MechaPig

Put the money in the bag

Shift At Midnight, a new indie co-op horror game, seems to go against everything that the industry and players have come to expect and applaud about indie games as a concept. A cold, cynical work designed from the ground up to make money and exploit the system by which games gain an audience. Shift At Midnight gamed the system, but is that such a bad thing?

The new horror co-op gas station simulator was announced in mid 2025 and prominently featured in the recent Triple I Initiative showcase on April 9th 2026. After that showcase there was a selection of developer videos giving devs a chance to speak directly to perspective players and give a little insight into what makes their games special. Enter Bun Muen, the primary developer behind Shift At Midnight whose video presentation took me by surprise and changed my viewpoint of the industry as a whole.

All about the Benjamins

In his presentation, Bun Muen explains how his first game (a 2D action roguelike) was a total flop and now with this sophomore effort he aims to make something with the highest chance of success. He literally googles how to make a successful indie game and decides to make a horror game, despite stating that he does not enjoy or have interest in the genre, only because that’s the current meta to get eyes on a project. Horror sells, and so horror it shall be. At one point he out right states he “Will do anything for success.” A point punctuated by a visual joke I did not get the reference for. From there every decision is based on maximizing visibility and revenue.

There are 3 specific streamers that Bun Muen hopes to get to play his game, the so called “Big Three” (CaseOh, Markiplier, and Coryxkenshin) and openly discusses using smaller content creators as leverage to get his game in front of more notable names. He labels his project in unity “horrorgamethatwillmakemeamilliondollars.” He hires an artist on fiver to make thumbnail art that is pre chopped into segments to allow creators to easily photoshop themselves in. Thumbnail art. Not key art, not cover art. “Thumbnail art.” It’s a subtle distinction but one that shows that Shift At Midnight is a game designed for YouTube and twitch. One that requires only what will look good on the for you page and catch folks’ attention enough for engagement.

There would seem to be no love at the core of Shift at midnight and none of the passion for the genre or style that we hear other creators talk about when pitching their games. In the nearly ten-minute presentation, Bun Muen almost never even brings up making the game fun. Here there is simply a bottom line. There’s a goal to hit. It’s the same results focused strategy that AAA publishers use to force hundreds of developers to spend years making derivative, trend chasing clones in the hopes of making money copying something that’s made money in the past.

Don’t hate the player

Hearing an indie dev so plainly state intentions and goals made me more than a little uncomfortable, but then it occurred to me that he isn’t even the first developer to do this kind of thing. He’s just the first to say it out loud.

In 2023, Swedish indie studio Semiwork released pixel art action roguelike Voidigo. It was original, vivid, fun, and far from a disappointment critically. Commercially however, the game struggled. So after spending six years making Voidigo with little financial gain to show for it, Semiwork decided to make their second game as quickly as possible. And what genre did they pick? A co-op horror, streamer-bait game. In this case, R.E.P.O., a game where up to six little bullet shaped robots infiltrate terrifying buildings and attempt to gather valuables for tax collection while avoiding scary monsters. R.E.P.O. was an unmitigated success and dwarfed Voidigo in both sales and zeitgeist discussion. R.E.P.O. also came out during the era of Lethal Company, Content Warning and other similar games that proved that the co-op horror job simulator was a good ripe market.

However, Semiwork was always concerned with making their game fun. In a 10-minute making-of video (similar to Bun Muen’s) about the creation of R.E.P.O. the team discusses how even when deciding on the genre and mechanics of the game, it was always the dev’s curiosity, and desire entertain that in the driver’s seat.

Despite not bringing it up during his talk, this still begs the question: Is Shift At Midnight fun? I decided to play the game’s demo to find out.

There’s No Substitute for Talent

Short answer: Yes. Despite all the noted reservations I had and my feelings about its inception, this dev managed to make a tense, weird, and creative little game that manages to blend the wacky on the job tone of R.E.P.O. and Lethal Company, with a genuinely tense and eerie tone. I’ve only played the game in single player but even then, the mechanics and foreboding atmosphere make it an interesting journey to a spooky alternate reality where doppelgangers stalk dark country roads.

It seems Bun Muen is just a talented Developer who can put the rubber to the road when it really counts. If he’d never told me about his callus reasons for making this game, I would have just assumed it was made with the same love and care of any of its spooky contemporaries, maybe more so even.

So, now I’m left to ask: If the game is good, who cares how it came about? Moreover, if a guy wants to make his bag following trends, who cares? There is no grand moral line Muen is crossing. He’s not a massive corporation waiting for quarterly reports to lay off staff. He’s a man with a dream to make money by making games. Maybe that’s as good a dream as any.