Northernlion Is Helping Fund And Publish A Video Game [Update]

Earlier this week, Ryan “Northernlion” Letourneau—aka the only big streamer who’s relatively normal—made an announcement so outside his typical wheelhouse that fans spent part of the day thinking it was a bit: He’s hosting a cruise. Yes, at sea, on a boat, far from the comfort of his streaming room and the headphones that, to be frank, he doesn’t look quite like himself without. But he’s also making a big move much closer to his proverbial home. [Update: Minutes before this story went live, Letourneau canceled the cruise.]

Like a handful of other streamers, Letourneau is dipping his toes into the waters of video game publishing. In conjunction with Ludwig Ahgren’s Offbrand label, Letourneau is funding and publishing Demon Bluff, a game he helped put on the map.

Demon Bluff is being billed as a social deduction game in the vein of Mafia, Werewolf or Blood On The Clocktower, but it’s single-player instead of a socially acceptable way to practice lying to your friends. This might sound counterintuitive, but here’s how it works:

Demon Bluff combines the tension of social deduction games with the replay value of a single-player roguelike deckbuilder.

Your goal is to investigate a corrupted village, gather information from each character, and piece together the truth to uncover and slay every demon in hiding.

Each character is represented by a card - Villager and Outcast cards will help you track them down with information and unique abilities. 

But be careful: Demons and Minions have disguised themselves as Villagers and will try to mislead you. Will you be able to see through their lies?

Prior to an Offbrand-branded showcase called Secret Sauce last year, which surfaced Demon Bluff to Letourneau, the game wasn’t doing so hot in terms of visibility. But then its fortunes turned on a dime.

"Before the showcase, I had, like, 1,000 or 2,000 wishlists [on Steam],” Demon Bluff developer Piotr Kwiatkowski told Aftermath. “But after the showcase—and Northerlion played the game—I got 60,000 in a week or two. After Northernlion played the game, all the other streamers started playing."

Letourneau’s format—which consists of talking over infinitely replayable games and making observations that range from comical to weirdly profound—ended up being an ideal match for the game. 

Demon Bluff is inspired by Blood On The Clocktower, which might help explain why it struck such a chord with content creators. The massively popular game of murder, mystery, and lies has proven easy sell to YouTuber groups like No Rolls Barred, Good Time Society, and Dropout. YouTube, in fact, is how Kwiatkowski first found out about Blood On The Clocktower in the first place. 

"Four years ago, when [Blood On The Clocktower] was released, I watched a lot of YouTube content on the game,” said Kwiatkowski. “I thought it was really just brilliant design that you have a lot of characters, and the other characters have different, very unique abilities, and it's very interesting to see interactions between the characters—and then the ending of the game, the big reveal, when the game master was explaining all the different interactions that happened. Like 'Number four poisoned this guy, so he received the wrong information.' That was very cool. I had an idea like this to turn it into a single-player game since I started watching Blood On The Clocktower."

Kwiatkowski did not, however, design Demon Bluff with content creators in mind.

"I wasn't even thinking about content creators like that. I thought maybe content creators would play it, but that was not my main goal,” he said. "My thinking was, why nobody ever did this is because it doesn't work—because probably someone already tried it, and it doesn't work."

The original plan was to develop a prototype of the game in a very short span, see if a critical mass of people liked it, and if not, move on. This rapid-fire mindset was instilled in Kwiatkowski by his background as a mobile game developer at Polish studios like Ten Square Games.

"We were doing, like, one prototype or beta version—one demo—per month,” Kwiatkowski said. “And then we were testing this on the mobile market to see how all the data turns out. Then we decide if we do another game or we just keep working on this one, right? So when I started working on indie games, I had the same mentality."

"After Northernlion played, I had a flood of publishers and investors [express interest], and then the people I messaged started messaging me back.”

Kwiatkowski decided to leave the mobile world behind and go indie in 2024, but the runway he gave himself could only last so long.

"I was just funding everything, and … my funding ran out,” he said.

So he did his best to contact publishers and find new sources of funding, but the initial reception was icy. Then the Secret Sauce showcase and Northerlion happened. Suddenly, the floodgates opened.

"After Northernlion played, I had a flood of publishers and investors [express interest], and then the people I messaged started messaging me back,” said Kwiatkowski. “I had a few occasions where I messaged a publisher, and they said they weren't interested. Then after Northernlion played the game, they said 'Oh, we just didn't have the space, but we have unlocked space for the game.'"

This is, unfortunately, par for the course if you’re an indie developer in this day and age: "In our case, it was all on the wishlist number and really nothing else," said Kwiatkowski.

Presented with so many publishing options—including Devolver, Future Friends, Hooded Horse's CEO (who wanted to invest), Yogscast, and HypeTrain Digital—choosing a publisher ended up taking eight months. But ultimately, working with Letourneau and Offbrand just made sense. 

"I just thought it'd be cool to work with them,” said Kwiatkowski. “They are a new publisher, so they don't have as much experience as other ones we were talking to. But I just thought [about how] streamers work for the game. Northernlion made the game blow up. ... All of the deals [we were offered] were very similar in the end, so it was just which one I preferred more, right?"

What comes next is still to be hammered out. But Kwiatkowski is hoping for a pretty straightforward arrangement: "I hope that whenever we have anything new, we can have a chat with him. Whenever I have questions or anything, I just can drop a link and he will take a look. But I was super focused on visual improvements during the last two months, so I didn't add many new mechanics. There is really not much to test yet."

Additionally, he already knows what he plans to do with a sudden influx of funding: hire more artists.

"So far I was only working with my sister [studio co-founder Agnieszka, who is an artist],” he said. “I really want to hire more artists to help with UI, really push the game artistically. ... We are hiring the UI artist from Cult Of The Lamb. So that's really cool as well."

"I agree that streamers are very, very helpful to uncover games. But it's also important to find the correct [streamer] that has the correct audience."

It remains to be seen whether partnering with content creators will lead to longer-term success. While some content creator-supported games—like Animal Well, which Dunkey helped propel to immense critical and commercial acclaim—have benefited from this kind of arrangement, others like games fronted by OTK’s Mad Mushroom label, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, and Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beam have demonstrated that surefire success, even with a major creator on board, is far from guaranteed.

Kwiatkowski, however, is hopeful that he’s picked the right partners to work with. 

"I agree that streamers are very, very helpful to uncover games,” he said. “But it's also important to find the correct [streamer] that has the correct audience. Even if you partner up with Ludwig, he might not have the core audience that plays roguelikes, then it might not be as good. But I think our game is casual enough to bring in a lot of players."

As for when that’ll happen, the plan is sometime this year. But the rest is up in the air. The game could release in early access, or as a more polished version 1.0. 

"I would like to release a polished 1.0 version and then do updates to the game. We have one big DLC in mind,” said Kwiatkowski. "It's still very rough, so it's difficult to tell."

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