About the studio
Nattskift means night shift. The studio is one person in Los Angeles, working the hours after everything else is done - which turns out to be a decent way to describe the whole approach.
The day job is ordinary software. The games happen after it: Swift, SpriteKit, an iPhone on a cable, and whatever is left of the evening. That schedule sets the constraints, and the constraints set the design. Small scope. Systems over content. Nothing in a game that one person can't maintain at eleven at night.
Two titles so far. A survival game about keeping a fire lit, and a satire about the kind of studio this one refuses to become. They look unrelated. They are not.
Values, stated plainly
Finished when it ships.
A release is a release, not an open beta with a marketing budget.
The player is the customer.
Not the advertiser, not the acquisition funnel, not a spreadsheet of whales.
Small on purpose.
One person means every decision has a name attached. All of them are the same name, which keeps the excuses short.
How the money works
Every game is free to start, so you can find out whether you like it without paying for the privilege. If you want more, there is one purchase, priced in real money, described in plain words before you tap. That's the model. There is no second, quieter model behind it.
The trade-off, named out loud: this earns less than ads and timers would. The night shift doesn't run on that money anyway, so it can afford to be picky about where the money comes from.
Things this studio will never do
- Sell ads, including "rewarded" ones.
- Add energy systems, lives, or timers that pause the game until you pay.
- Price anything in a made-up currency.
- Run limited-time offers on a loop and call them limited.
- Sell or share player data. There is none worth selling, by design.
- Ship a game to hit a date it isn't ready for.
- Say "we" in a press release.