Thronefall

A minimalist RTS that strips away frustration and keeps only the fun—Jonas Tyroller walks us through the vision, process, and philosophy behind Thronefall.

Hello Jonas, before we dive into Thronefall, we’d love to hear about your journey to becoming a game developer!

I’ll keep it short because I feel like most developers give the same answer: I loved playing video games as a kid, so at some point I got curious about how to make them. I was in the fortunate position that my dad is a programmer (in a different industry) and taught me the basics of GameMaker. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Thanks to your fantastic YouTube channel, we’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot about your involvement in Thronefall. However, we’re also curious about your collaboration with Paul! Could you share some insights into how you two work together?

We met at game school in Berlin (ba GameDesign HTW Berlin, also known as “DE:HIVE”). Our first game, “ISLANDERS”, was a 3-month university project we made in a team of three. I joined GrizzlyGames a bit later. Before that, the team had already published their first successful game, “Superflight”, in a slightly different constellation.

We always used the company mainly as a vehicle to collaborate, not much more, and now only Paul and I remain in the studio. Our friend Friedemann wanted to go a separate path for a bit (he recently released his new game Pizza Possum).

After some solo projects — “Will You Snail?” for me, “The Ramp” and “The Block” for Paul — we decided we were fed up with the solo dev life and teamed up again. I had built a fairly successful YouTube channel by then (not the case for our earlier games) and we both gained a lot of new skills from our solo projects, so it felt like a good moment to reunite.

We work 100% remotely. Paul is still in Berlin, I’m back in Bavaria. We usually call each other daily on Discord. I think we haven’t seen each other in real life for… probably at least three years now, but we both like it that way. I enjoy being near my family, and Paul likes traveling. Remote fits us perfectly.

We use Miro as a digital whiteboard for ideation and task tracking. Early in development we talked a lot to figure out the vision and direction, and now a quick call or two per day keeps everything running smoothly.

We also brought in a community manager, Sacha, to help manage the Discord server and Steam forums. He has been incredibly helpful.

You managed to complete the entire game in roughly 180 days, which is impressive considering the quality of the title. How did you achieve this?

Important note: it took us 180 days to launch in Early Access. The game was quite small at that point — at launch we had only 4 levels and about 3–4 hours of playtime, and we’re still adding content.

Also, the 180 days only count actual working days. In real-world time, it was over a year.

Beyond that, you just have to stay aware that not finishing your game is always the biggest risk to your game. That’s why we focused so much on keeping things simple and manageable.

It’s a misunderstanding that players only like big games. They love simple games if they’re well made. So yes, this advice was destined to appear here: Keep it simple.

Balancing gameplay and crafting a satisfying, addictive loop is always a challenge. With Thronefall you’ve created a dopamine-boosting loop that keeps players engaged. Can you shed light on the design process?

Our idea for Thronefall was basically to take a classic RTS and strip away all the unnecessary frustrations.

Hours spent learning how the game works?
Gone. It’s stupidly simple.

Keeping up with players who are way more skilled?
Doesn’t matter. It’s single-player, at whatever difficulty you want.

Stressed because you don’t have the APM?
Who cares? You have all the time you want to choose buildings and upgrades, and you control only one unit at night.

Not enough time to master a full RTS?
Thronefall doesn’t demand much time. And the frustration-removal philosophy continues…

If you die, it’s not game over: you respawn 10 seconds later. Your buildings respawn for free every morning. No repairs needed. Units respawn regularly during combat. If you lose, you still earn XP and unlock perks and upgrades to make it easier next time.

So why is it fun? Because all the fun parts of RTS games remain. There’s resource management, build orders, unit choices, upgrades, and even some micro — even if it’s just one unit to micro.

Give people the experience they want and remove unnecessary complexity. Another rule we follow: If you feel almost ashamed about how tiny your game is, you’re scoping correctly for an indie game.

When we started, we worried:
“You can only build specific buildings on predefined slots? Isn’t that restrictive?”
But in the end, it’s not about complexity — it’s about the experience.

Thronefall’s polished interaction system feels perfect for mobile — especially Apple Arcade. Are there any plans to bring the game to other platforms?

We agree that Thronefall would be great on handheld platforms. We love it on SteamDeck, so we’re definitely considering additional platforms. I can’t share concrete details yet.

Your YouTube channel is a major favorite in the indie community. Since much of your audience is involved in gamedev, do you think promoting your game within this community is a viable strategy today?

My YouTube channel has always been super helpful for wishlists and early feedback. It also guarantees at least some baseline success, which is nice.

That said, I question the cost-to-payoff ratio. It doesn’t seem to be the deciding factor. The game itself is.

For ISLANDERS, my channel was tiny (below 4k subs), but the game was hugely successful (for our standards).
Will You Snail? was more niche, so the channel helped more there.
For Thronefall, my channel wasn’t much bigger than during Will You Snail?, yet Thronefall got 10× the wishlists.

So no, YouTube is not a marketing hack. It’s extremely time-intensive, and in the end your game matters more than your channel. If you have to choose between two years building a YouTube channel or two extra years improving your game, choose your game (unless you genuinely love making videos).