ABOUT US
Our story: Developing & Publishing Games while Helping others succeed!
Hi, we are Gamex Studio, operating with the brand Gamex Games, welcome to our site.
Gamex Studio was established in 2015 when we started our game development path, developing games for a contractor at first. We learned so much during the whole process, which helped us focus further to much more challenging operations, developing more in-depth games with fun twists, which players now play for years! We are proud of our players as some have been with us from the very humble beginning back in 2015.
We have reached over 5million plays with one of our games now, but this is only the beginning, we are still counting further and working on even bigger projects to come. Our main mission is to develop games players will enjoy playing and to help other indie game developers by publishing and promoting their games!
"We started with web-based games, now working on standalone games for the biggest PC platform - Steam"
Initially, we have been developing web-based / online games, but lately changing our concepts to standalone versions heading towards the biggest market in the PC gaming industry – Steam. In May 2021 we launched our first game there, SimPocalyse, which was a huge Milestone for our studio. We’re now coming back with other unique game projects, on which part of the team is already working.
Publishing games on our own, distributing them to various platforms, running Marketing campaigns, contacting press, media, youtubers, streamers, collaborating with players, and much more has leaned us a lot. That’s why we are now opening up to other game developers, indie studios, solo developers, to help them avoid any possible mistakes on the road, and help them release games and spread the word about their game out! During our work we’ve seen, that effective marketing can have a significant impact on the game’s success. As the competition is fierce nowadays, marketing is now more important than ever! How would you sell a decent amount of copies of your game if no one has heard about your game before?
But not every aspect in game development, marketing or publishing was clear when we start our business…but, we learned a lot in all those years. Here’s our Story:
2010 - How founders of the studio met?
2010 was the time when co-founders of Gamex studio, Rok and Andraž, met at the store, where they have worked as students. They both worked there to cover the costs of living in a capital city, and to cover the costs of studying and everything it brings along.
After a few years, they started to hang out a lot, and found out that they have similar views on business and things they want to work in life, which soon resulted in working on their first project.
(end of) 2013 - First Working Project
They started to work on a service project for reservation bookings in local areas, where they’d serve as a middle-man between regional/local restaurants and guests searching to book bigger part of restaurants on a specific day for Birthday and other Celebrations, Business Events,… They have been working on this project in their free time, trying to find the best solution to offer on the market. After some work input, but before the website was fully launched and shared around with masses, they got an offer they need to take.
Because of the offer they got, the launch of the Reservation Concept didn’t launch at the end, and slowly the story of Gamex Studio began to be written.
2015-The Big Year: Gamex Studio Established!
A decision about opening up a company was confirmed.
The group of developers was picked and they started to search for an office, which would be the most appropriate for the team who will be working on game development, administrative work, design, programming,…
After checking a few options, they find the one that suits the needs of the newly established Gamex studio within the nearby skyscraper with a security guy at the reception office at the entrance of the building. The biggest benefit of the office was, that it was approachable 24/7, as some of the other options wasn’t and were closed in the evening after some hour, and also closed during the weekend.
24/7 office was great, especially as they started to work as a startup, which means they were giving tons of hours into the company to succeed! And they did, they survived their first year, and heading towards the next goals!
Champagne – Gamex Studio is entering the Business!
2016 - Contractual work & start of War Clicks
We started working on our projects while still working on contractual work. This was an important change, and we needed to invest quite a lot, time and funds in our projects. During that time we developed a basic version of an incremental game, where players fought for their countries. This was the project that took us a lot of time to develop the final version of the game, and this was the project we learned the most from, the lessons learned are still around nowadays helping us focus on projects more effectively.
2016 was the time we invest a lot into researches, analyses, understanding players’ behavior and experience while constantly improving our skills on a regular basis. This was also the time where studio cofounders visited GamesCom in Koln, Germany – to check the competition a bit closer. They’ve seen what the studio is missing at that point, what are the requirements to release an outstanding games, and what are players expectations in the indie gaming market. They got back filled with motivation to work on the upcoming projects.
Co-founders of Gamex Studio Rok and Andraž at gaming fair – GamesCom (Köln, Germany)
2017-19 - Process optimizations, War Clicks development, New Markets 'Conquered'
After GamesCom visit, War Clicks deserved quite some updates, improvements, additions, extra content, as we were developing it through a long period of time. We managed to prepare the complete graphical overhaul of the game, making it more appealing for bigger platforms and wider audience to give it a try.
During those times we publish the game on various platforms, and we managed to get in top sections as ‘Popular game’ or ‘Hot New Game’, we were also the SuperFinalist of Indie Game of The Year 2019 on IndieDB.
We found various markets, where we launched the game, and also implemented a self-hosted website dedicated to War Clicks. We tested various things in game, so we now know what usually gathers player attention and whatnot. We’ve optimized the game, progression, monetization models, and manage to bring more players in the game also with the help of optimization and retention improvements.
