AAA franchises we’ve gotten used to. Not only that, but the sentiments shown by Hanna here are rapidly growing, with smaller developers realizing there’s not always a need for crunch, for ‘milking profits’ and abusing their audience, and it has been coming for a few years now.
It’s always illuminating to speak to those who create the games we love (and some of them that we don’t), but after this interview, I think we can all agree that Landfall Games is a developer we should all be keeping an eye on, and not just for Content Warning, but also their annual April Fools releases that have exploded this time.
Have you played Content Warning? How about the multitude of other releases Landfall Games are responsible for? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
