Thronefall: How Two German Developers Shrank a Strategy Game to Fit Your Evening
Grizzly Games wanted a strategy game for people who no longer have time for strategy games. The result sold close to a million copies in a year. The story of Thronefall, and why its makers sold it on.
Strategy games have a time problem. The best ones ask for whole weekends: tech trees, supply lines, a hundred units to micromanage. The two developers at Grizzly Games noticed they no longer had that kind of time to play. So they made a strategy game that fits into an evening, and players loved them for it.
Thronefall entered Steam early access on 2 August 2023, launched in full on 11 October 2024 for Windows and Nintendo Switch, and reached iOS in June 2025. It sold just under a million copies in a year, a remarkable result for a two-person studio in Germany.
Build by day, defend by night
You play a monarch on horseback, riding around a small kingdom centred on a great hall. By day, you spend gold on houses, farmland, mines and fisheries, which earn more gold, and on walls, towers and barracks, where you recruit crossbowmen and knights and position them around the map. By night, enemies attack, and you fight alongside your troops.
Survive the night and you earn gold based on how many buildings are still standing. Destroyed buildings and fallen units are restored for the next day. Then you build again, and the next wave is bigger.
The loop is easy to learn, but it has teeth. Gold is always short, so every building is a trade-off between earning more tomorrow and surviving tonight. Put too much into farms and the walls fall; put too much into towers and you cannot afford the knights you need later. Because you ride into battle yourself, positioning your monarch matters as much as positioning your troops.
Less, on purpose
What makes Thronefall special is what it leaves out. There is no sprawling map, no complicated economy, no menus within menus. Each decision is small and visible: one more tower here, a farm there, a knight on that bridge. Runs are short, and you can see the whole kingdom on one screen.
That minimalism extends to the look. Thronefall's low-poly art, soft colours and clean shapes make it readable at a glance, on a monitor or on a Switch screen. It is the strategy equivalent of a good short story: every element earns its place. The game was built in Unity.
A new owner for the throne
In December 2025, Thronefall's publisher Mythwright acquired the entire Thronefall intellectual property from Grizzly Games. The two developers cited limited resources and a wish to move on to new projects. Mythwright said it would continue Grizzly's partnership with Doghowl Games on the mobile version.
It is an unusual ending for an indie hit, and a candid one. Rather than stretch a tiny team across years of updates, ports and support, the creators handed their game to a partner with the capacity to look after it, and kept their freedom to make something new.
Why it matters
Thronefall shows that "small" can be a selling point, not a compromise. A clear idea, a strict scope and a game that respects the player's time found an audience of close to a million people in one year. For solo developers and tiny teams, it is a useful model: do one thing, make it elegant, and ship it.
Where to play
Thronefall is on Steam for Windows and Mac, on Nintendo Switch and on iOS. For another small European team with a big hit, read our story on Sweden's Tiny Glade (here).