ChillyRoom Runs Over 10 Development Lines With Indie-Style Autonomy
ChillyRoom's self-organizing, multi-team model shows how a mid-sized studio can sustain indie-scale experimentation across a dozen simultaneous projects without central direction.
Key Facts
- ChillyRoom has around 200 employees organized into self-starting teams of 4-5 people, with most projects initiated by employees rather than top-down.
- The studio currently runs about ten mobile projects and three PC/console titles in development.
- 'ReBlade: The Death Spiral' has been in development for three years with a seven-person team and is nearing completion, with a demo planned for October.
- ChillyRoom's mobile hit 'Soul Knight' has over 50 million Android downloads.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
In an interview at BitSummit PUNCH, ChillyRoom CEO Li Zeyang detailed the studio's unusual structure: around 200 employees organized into small, self-starting teams of 4-5 people. Most projects are employee-initiated rather than top-down. The company currently has about ten mobile projects and three PC/console titles in development, including the extraction shooter "No Such Place," the console game "Loulan: The Cursed Sand" (part of SIE's China Hero Project), and the cyber action roguelike "ReBlade: The Death Spiral," which is nearing completion after three years with a seven-person team.
ChillyRoom CEO Li Zeyang described the company's structure as closer to an indie collective than a traditional developer. Teams are small-around four to five people-and projects are initiated by employees rather than assigned from above. If a project becomes a hit, the team expands. The approach has produced the mobile hit "Soul Knight" (over 50 million Android downloads) and now supports three PC/console titles alongside roughly ten mobile projects.
The PC/console slate includes the extraction shooter "No Such Place," the larger-scale console title "Loulan: The Cursed Sand" selected for SIE's China Hero Project, and the cyber action roguelike "ReBlade: The Death Spiral." The latter has been in development for three years with a seven-person team and is nearly finished; a demo is planned for October. Li noted that competition in mobile is fierce, with high traffic costs, which prompted some employees to propose Steam projects.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.