Our Quest Log

So we’ve been making CRUFT. We’re in Early Access on Steam, you can find us on Twitch, there’s some marketing up on YouTube… but what are we building, and why should you care?

I’m a game developer, not a salesman, but I am going to pitch our mission. We have a clear vision for what Go On Entertainment can be, and there’s no point in keeping that a secret. In fact, we reject secrecy as a policy. It’s the first point of our 5-point plan. So, lemme unfurl this document and clear my throat…

No Curtain

We stream our planning meetings on Twitch. Anyone can join the conversation and see our progress in real time. We believe the best designs emerge from diverse perspectives, so we're sharing what we got and listening to all the feedback. We're having hard conversations about what’s working and what’s not, out in the open. We’re going onstage, online, and pulling back the curtain to shine a spotlight on our creative journey.

Going over a new game idea on Twitch

Inside a cuckoo clock

Replayability

Our favorite games are intricate contraptions, like a cuckoo clock: each gear adds depth, delivers a surprise, and resets for the next playthrough. We don’t build “one-and-done” stories on rails; we build complex systems you can poke, bend, and break.

Hearty Meals

Cruft features 476 items, at the moment.

Years at larger studios taught us how to cook at scale. I worked at WB Games for seven years, where I learned how to build tools for producing and maintaining a deep collection of game data. that data can provide players with ample content, long after their first taste. To deliver that richness, we build custom tools that streamline our process and multiply our output, so what reaches players is hearty, not hollow (and no, we’re not talking about generative AI).

Go Fast (But Stay Healthy)

The Optimist Sailing Dinghy is very maneuverable. I'm also an optimist.

We're a tiny team, so we can accelerate fast, and turn on a dime. We know that making a hit game is part skill, part luck, so we hedge our bets with a spread of smaller, riskier projects. That nimbleness lets us take risks that AAA studios won’t. While they’re doubling down and crashing harder, we’ve gone on to the next experiment.

The game industry has changed dramatically since we started out, and not all of that change has been healthy. There’s still crunch, burnout, and high turnover for developers, while expectations are higher than ever. We’re not interested in burning out, we mean to go on! And that means setting boundaries around our work, and striking a balance between the craft we are so passionate about, and everything else that makes life good.

For players, these increased expectations have brought a rise in predatory monetization, social pressure, and other psychological tactics that trade long-term trust for short-term profits. We reject that. Its power is hollow, and it leaves a permanent stain. If players go on playing our games, it will be because we respect and value their time and autonomy – never because we exploited their nature.

Release the Tools

StarCraft's Campaign Editor

Great tools are essential to building a great game. The most reliable and efficient way to make a great tool is to solve one problem well. Game technology is awash today with one-size-fits-all solutions: broadly generic, and wildly complicated. That may be how you satisfy shareholders, but it’s not how you satisfy a novel game's requirements, nor is it how you make content creation accessible. Our answer: custom-built tooling for each game.

This used to be the norm! My gateway to game dev was through tools like StarEdit, Valve's Hammer Editor, and my all-time favorite, ZQuest. The opportunity to create game content should be available to anyone determined to try, not just CS masters or software specialists. So go on, try our tools and make cool stuff with us.

Quest Accepted

So there they are: five reasons to keep Go On Entertainment in mind as you tend to your own Quest Log. We know there are too many games to ever play in one lifetime, but we’d be honored if you made time for one of ours.

These are also five reasons why we are an independent studio. Just imagine if you could tune in to a green light meeting at Activision? Get the popcorn. What about a crafting game without microtransactions, speedups, or an energy system, that works offline and your data is entirely local? Get outta my office, they’d say. Is anyone publishing a mission statement right now that isn’t about how deeply they’ve bought into the AI hype? You may hear AAA studios talk about work-life balance, but they will definitely not talk about pending litigation from consumer-advocacy groups.

At least Battlefield 6 lets you make your own levels in Godot.