Let’s Build A Dungeon - On Building Success in Asia
A game within a game sounds like something from a Christopher Nolan dream, but it’s actually the brainchild of one James Barnard. James and his award-winning team out in Singapore, Springloaded, are best known for their hit title Let’s Build A Zoo. Which is why when the team reached out to us for support on the spiritual successor, Let’s Build A Dungeon, we had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming.
When taking on projects, we always have a game assessment period, especially if the ask is about Asia-facing PR and marketing. Do we think the game will resonate with the intended audience? Are there parallels we can draw between the game’s design, core loop or inspiration that would match with the lived experience of the community? And most importantly for us, does the game excite our internal team at Neon Noroshi?
Let’s Build A Dungeon turned out to be one of those rare games that ticked all of the above boxes. As we dived deeper into understanding Let's Build A Dungeon, we marveled at how you weren’t just role-playing a budding studio head, you could also play the game you’re making! Our team set to work putting together a nuanced Japanese press release that would hit all of the notes of a journalist that likely grew up playing the exact MMORPG games that Let's Build A Dungeon takes cues from. The Springloaded team helpfully prepared a press release written in Simplified Chinese, but we had our China marketing specialist fine tune it for better readability for the Mainland Chinese audience. The power of collaboration, people.
Even if our game success senses are tingling, we’re always cautiously optimistic as you can never guarantee the media or community reaction. But we breathed a sigh of relief as the positive coverage from the likes of Dengeki Online, Game*Spark and Famitsu started coming in. Suffice to say, Japan was into it. And by the looks of our Chinese coverage, the game was picking up speed there as well. However, we felt like there seemed to be a lingering sense of curiosity, especially amongst the Japanese playerbase. What else could we do to thank them for their enthusiasm for the game? We decided to speak directly to them, to let them know that Springloaded sees them and is open to sharing more nuggets of information.
Springloaded does not have a Japanese Twitter/X account and starting one from zero didn’t seem to make sense, nor did the team have the bandwidth to maintain past the announcement phase. We decided to use our own Neon Noroshi Japanese account, which we had steadily grown over the years to talk about client work and the indie games that we love. We worked closely with the Springloaded Marketing and PR team to craft a message from James that teased more about the game’s development while also staying true to his experience and tone of voice. You can find that message here, which roughly summarizes James’ experience playing the old FFXI MMORPG, getting KS’ed relentlessly, and that being a pivotal point of inspiration for this game. We might be biased but we think the tongue-in-cheek humor translated well into Japanese.
We really love working with developers who are not just making interesting games, but are also interesting people and who feel like they can be themselves. Authenticity is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, but speaking frankly to your community with nuance that they understand will never go out of style. We continued to work with Springloaded at Tokyo Game Show 2024 through bringing media to their booth in the Selected Indie 80 area. All the best to the team, we absolutely loved working with you all and we’re here for Let’s Build A Dungeon, as your Asia marketing consultants but first and foremost, as fans of the game.
