★ 10/12

Evil Trout Inc — repeatable jam-to-Steam remake formula

Robin Ward (pseudonym Evil Trout, ex-co-founder of Discourse) finds a free browser game with a cult following, made by someone else at a game jam, and offers the author a no-risk…

repeatable-formulasolo-game-hitcross-funded-sequel

Geo Canada (studio/publisher, Toronto); Phoenix AZ US (author of game 1, [estimate]); RU/CIS: organic demand (a community translation before the official Russian localization)

Founders Robin Ward (pseudonym Evil Trout; studio/publisher, ex-co-founder of Discourse, Toronto) · Jeremy Johnston (itch.io: jjohnstongames; author of the original "The Roottrees Are Dead," Phoenix AZ [estimate]) · William Rous (author of the original "Type Help" → "The Incident At Galley House")

Domains eviltrout.com · roottrees.com · theroottreesaredead.com

Score demand 3 · ease 2 · ICP 1 · monetization 2 · freshness 2

Growth tactics (teaser)

Day9 (Sean Plott) played the prototype in a public dev challenge (March 2023): the first external validation BEFORE release
itch.io featured the trailer on its own YouTube channel unprompted, an organic signal
a hyper-personalized pitch to journalist Jason Schreier ("I know you loved Golden Idol...") → a Bluesky post → ~+15% wishlists in the week before release
a deliberate decision to skip a demo/Steam Next Fest: the only programmer could not afford to split his focus
the free jam/itch version is NOT taken down after the paid release: a parallel funnel, not a replacement

🔒 Full dossier

Launch timeline, metrics, the growth mechanics taken apart and checkable sources — sent to your email after payment, as a .md attachment. The dossier itself is written in Russian; this page and the catalog are the English part.

Buy dossier · $5