A small indie game is currently a surprise hit on Steam, despite launching under the worst possible circumstances, and the developer almost missed the release.
What game is it? Megabonk, heavily inspired by Vampire Survivors, is currently an absolute surprise hit on Steam. In this new 3D roguelite, it’s all about developing overpowered builds and mowing down tons of enemies. There are 20 unique – and sometimes quite outlandish – characters as well as numerous items and upgrades available.
Megabonk caught the attention of Twitch streamer shroud, who showcased it on September 23rd to over 15,000 viewers and has not stopped playing since (Source: Sully Gnome). On the same day, the roguelite reached 30,000 players on Steam, and over the weekend, according to SteamDB, it even surpassed 80,000 concurrent players.
And this, despite the solo developer Vedinad choosing the worst possible time for his release.
Developer took on genre giants and AAA games
Why was the timing so bad? Vedinad showed extraordinarily poor judgment in selecting a launch date, and that happened multiple times. He originally scheduled the release for September 4, 2025 – exactly the date when Hollow Knight: Silksong was released, which fans had been waiting for years.
Like several other indie developers, Vedinad postponed his release to avoid Hollow Knight – and ended up on the newly chosen September 18th, exactly between the also highly anticipated games Borderlands 4 and Hades 2.
To make matters worse, the survival game Dying Light: The Beast launched on the same day as Megabonk with 80,000 players on Steam.
An indie game without much advertising couldn’t have worse conditions. That Megabonk is still so successful seemed to surprise even the developer.
However, there was one positive aspect to the delay, as Vedinad admitted in a video on YouTube that his game was far from finished three weeks before the scheduled release. Therefore, there must have been panic when he received an email from Steam requesting the finished build of his game within the next few days.
On Steam, Megabonk has a “very positive” score of 94% and is still available for 8.28 euros until October 2, 2025.
Especially for small studios and solo devs, the hot phase right after the release is particularly important, as it is even harder to attract players after a failed launch. One developer team was especially unlucky, as a mistake on Steam ruined 10 years of work for them: What happened to the developer who worked on a game on Steam for 10 years and even sold his car?
