"The Bullet Heaven (Survivors-like) genre continues to evolve," says Ilya Boytsov from MidHard Games on the results of 2025

As the New Year approaches, we continue summing up 2025 with gaming teams. Next in line is an interview with MidHard Games. We talked to Ilya Boytsov, co-founder and CEO of the studio.

How was 2025 for your team? What did you manage to achieve, what are you proud of, and what, on the contrary, did you not manage to accomplish?

Ilya Boytsov, MidHard Games: We kept the Christmas tree battle-ready. Thought that Santa would come and bring all the gifts he owed for several years. He didn't show up, so we decided to do it the old-fashioned way — by hard work. Games don't make themselves.

We completed the development of Adrenaline Rampage and released it.

Adrenaline Rampage

Adrenaline Rampage and FatalZone were released on consoles, which slightly boosted our portfolio. Although this is entirely thanks to the publishers (kudos), it's still nice.

FatalZone

We created an MVP for a mobile game based on the mechanics of Backpack Battles, and there are many tests ahead.

We started experimenting with friendslopes. Once we find fun gameplay, we'll start production.

We are engaged in several interesting projects for renowned clients (under NDA) on outsourcing development.

We didn't manage to make another survivor or something equally cool.

What conclusions have you drawn as a development studio at the end of 2025?

Ilya: We thought the outsourcing market had hit rock bottom, but then we heard knocking from below.

The main conclusion (unchanged) is that we need to create our own commercially successful projects. We have three projects generating a tiny net profit; we need more.

Over the last two years, a trend of problematic receivables has strengthened. From 2019 to 2023, we didn't notice this.

At the end of the year, as in the previous one, business activity increased significantly. Budgets are low, but there's a demand for games (can't do without it) — that's good, and that's where we stand.

Has the interaction with publishers/investors changed? Has it become easier/more difficult to work with them?

Ilya: We haven't noticed significant changes in working with publishers; this year we worked with four publishers and communicated with a dozen.

How did the year turn out for the niche/genre you work in?

Ilya: The Bullet Heaven genre (or Survivors-like) continues to evolve. The Spell Brigade, BALL x PIT, and Megabonk made a big splash, with Megabonk surpassing Vampire Survivors in online numbers: 117,000 versus 77,000.

Megabonk

What trends do you expect to strengthen or emerge in your niche/genre in 2026?

Ilya: We expect survivors to continue evolving: new synergies of core mechanics, new metas, new settings.

What are the team's plans for next year?

Ilya: 1 — Make a hit.

2 — Make a hit!

3 — Make a hit!!!

Colleagues, happy holidays! Take care of your health and creative passion!