Reign of Dwarf: Post-Mortem - What We Learned, and What Comes Next

Reign of Dwarf was our first game. And like many first games, it was both our greatest pride and our greatest source of learning. Today, I want to take the time to honestly share what happened, why we made the decisions we made, and where it all led us.

This isn't an article to complain or to blame anyone. It's a game dev post-mortem, like hundreds that exist across the industry. Sharing your mistakes openly is what helps everyone move forward.

Communication Mistakes

Reign of Dwarf was a team of 6 to 10 people, depending on the period, building an ambitious survival game with servers of 200+ players. Entirely self-funded through my company. Early on, we were lucky enough to attract the attention of influencers and content creators interested in the project. We were excited. We wanted to show what we were building. So we gave them access to development builds. Playtest versions, not the finished game.

Some of them racked up 30, 40 hours of gameplay on these private builds. The interest was real and we took that as validation. But what we didn't understand at the time is that giving early access to content creators burns their interest. They've already experienced the game. They've already formed their opinion. By the time we launched the actual finished product, most of them had moved on. They weren't there when we needed visibility the most. They had never seen or tested the final version, but in their minds, they had "already covered the game."

We also made the mistake of communicating too broadly, too early, without a proper marketing strategy behind it. We were generating buzz without a plan to convert that buzz into launch-day momentum. Wishlists were climbing, attention was there, but we had no structure to channel it into a coordinated launch window.

On top of that, we were so focused on building the game that we treated marketing as something that would "just work" because the product was good. That's naive. A good game with bad timing and scattered communication is still a game that struggles at launch.

It's a classic first-studio mistake: confusing early interest with a guarantee of launch coverage. And confusing visibility with marketing strategy.

Too Close to the Community

I have a very player-centric development philosophy. During development and after launch, I'd regularly jump into the game, hop on VOIP, and talk directly with players. I'd answer every single DM. I'd join voice calls with players just to chat, be friendly, take feedback. I'd ask what they thought, what they wanted to see, what wasn't working.

The vast majority of these interactions were incredibly positive and enriching. But without a clear boundary between developer and player, some people ended up confusing accessibility with friendship, and friendship with privileges. Because I was so available, some players genuinely thought we were friends. And when you think someone is your friend, you start asking for things you wouldn't ask a stranger.

Requests started coming in: free resources, exclusive bonuses, special treatment. Requests we systematically refused out of fairness. And the moment I said no, the tone would shift completely. Players who were friendly five minutes ago became hateful and deeply disrespectful. Groups of them, frustrated by our refusals, began posting slanderous reviews claiming we were giving advantages to certain players. Which was false. It was a pressure tactic born directly from our proximity, and retaliation for not getting what they felt entitled to.

The world of large-scale PvP survival games carries a well-known level of toxicity. We didn't underestimate it. We thought we could do things differently. We thought that being open, accessible, and human with our players would create a different kind of relationship. It didn't. In that specific context, developer accessibility gives fuel to inappropriate behaviour. The lesson is clear: some communities need structure more than they need proximity.

And all of that slowly eroded something else: our ability to trust and listen. When you're constantly dealing with bad faith requests and toxic behaviour, you start second-guessing everyone. Including people who had genuine, constructive feedback that could have improved the game. That's the hidden cost of letting toxicity get too close.

In the end, it's my fault. I should have kept distance with the people contacting me and applied our initial rules strictly. I didn't do it. And now I'm learning from my mistakes.

This is a lesson we've carried into Mithrall. We still listen to our community, but with clear boundaries and structured channels. If you contact us, it goes through the normal process. No friendly fast-track, no special access. Not because we don't care, but because it protects us, protects the game, and protects the community from people who would harm both our morale and the game's reputation.

A Launch Under Pressure

One month before release, we were hitting 500-600 wishlists per day on Steam. For a self-funded indie studio with no publisher, those numbers were massive. During that period, we received interview requests from publishers and VCs interested in working with us. We turned them all down. We wanted to stay 100% independent, convinced that success was a given.

But financial reality caught up with us. The team, 6 to 10 people at various points all funded through my company, had been working for long months, some without guaranteed pay. The pressure to ship and start generating revenue was immense. We launched too early.

On days 1 and 2, significant bugs impacted the experience. We reacted very quickly and everything was fixed within 1 to 3 days. But Steam's recommendation algorithms don't forgive. At our scale, it was already a false start. The initial window of grace had passed.

