Innersloth is a Redmond, Washington-based video game-development studio, most notable for creating the games The Henry Stickmin Collection and Among Us. They create games for Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices.
The developer team persevered when their product did not find success immediately after game release, and waited and adapted their strategy. Innersloth faced growing challenges after rapid success and increased popularity in 2020, two years after its release.
Background[]
Foundation[]
Innersloth is structured as a limited liability company. Its staff consists of five programmers, two artists, and a community director. They are based out of Redmond, Washington. The Innersloth team has maintained their focus as an indie game developer. The developers rarely meet in person, preferring remote work. Innersloth was formed by video game developer PuffballsUnited; with his colleague and co-founder ForteBass. All three members of the Innersloth team first met in college at Oregon State University (OSU), and began video game development together after graduation.
Puffballs and ForteBass discovered their video game development skills could help each other, with Puffballs's skill game design and artwork complementing ForteBass's computer programming background. After ForteBass left his job at Microsoft, they decided to form a joint venture together. Puffballs and ForteBass founded Innersloth as a privately held company in 2015.
Development Team[]
Puffballs serves as an artist, animator, and game designer for Innersloth. ForteBass serves as a computer programmer and head of business management for Innersloth. Amy Liu is artist, designer, and animator for Innersloth. Amy was hired as artist for Innersloth shortly after its co-founding by Puffballs and ForteBass. In their early development process, the Innersloth team traveled to a video game convention PAX and were inspired by viewing the game Nuclear Throne. During early game design, the Innersloth team engages in creating prototypes with rough images, detailing the art design at a later stage once they worked out the basic game mechanics.
Growth and Response[]
By October 2017, all three members of the Innersloth team had begun to devote their efforts full-time to the company. Innersloth faced challenges after their 2018 game Among Us achieved rapid success during 2020. After an increase in popularity in 2020, ForteBass stated Innersloth planned to increase server performance for August 2021. Innersloth experienced problems with hackers attacking their servers in 2020. Innersloth responded by adapting their systems and servers.
Game Release History[]
Innersloth released its debut game Dig2China in 2015. It was made available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. In the game, players are able to dig to Asia using an excavator. They can then upgrade their excavator and dig through thirteen layers of the Earth. In-between Dig2China and their next venture, Innersloth experienced multiple failed projects prior to achieving success with their video game development. Some of these failed projects were multiplayer games, which gave the Innersloth team some hesitation with venturing into this medium for their next game. This was followed up by Among Us, first released on June 15, 2018. This game was not successful upon initial release in 2018 and failed to become popular after its launch. However, it gained popularity for Innersloth in 2020, after increased usage by Twitch streamers and YouTubers.
Innersloth released their game The Henry Stickmin Collection on August 7, 2020, and the game was made available via macOS and PC versions. The Henry Stickmin Collection is a remaster of some of Puffballs' previous flash games, along with a 6th and final installment, and involves control of a protagonist character assigned special missions including infiltrating an airship, stealing diamonds, escaping from prison, and committing bank robberies.
By October 2020, Among Us had been downloaded over 100 million times. Innersloth was not prepared for the level of interest they received from this game, and they altered their video game development plans accordingly. They originally had planned a release of an Among Us sequel titled Among Us 2, with new features including playability across multiple devices and increased capacity for the surge in the number of players using their systems. Innersloth canceled their efforts at this initiative in order to focus on maintaining and improving the original game in the face of sudden rising popularity.
Members[]
- Forest Willard
- Marcus Bromander
- Amy Liu
- Victoria Tran
- Adriel Wallick
- Gary Porter
- Torin Freimiller
- Shahrin Khan
- Nathan Blau
- Hannako Lambert
- Jake Clark
- Krys Loh
- Mik Minier
- Kristi Anderson
- Tony Coculuzzi
- Sarah W.
- Chris D.
- Antonio Gutiérrez
- Dave Tamayo
- Lucy M.
Gallery[]
