Barque 42: the captain’s voyage, from a volunteer armada to an agile studio in Zürich

  1. January 2024

    The volunteer armada.

    Not so long ago, a captain raised a flag and called for a crew. More than 40 creators from around the world answered, all holding to one rule: whoever joined first had their game made first, by everyone. Then the next person’s.

  2. 2024

    XP for every task.

    The captain ran the ship like a game. A home-made XP calculator sized every task, from XS (50 XP) to XL (1,200 XP), and enough XP made you one of the captains. Newcomers had a weekly quota: miss it once and you were warned; miss it twice and you were fed to the ship’s mascot, the Kraken of Deadliness. With spin-wheel events and brainstorms, the ideas never ran dry.

  3. July 2024

    The first game ships.

    But ideas alone don’t sail. So the captain and the captain’s brother built No One’s Escaped themselves, start to finish, and on 17 July 2024 it reached Steam. The lesson stuck: finishing takes a small crew that’s all in.

  4. 2025

    The refit.

    So the captain refitted the ship. With pay from a part-time job, the captain started investing for real, became a certified Scrum Master and began an MBA in Innovation and Enterprise. Then came the crew to build Octoportals: Johann, Jenna, Pepper, GameMaker Rob and Othman. Six aboard, fully remote and fully agile, each paid weekly by the size of the tasks they finished.

    • Weekly sprints
    • Daily stand-ups
    • Scrum board
    • Backlog
    • Sprint reviews
    • Retrospectives

  5. 2026

    Researched, not guessed.

    Along the way, the captain’s research on remote indie studios earned a Distinction, the 2026 Postgraduate Final Project Prize, and an endorsement from Chris Zukowski of HTMAG+.

  6. June 2026

    Octoportals at Next Fest.

    Then came the crew’s first big test at sea: the Octoportals demo logged 700+ activations at Steam Next Fest.

  7. October 2026

    A new course.

    Then AI changed the seas, and the captain changed course again. Instead of a full crew on one game, Barque 42 now builds fast prototypes and puts them in front of players early. Two free demos set sail on Steam, BOINGBOUND and Sky Motors, with more on the way, and the new Barque 42 Creator Program invites streamers to play them. When one proves real traction, the Scrum crew comes back aboard to build it.

    • Fast prototypes
    • Early marketing
    • Creator Program
    • Scrum on traction

  8. Here be new worlds.

    The map runs out here. Past the fog lies the next island: new games, new voyages, and nobody has charted it yet. Follow Barque 42 on Steam, LinkedIn or Discord, and be aboard when we find it.

And the captain’s dream? A happy crew, sailing and exploring many worlds together.

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