Gunpoint recovered development costs in 64 seconds

Gunpoint developer Tom Francis has quit his job because he suddenly has an enormous pile of money and plenty of ideas of what to do with it.

In a developer post, Francis joked that the game had recouped development costs in the first 64 seconds after pre-orders opened - but as the only direct cost was the price of the Game Maker software he used to build it, that wasn't hard.

But even when you factor the cost of time and expertise, Gunpoint is doing pretty well; Francis estimates it took just "a few hours" to earn back his investment.

During pre-order week, sales were on track to fulfil Francis's dream of using Gunpoint as a showpiece to get him a job at a game developer - assuming the trend continued. Instead, it spiked hugely, so that he could not only quit his day job but also give up on finding a position in the industry, since he can now afford to strike out as a professional indie.

"I can now make games full-time for the foreseeable future. More amazingly, I can do it with total creative freedom," he said.

"There’s really no pressure for my next thing to make a particular amount of money, so I can do whatever I think will be most exciting."

It also means Francis can "afford to keep being nice; he doesn't have to charge players before he has playable demos, for example.

One of the developer's current goals is to port Gunpoint out of its Game Maker base to native Linux, Mac and PC clients, and he's currently looking for someone to help with this task; hit the link above for more info if you think you qualify. He's also planning to continue support for Gunpoint with a ton of new features.

Gunpoint released last week on Steam and via direct purchase. It's an IGF-nominated 2D stealth game which Pat has been following avidly.