🔥 Acclaim is publishing my game Pixel Washer

Ahh finally the news is out! I've been sitting on this for months and I'm about to vibrate out of my chair with excitement. Anyway –

🐷 My upcoming game Pixel Washer is being published by Acclaim!

This is really big news for me. It's a big step up and I'm excited to tell you all about it. I've been looking forward to this! Let's get into it.

🕹️ Acclaim games you (probably) know

Remember Acclaim Entertainment, the legendary games industry publisher founded in 1987 that published games for almost 20 years? If you're like me you remember quite well, but if not you might know some of their classics:

Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Burnout, Turok ... and BMX XXX (lol sorry I had to).

❤️ Acclaim games that mean a lot to me

When I was growing up in the 80s, Acclaim was a household name. In fact, lemme go see how many games of theirs I still have ...

OK yeah I can see that I've got Mortal Kombat II and several Wizards & Warriors games sitting on my nearby shelf staring at me. I've whittled down my collection over the years and now own only the games that you'll have to bury me with someday.

Granted, these are separate IPs that we (probably?) don't have the rights to use, but I'll just put this out there:

I would love to make new versions of Wizards & Warriors and/or Swords & Serpents. Make it happen for me, universe!

🎮 Fellow indie games Acclaim is publishing

Naturally, Pixel Washer isn't the only game that Acclaim has announced that they're publishing. Here are some of the other games in their lineup:

• Katanaut (OUT NOW!)
• Basketball Classics (OUT NOW!)
• The Prisoning: Fletcher's Quest
• HYPERyuki: Snowboard Syndicate
• Tossdown
• GRIDbeat!
• Ground Zero Hero
• Talaka

📝 Why sign with a publisher?

This is one of the most common questions I get. It's a fair question! Anyone (with $100) can now develop and publish their games directly on Steam. You can do everything yourself and you get to keep all the revenue.

So why might a developer want to work with a publisher? I can't answer that for you, but for me, I wanted to sign with Acclaim because it means many things for my game, including:

1. I get to expand the scope of Pixel Washer significantly
2. I can focus on making the game without having to worry (as much) about marketing, localization, porting, and other stuff
3. I can take Pixel Washer further with Acclaim than I could on my own
4. Maybe most importantly: while I have self-published games before, I've never published with a publisher so this will be an exciting new adventure for me

If you haven't self-published a game on Steam or any other "major" games platform, then my advice would be to do that. Make your game, however you want, then publish it yourself. Learn the entire process before escalating things.

I spent months working on a pitch deck, demo, and other materials to help pitch Pixel Washer. Sent many emails, had many meetings. Sometimes I wonder: if I had spent all that time on the game, could I have finished it by now?

(In my case the answer is no, but it's a question worth asking.)

📈 What's next?

I'm working steadily with Acclaim's ongoing support to make the best game I can. In addition to focusing on developing the game full time, I've also hired a level designer and a few pixel artists.

You heard that right! I'm no longer a "solo game developer" (if that's even really a thing (everybody gets help somewhere)). That might seem strange from a guy who wrote a book about making games all by yourself ... and yeah, it is to me too!

Having people to manage has put pressure on my leadership skills and created an environment where I have to document wayyyy more than I would have on my own. I'm exercising muscles I haven't used in ages (and growing some new ones).

It's the exact challenge I've been wanting and I'm so grateful that I get to do it.

Next up:

• I'm working on making a killer demo for Pixel Washer. If it looks fun to you (and/or you want to support me) then please add it to your Steam washlist
• You can bet I'm going to do a postmortem on the publishing experience ... although that's many, many moons away. Stay tuned!
• I also think it would be fun to cover the ⚾️ 9 things I learned pitching my game to publishers article to see if I still agree with those things (or not)

I'll continue to update you on what this process is like over the next many months, so if you're interested be sure to follow me on Bluesky and YouTube (and I might even post a new TikTok one of these days). Naturally I'll post about it here, too.

🎙️ I'll podcast about this soon

As Make the Game listeners would expect, I'm very eager to talk about all this! It's so exciting to me that I get to focus on Pixel Washer development full time, but it has cut into the time for other projects that I enjoy working on such as my podcast and other stuff.

But my urge to babble into microphones and (and sometimes, cameras) for your enjoyment cannot be squashed! I'll return soon with a podcast (maybe a video too?) so if you want to hear more about Acclaim and Pixel Washer, subscribe to Make the Game wherever you listen to words (Spotify and Amazon and perhaps other gigantic monopolistic technology oligarchs like oh yeah Apple too).

That's it for now! More coming soon but in the meantime check out Acclaim and Pixel Washer and Acclaim / Pixel Washer and the Acclaim / Pixel Washer presskit and and and –