The Post-Launch Fight

We didn't stop there. We worked relentlessly to add impactful content: instanced dungeons, new mechanics, continuous fixes. The feedback from players who stayed was positive, but they all told us the same thing: "We love the game, but there aren't enough people playing."

They blamed us for not doing enough marketing. We were doing everything we could with our budget.

The Free-to-Play Switch and the Final Blow

Facing a declining player curve, I made the decision to switch the game to Free-to-Play to bring in volume and reverse the trend. And it worked: the curve flipped, new players arrived, we were sitting at 74% positive reviews.

Then something unexpected happened. We were still too small to have a dedicated Steam Advocate. Individuals contacted me by email, initially presenting themselves as Steam Curators. After a few exchanges, their real message became clear: 74% is good, but if negative reviews were to come in, we could drop below 70% quickly. They offered to "sell" us positive reviews to make sure "everything stays fine."

I didn't respond.

The next day, an abnormal influx of negative reviews began. Day after day, reviews describing things that bore no relation to the actual state of the game. Our score dropped from 74% to 66%.

We contacted Steam about the fake reviews and the blackmail. Their answer: they couldn't do anything for us, and we should contact our local authorities. Which we didn't do, because legal action is expensive, with no guaranteed return of any sort. It was a bet we simply couldn't afford.

That was the final blow.

The Decision

Facing this situation, a game that had generated roughly €18,000 after Steam taxes and refunds, a sabotaged player curve, an exhausted team, I made the decision to pull Reign of Dwarf and take a step back.

Not to give up. To understand.

To understand what we had done wrong. To understand what worked and needed to be preserved. To understand how to do better.

What Comes Next: Mithrall

One month after that decision, Mithrall was born.

Mithrall carries the essence of what players loved about Reign of Dwarf: the survival, the building, the community aspect. But it fixes every retention problem we had identified. Server meshing, territory systems, variable-risk zones, a dimension that Reign of Dwarf simply didn't have.

We drew major inspiration from games that do well what we were trying to achieve, and we redesigned the project around a more ambitious but better-structured scope, with tools and experience we didn't have the first time around.

To Our Early Supporters

And now, the most important point of this article.

To those who purchased Reign of Dwarf. Who trusted us from the beginning, who played, gave feedback, believed in us when we were a small self-funded team with a big idea: you will receive Mithrall for free.

This isn't a marketing gesture. It's a matter of respect. You paid for a game that carried our vision. That vision is still here. It simply grew bigger. And you are part of it.

We also know that some of you who bought Reign of Dwarf wish you could have gotten a refund when we stopped. We understand that frustration. But we need to face the reality of what happened with that money: it didn't go to anyone drinking mojitos on a beach in the Bahamas. It went to servers, to the team, to licenses, to keeping the lights on. And even then, what we earned doesn't even cover 1% of our actual expenses on this project.

We know some people feel deceived. And we want to prove with Mithrall that they shouldn't be. We also know there will always be people calling us scammers because we didn't have a commercial success with Reign of Dwarf and decided to remove it from Steam. That's life. And we will prove, through our work, that those people are wrong.

To be clear: this applies only to people who purchased the paid version of Reign of Dwarf. If you received the game for free (key giveaways, review copies) or picked it up during the Free-to-Play period, this does not apply to you. Only those who actually paid for the game will receive Mithrall for free.

Practical details on distribution will be communicated in due time through our official channels.

Final Words

Reign of Dwarf was not a failure. It was a first game, with all the mistakes a first game carries. Every studio has its story of a rough launch, of lessons learned the hard way, of decisions made under pressure.

What defines a studio is not the absence of mistakes. It's what they do after.

The future of Mithrall is bright. We are still working on it every single day. From the few playtests we've done with people so far, the feedback has been great, and the overall quality of the game is being pushed beyond what we thought was possible.

A lot of exciting announcements are coming. But we don't want to burn the steps this time around. Follow our socials, and you'll know when it's time.

One last thing. To those who spread disrespectful messages and claim that getting banned somehow validates what they're saying: no, it doesn't. Of course we're going to ban people spreading lies and toxicity. We have a team of dedicated people pouring a full part of their lives into this, with sacrifices, passion, and commitment, just to see it dragged through the mud by people who don't think about what they say or its consequences. Banning someone who is actively harming the community is not an admission of guilt. It's basic moderation.

To those people: we hope that one day you'll stop and genuinely ask yourselves if what you're doing brings any value to anyone. If it makes the community better. If it creates anything at all.

We're still here. We're building something better. And we're doing it with the same transparency we've always had, even when it doesn't play in our favour.

See you in Mithrall.

• François