Vampire Survivors’ developer created publisher to “share the luck” with other indie studios

Poncle founder and Vampire Survivors creator, Luca Galante, has said the team established publishing arm Poncle Presents to “give something back to the indie community.”

In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Galante, who developed and published Vampire Survivors under the studio name Poncle, explained that the (now expanded) team established its publishing arm to share what it learned from the game’s development with other indie studios.

“Basically, we got very lucky with Vampire Survivors,” Galante told the publication. “The game has been so successful that – we definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies.

“It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck.”

Indie studio Poncle revealed its publishing division, Poncle Presents, in September 2024, emphasising that it would not operate as a “traditional publisher” but would work more as a label or fund to enable people to “make their games.”

Galante said he sees “a lot of publishers I don’t like” and uses these to “define what a good publisher should be.”

He went on to explain that he sees “a lot” of publishers that “exploit the platforms just to make money,” by putting out “games that are incomplete or in early access that actually never get completed.”

Instead, Galante believes publishers should “make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value” and understand “that not everything can be a breakout hit.”

This is the reason Poncle Present plans to “keep supporting games post-launch” regardless of how successful they are because “once you put the game out there, you have an audience, and as big or small as it is, that audience deserves to be treated fairly.”

The publisher has so far released two titles, both indies under $5: Doonutsaur’s arcade roguelite Kill the Brickman and Nao Games’ hack n’ slasher Berserk or Die.

Poncle Presents is primarily focusing on small teams that are “very transparent in what they do,” with Galante seeing a publisher’s role as “making the developers and the players happy” rather than simply a business.

While there are currently no plans for a Vampire Survivors sequel, Poncle announced in 2023 that an animated TV show based on the hit roguelike had been greenlit.