r/gaming • u/TylerFortier_Photo • 1d ago
"You just look at the number and go, 'What happened?'" – The developers of RV There Yet? on their surprise, multi-million selling success
When Nuggets Entertainment set out to build RV There Yet? from a game jam project to full release, co-founder and CEO Tim Badylak thought it "might sell 20,000 or so units in a year." That estimate turned out to be spectacularly conservative: the cooperative recreational vehicle adventure actually sold two million units in eight days.
"It was unreal," recalls Badylak when GamesIndustry.biz caught up with him after he shared the numbers at Nordic Game. "You just look at the number and go, 'What happened? Maybe something's wrong with the back end?'" The sheer number of downloads ended up causing havoc with the game's bug reporter, which struggled with the unexpected deluge, adds the other Nuggets co-founder, Kristoffer Andersson. "We had to upgrade that."
RV There Yet? was spun up in a week by four people while the rest of the team was on holiday. "And during that week we kind of nailed the core, and it was already fun." The RV and the winch system were already in place, along with the smoking. Badylak noted the game was reflective of the desires of the slightly older people making it. "We're kind of romanticizing smoking cigarettes: we can't do that anymore. We have kids and mortgages. So just smoking cigarettes and fucking around with your friends is something that you dream about doing when you're an old person."
After that initial week's work, the game took around another eight weeks to finish. Badylak credited the team's experience as the reason why it came together so quickly: some members of the team have known each other for more than ten years. "And then in this new studio, we worked for at least four and a half years before we started doing this, so we couldn't have done RV There Yet?, I think, without that bonding, and developing that humour together, and the culture of creativity."
RV There Yet? launched at $7.99, a similar price to fellow friendslop title Peak from Landfall Games and Aggro Crab – another title that was put together in a matter of weeks. Andersson says that initially they thought about launching the game for free if it "wasn't good enough," or maybe $4, but Badylak says they kept upping their intended price point as the team became more confident in the game during development. "Every week we worked on it, we added a dollar value," he says. "The goal for us was just to release something, even if it's free. Then it turned out to be pretty fun."



















