As the New Year approaches, we continue to summarize the results of 2025 with game teams. Next up is an interview with MidHard Games. We talked with Ilya Boytsov, co-founder and CEO of the studio.
How was 2025 for your team? What did you manage to accomplish, what are you proud of, and what, on the contrary, didn’t you have time for?
Ilya Boytsov, MidHard Games: We left the New Year tree in combat condition. We thought Grandpa would come and bring all those gifts he owed us for several years. He didn’t come — we decided to act the old-fashioned way — to work hard. Games don’t make themselves.
We completed the development of Adrenaline Rampage and released it.
Adrenaline Rampage
Adrenaline Rampage and FatalZone came out on consoles, which slightly strengthened our portfolio. Although this is entirely thanks to the publishers (well done), it’s still nice.
FatalZone
We created an MVP of a mobile game based on mechanics from Backpack Battles, with many tests ahead.
We started experimenting with friendslops. Once we find fun gameplay, we’ll go into production.
In outsourced development, we have several interesting projects from renowned clients (under NDA).
We didn’t have time to make another survivor or something equally cool.
What conclusions did you draw as a development studio based on the results of 2025?
Ilya: We thought the outsourcing market had hit rock bottom, but then someone knocked from below.
The main conclusion (it’s unchanged) — we need to create our own commercially successful projects. We have three projects that generate tiny net profit, we need more.
Over the past two years, the trend of problematic receivables has strengthened. From 2019 to 2023, we didn’t notice this.
By the end of the year, as in the previous one, business activity has increased significantly. Budgets are low, but there’s a need for games (where would we be without it?) — that’s good, that’s what we’re standing on.
Have practices for working with publishers/investors changed? Has it become easier/harder to work with them?
Ilya: We didn’t notice significant changes in working with publishers; this year we worked with four publishers and communicated with a dozen.
How was the year for the niche/genre you work in?
Ilya: The Bullet Heaven (or Survivors-like) genre continues to evolve. The Spell Brigade, BALL x PIT, and Megabonk did really well, with Megabonk significantly outperforming Vampire Survivors in terms of online players: 117 thousand versus 77 thousand.
Megabonk
What trends in your niche/genre do you expect to strengthen or emerge in 2026?
Ilya: We expect survivors to continue evolving: new synergies of core mechanics, new metas, new settings.
What are the team’s plans for the coming year?
Ilya: 1 — Make a hit.
2 — Make a hit!
3 — Make a hit!!!
Colleagues, happy upcoming New Year! Take care of your health and creative passion!
Source: App2Top.ru