Fellow Traveller Reflects on Successful 2024 With Strong Year Ahead

Narrative publisher Fellow Traveller confirms six titles to release over the next twelve months and celebrates major milestones for Citizen Sleeper and 1000xResist. Founder and Managing Director Chris Wright is proud of the company's slow and steady approach.

Boutique narrative games label Fellow Traveller has announced that it will be releasing six games over the next twelve months. The label has signed three unannounced titles since January this year, increased its annual development budget and expanded its team. "We have a simple philosophy here - money is the means not the end," said Founder and Managing Director, Chris Wright. "It's not that we're not shooting for commercial success because that's still really important; but we aim to make money so that we can publish these remarkable games, as opposed to publishing games as a way to make money."

After releasing just three games in the last 18 months, Fellow Traveller has confirmed six titles for next year: Afterlove EP, Wander Stars, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, Great God Grove, Pine: A Story of Loss, and Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo. "The wealth of upcoming titles sits in contrast to a lighter output from the label for the last two years. This follows a decision to give several developers more time when it was needed and to avoid chasing after last minute signings to fill the gaps, giving the internal team room to breathe," the Melbourne-based company said.

The independent and self-funded publisher also celebrated over one million players of Citizen Sleeper. The sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, will be released in early 2025 on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, as well as Xbox Game Pass on day one. The latest success is 1000xRESIST from Canada's sunset visitor. Since its launch in May this year, the three-time IGF Award nominated sci-fi adventure has sold over 25,000 copies and has received "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam.

Chris Wright: "We have reinvested our profits every year for the last 10 years and taken a slow and steady approach vs chasing growth at all costs. Staying small and focused has put us in the fortunate position to be able to make our own decisions, letting dev teams breathe when they’ve needed it and not rushing to fill gaps in our schedule caused by delays. Not only are we seeing the results in the quality of our slate in the coming year but we’ve also been able to grow our team, increase our funding budgets and sign games further out than ever before."

Fellow Traveller was founded by Chris Wright and originally launched in 2013 under the name of Surprise Attack Games. The company was established to be a new kind of indie games label. "Earning an early reputation for games with weird and unusual concepts, largely through the success of games such as Hacknet, Screencheat and Orwell, the label has increasingly been attracted to signing games that use narrative in compelling and unusual ways," the company says. "In 2018 the decision was made to rebrand the label to Fellow Traveller Games to better reflect the motivation of working in very close partnership with developers and its mission to explore the uncharted space of what narrative games can be."

Never miss anything from the German, Swiss and Austrian games industry again: subscribe for free to our Daily newsletter and get all news straight to your inbox.