No Straight Roads, the indie music-and-rhythm-themed action game made in Malaysia by Metronomik, has more than 500,000 players. The number includes downloads from subscription services like PlayStation Plus, hence the use of “players” rather than “copies/units”.
The region with the most sales was in North America, which made up 42% of sales, followed by 35% in Europe and Africa. Southeast Asia only makes up 5% of the sales.
The sales figure shows that a game that portrays culture that’s less mainstream, in this instance Malaysian culture, can still find and audience in foreign markets.
Metronomik co-founder Wan Hazmer revealed the sales milestone as part of his industry talk panel as part of Indie Jam 2024.
Hazmer was speaking to the attendees of Indie Jam 2024, comprised of game developers, aspiring game developers and gamers at Xsolla Curine Academy, KL Eco City, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That talk, titled, “Playing with Your Roots: How to Effectively Weave Local Cultures into Your Game”, saw Hazmer share his experience integrating cultural elements into titles like Final Fantasy XV (which he was the lead game designer on culture/towns) and No Straight Roads.
Hazmer suggest the audience to “not just compare your game with other people’s games but think [about] what your game can do, what you can do” that others can’t do, opting a blue ocean strategy when making games.
This includes making games where you are uniquely in position of doing, like making a car mechanic simulator or a racing game for a team full of gearheads, or in the case of Metronomik, making a music-themed game based on the idea of “a rhythm-centric game but not rhythm-based.”
And of course, weaving in one’s culture in a video game where they are uniquely positioned to portray them is another example, which Metronomik did with No Straight Roads.
A clip of various streamers from overseas reacting and vibing with the DK West boss fight, to the point where they even started to say the uniquely Malaysian “Ewah!” interjection was shown to the audience, which then followed by the reveal of the sales/player count figure. That was not a cherry picked highlight reel, now that we roughly know how many NSR players live in the West.
Metronomik is currently developing their next game, Ondeh Ondeh, which will be infused with more Malaysian culture than its debut title played by over half a million people around the world.
No Straight Roads is out now on PS4, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.