Grizzly Games

A two-person studio

Grizzly Games is a small studio run by two developers, Paul Schnepf and Jonas Tyroller. In an interview conducted at Gamescom, Schnepf introduced himself by saying he runs the small game developer studio with his friend Jonas Tyroller. The pair met in the game design programme at HTW Berlin, the city's University of Applied Sciences, and built their first release from a university team project before deciding to sell their games under a studio of their own.

That studio kept its scale deliberately small. Schnepf describes the guiding idea as minimalism, applied not only to the games but to how the team works: keeping the studio at the bare minimum, sharing development openly, and resisting the urge to expand into a large-scale production. He says they considered growing the operation and decided the small style suited them best, so Thronefall was created by only two people.

Thronefall, the game

Thronefall is a minimalist strategy game. The store description spells out its loop plainly: you build a humble kingdom by day and defend it by night, balancing economy and defence by fortifying walls, raising buildings and deciding what to spend on. The Nintendo store page frames it as an effort to strip a classic strategy game of unnecessary complexity and combine it with hacking and slashing, so the player builds a base during the day and fights to hold it at night.

Its store tags describe the blend: tower defence, strategy, city builder, minimalist, medieval and action. The design goal, in the developer's words, is to reduce headaches for players and creators alike by deliberately offering fewer choices. Units are not micromanaged, resources are limited, and buildings go in fixed sites rather than anywhere on the map, on the reasoning that free placement rarely changes the outcome in other games anyway.

Release history and platforms

Thronefall reached its full version on 11 October 2024, the release date given on both Steam and Nintendo's official Switch store page. On the same day it arrived on the Nintendo Switch alongside its Steam version, and players on that console can use it in TV, tabletop or handheld mode. The Switch build is listed at 792 MB. The game had been available in early access on Windows before that point, building an audience ahead of launch.

Support has continued after launch. An announcement published on the game's own Steam community page tells players that Thronefall is coming to mobile, stating that it lands on the App Store on 20 May, with Android and Epic Games Store versions described as yet to be released. The same developer-run channel is where the studio posts updates for existing players, keeping the small team in direct contact with its audience.

Who is credited now

The current Steam listing credits two developers, GrizzlyGames and Mythwright, with Mythwright also named as publisher. That differs from the game's earlier life as a self-published release from a two-person studio. For players, the practical meaning sits on the store page: the game continues to be offered and updated, with the publishing side now handled by a partner rather than by the two developers alone.

Grizzly Games itself remains a small studio. Its public presence is deliberately lean, running through a developer account and the developers' own devlogs rather than an elaborate corporate website. The team's earlier release, Superflight, shares the same minimalist instinct, and the studio's standing in the German indie scene rests on making compact, clearly presented games rather than large ones. The store page still presents it as the same single-player strategy title the two developers built.

How it was received

On Steam, Thronefall carries an Overwhelmingly Positive rating from players, with the store page showing thousands of English-language reviews and roughly nine in ten of them positive. That sort of aggregate is the clearest public signal a store gives about whether a game found its audience. For a two-person release competing in a crowded strategy market, sustained positive reviews are a real outcome rather than a marketing line.

The interview account adds a sales figure. Schnepf's interviewer describes the game as having reached an impressive one million copies sold, a result that followed an early-access run and a full launch. The studio's response, as described, was not to scale up but to stay small. Grizzly Games represents a different model from the studio that grows with every success: it treats a hit as permission to keep working the way it already was.

Quick facts

Studio: Grizzly Games, a small Berlin-based developer run by Paul Schnepf and Jonas Tyroller, who met at HTW Berlin. Earlier games include Superflight. Key title: Thronefall, a minimalist strategy game about building a kingdom by day and defending it by night, tagged on Steam as tower defence, strategy, city builder and medieval. Full release: 11 October 2024 on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Reception: Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam from thousands of English-language reviews; the studio's interviewer recorded one million copies sold. Platforms: PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch, with a mobile release announced for the App Store and Android and Epic Games Store versions said to follow. Publishing: the current Steam listing credits GrizzlyGames and Mythwright, with Mythwright named as publisher.

Games

• Thronefall

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