Today marks Axol Studio’s 10th Axolversary! 🎇
On this date, in 2015, Axol Studio, LLC was officially founded! I established the company in order to be able to publish my first “major” game on Steam: Blasting Agent: Ultimate Edtition. Over the past decade, I have released a number of games (and a webcomic!?) - many of them small, game jam projects, or small prototypes. Most, if not all of these were solo endeavors, although I hired contractors for specific tasks on a many of them - whenever possible.
This studio has been a labor of love (or …insanity?) for me, and while I am proud of many of the games and projects that I have released, it is bittersweet knowing how few people have had the chance to discover them. Marketing and community building have never been my strengths - meaning all of my work has remained in obscurity. My legacy over the last 10 years speaks for itself: negative revenue, a Discord server that is a ghost town, an empty bank account, and years of effort that have as-of-yet failed to translate into a self-sustaining business or fanbase. Yet despite the uphill battle and the financial losses, I keep creating - keep making things, and pushing forward. Giving out stickers to random people I meet who have no interest in anything I’ve made… but just in case someone sees the logo and checks out this site. Whether that’s dedication or stubbornness, I certainly don’t know anymore.
I had grandiose plans for this year in way of trying to bring in new fans and to really build the community that I’ve always wanted around the Studio. I started with a plan of doing a new small game every month, and stream the process, and use Patreon to encourage people to lend their support… but that quickly fell apart as I realized how terrible I am at streaming - and how it fills me with anxiety… and then the second game of the year turned out to be… not fun and not worth the $1 I was going to charge for … which felt bad. Plus life, and my real-job got in the way so I ended up scrapping the whole thing.
The last major game project I released was Bring It On! just last year - and it has been completely ignored by everyone despite the 3+ years I sank into it, and the $hundreds I spent to hire artists, and composers, and make it look and play as well as I could. It is disheartening, to say the least.
I want to try to do more for the company next year. I don’t know what that means. Maybe instead of a new game I hire someone to help me with marketing. Or maybe I try a game genre that I really connect with better… or something. I do not know.
Hey, at least I made it this far - and I am going to keep going.
All I really want to ask you is that if you have enjoyed any of my games - if you consider yourself a fan - if you want to see more… let me know. Just ping me with a random Bluesky message or leave a nice comment on a game on Itch or Steam… tell a friend about a game you liked. Anything. Because I really want to keep going, and I would love to know that there are people out there who care.
Here’s to another 10 years of Axol Studio! 🥂
- Timothy Ian Hely, Founder of Axol Studio, LLC
just imagine what I'm like to be around on my Birthday... (⊙_⊙;)