What we learned is priceless (it may sound cliche, but if any of those are missing, then the game might just not be a hit at the end):
– don’t rush to Release the game, instead of rushing try to polish it as much as possible
– collect the feedback in early phases
– admit game problems, and fix them
– community matters
– ratings/reviews are important – at the end they might define further success of the game
2020 - The year of Market Strategy Adjustments
Things changed a lot, and we needed to adjust the Strategy to achieve our goals!
Not only the pandemic, but also the announcement of our main targeted gaming platform (our crucial Market) that they will stop accepting new games, shook the ground beneath our feet!
The pandemic itself was challenging. We moved from the office to the comfort of our homes, but thanks to the technology, we’ve been connected on a daily, sometimes on a hourly basis and we manage to overpass global issues somehow. The pandemic didn’t hit us hard, and we’ve been even more focused to develop a greater game, so we’ve been working harder than ever to deliver a quality game for the masses of targeted players.
But, this wasn’t the only shock in this year…
On a sunny July morning it hit us hard…we got the news that the most important market for us (to date), Kongregate – the biggest gaming platform for (web) idle games, will stop accepting new games as they are focusing more on development of their own games, and will also have fewer resources to support the platform Kongregate.com .
Huh…what about now? If we lose our main market for the game we nearly fully developed, what does this mean for our studio? We’ve been working on the game for almost a year now, and we won’t cover all the development cost without our main market on Kongregate, where we wanted to primary launch the game.
At that time, we knew it that we need to act fast to find appropriate Market the game, so that all the work we put into it, will not go to waste! We needed to find another market, players that will enjoy playing our niche game.
We ended up every discussion, that we now had only one option – to adjust the game for Steam players, the biggest global PC gaming platform. It was all or nothing! Steam is one of the most competitive gaming markets in the industry, where the biggest gaming studios are launching their games. We knew it, that we’ll need to overperform with the game in order to succeed.
As our game was initially prepared to a specific audience, and we already knew what to expect with Kongregate, what their audience like to find in games and whatnot. This was now something completely different for us. We were complete newbies, no-one knew our studio, and we didn’t know what to expect exactly. But, we were determined to overcome these obstacles along the way!
So, we started with tons of analyses of the new Market, where we found out that the game we were developing for Kongregate now needs a completely different approach with mechanics and graphics, as player’s expectations on Steam are quite big, as there is tons of competition on Steam nowadays.
All needed changes and adjustments postponed our Early Access Launch on Steam, but long story short, we were more than happy to manage to redirect our strategy to another market, which now becomes our main target market for the games coming out next. It seems like we needed that kick in the ass, to scale up the studio. Usually, when you are squeezed into a corner, you do everything that is in your power to resolve the situation.
2021 - Scaling up - Release on Steam, and opening up to help others to succeed
We continue improving the game while it was still in the Early Access on Steam, sharing a public Roadmap and completing tasks with bigger Game Updates during the EA times, while working on extra promotions to generate more wishlists for the full Launch of the game.
The Launch day and the whole month before the full release were one of the busiest days of our lives, as we were working almost double the usual hours on the game. It was a lot of work needed, from testing the game, working on latest polishing additions and corrections, while sharing the awareness around the game between various gaming communities.
The Full Launch Day:
– the busiest day of our lives (we worked from 7am in the morning to 11pm!) – there was simply a lot of work to handle on various fields, but we manage to complete it.
Releasing a game on Steam, is for most of indie game developers and studios like completing a huge Milestone to follow their dreams – and the same was with us. We’ve managed to survive the Launch week, learned tons of new things on the way, met new people, get more connections on various fields, and we feel like our dreams can come through if you work hard and believe in your skills.
*It certainly helped us, that we had experiences in releasing new games before, also all our marketing researches, campaigns, lists, promotions, connections helped us on our way to follow the dreams.
Sharing skills with indie game developers or studios searching for publishers or marketers
As we are game developers ourselves, we know how much time it is needed to develop a game, and how much is needed to gather attention on Steam, in media, between niche/ targeted players. The amount of work is really hard to handle, especially if you are a solo game developer or small indie game studio.
For that reason, part of the team decided to dedicate part of their work to help others to succeed and follow their dreams. We are ready to help out with game promotions or you can contact us for potential publishing offer. You can read more in ‘Services’ category – from the Header menu.
What is next to achieve?
Gamex Studio is in its core a game development company, which is developing and publishing games by themselves.
We are willing to establish a great environment for prospectus game developers, designers and marketers who will work together as one team with great chemistry and passion to build awesome projects for players and clients!
We are already working on the new game prototypes, and we will soon expose the ones we’ll confirm to develop into a full game – follow us on our social media channels to stay updated about the new games coming up.
On the other hand Gamex Studio aims to give back to the community of gamers and developers, that helped us on the way up, and all those searching for any tips or tricks on how to launch your games, how to market it properly, how to stay motivated while developing your games. The website is in its early phases, and will be developing along the way. We will try to share as much valuable information as we can, and hopefully it will help out readers of this blog, to scale up your games or business!
So, this is us, Gamex Studio, and this is our Story!