Imagine landing your dream job at the biggest game studio in the world, only to find yourself navigating a maze of toxic coworkers, endless meetings, and creative burnout. That’s the premise of Crush the Industry, a unique deck-building game that challenges you to survive the corporate gaming world. Developed by Travis and Kara from Cognoggin Games, a couple with a love for retro games, Crush the Industry is set to leave Early Access soon on Steam.
In Crush the Industry, you take on the role of a new hire at a massive game studio. Your goal is to climb the corporate ladder by battling workplace challenges, managing your sanity, and building a deck of skills to overcome obstacles. The game features multiple playable characters, over 200 skills and talents, and an ever-changing schedule, ensuring that no two career runs are the same.
The game’s progression is challenging, with nine difficulty levels and the infamous “9 Circles of Corporate Hell” to conquer. As you achieve milestones, you unlock new content, including skills, talents, and characters. The latest update introduces 15 new character-exclusive skills, shop rerolls, discounted items, and four new talents. MacOS support has also been added, along with improvements to animations, enemy behaviors, and bug fixes.
We asked Travis and Kara to share their thoughts on the Early Access aspect of the game, whether it’s worth it, how it helps, what benefits it brings, and what developers can typically expect to gain from it.
Do you consider Early Access on Steam to have been useful, given that your game has been in it for two years?
Early Access increased our confidence for the full release clearing player expectations. It’s been helpful to have that feedback and extra time to refine.
Are you satisfied with how the game has been received so far?
We’re satisfied with it. The constructive negative reviews helped us make improvements, and we didn’t expect the game to land for everyone (particularly the satire of office work culture and crude humor). We’re happy to be north of 90% on Steam with the majority of players sharing positive experiences.
Looking back at the game two years ago compared to today, what’s the one game mechanic you’re still most proud of?
Expanding the “rolling health” mechanic popularized by Earthbound and fusing it with card battler gameplay. I think it makes our game stand out and play differently than anything else in the roguelike deckbuilder genre. We had some concerns early in development that it might feel too gimmicky, but it worked out way better than expected.
How valuable has player feedback been during development?
The players who took the time to offer detailed feedback were invaluable. There’s a lot of things they thought of that we wouldn’t have on our own.
An enemy most indie devs can probably relate to: the Game Designer Mole that tunnels too deep on new ideas. 🐿️#screenshotsaturday #gamedeveloper #indiedev pic.twitter.com/kqqZHlBjmP
— Travis | Crush the Industry dev (@CognogginGames) February 23, 2025
How frequently did you update the game, and did you ever feel it became repetitive or boring to continue working on the same project?
We’ve had 10 major updates and around 20 unannounced/small updates. It did become repetitive at points and the burnout was real. Grinding through the work required for localization was especially rough.
What were some of the key lessons or experiences you gained while developing this game?
The importance of early marketing comes to mind as a lesson. We learned to appreciate trimming down excess scope to focus solely on whatever makes the game fun to play. There were some overly ambitious features that had to be cut, like a minigame and casino node. Learning to avoid those scope creep pitfalls was just as important as speeding up our code/art turnaround times.
We would market earlier and wait on releasing our first demo until it was more polished. We’d also reconsider some of the full-screen visual effects and loosen up on staying faithful to retro console pixel resolutions.
How important has marketing been for the game’s success? Are there any statistics you’d be willing to share, such as wishlist numbers before and after launch? Have sales remained steady, or have they fluctuated over time?
Marketing was and is everything for us finding success. Steam’s Next Fest and some early youtube coverage gave us a nice initial boost. Right now our sales jump for discounted events and seasonal sales. I think a lot of players are waiting for it to exit Early Access at this point, and we’re almost there. We have ~20k wishlists right now and want to drive that number up in the coming months as we market for full release.
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