"This Irreparably Damaged Our Reputation": How One Game Bounced Back After Publishing "Nightmare"
By Darryn Bonthuys
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Auto-posted by TMGClan NewsBot
By Darryn Bonthuys
Last year, indie game publisher Humble Games went through what it called a restructuring, a process that resulted in mass layoffs. Not only were various staff members affected, but also several games under the publisher, including Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus. Developed by the small team at Squid Shock Studios, the colorful platformer inspired by Japanese folklore would turn out to be the final title published by the in-house team at Humble Games.
Fast-forward to November 2025, and Squid Shock Games is still hard at work on Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus. The team has just released the free Tanuki Kabuki update for the game, a major content drop that adds new post-game challenges, gameplay options, and collectibles to the game, with one of the highlights being a Kabuki-style Boss Rush mode where players battle in front of an audience that reacts to each clash. A new Gauntlet Mode has also been added, and this is a curated selection of challenges that also features customizable difficulty options.
Getting here wasn't easy for Squid Shock Games, as following the restructuring of Humble, the team had to fill multiple roles that the publisher had previously handled. We spoke to creative director Chris Stair about how the studio bounced back, was forced to adapt at the 11th hour, and the lessons learned from this ordeal.
"Honestly, the main thing was it left me--and my whole team at Squid Shock--feeling completely confused, abandoned, and lost right after launching our very first game. Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus was the first title Squid Shock ever released and the first game I'd ever worked on in my life. We had launched literally five days before Humble's restructuring hit," Stair said. "My team and I were on an absolute high. We were at Bit Summit in Kyoto, Japan, meeting devs we'd idolized for years, throwing an incredible launch party, soaking in all the love from the community. And then, overnight, it felt like the ground just vanished beneath us. Even just recollecting it right now makes my cortisol spike."
Stair added that it was a disheartening experience to see the news about Humble Games and receive emails from former employees at the publisher, many of whom he'd worked with on marketing the game. In a more practical sense, however, Stair now had to confront the fact that all the previously arranged post-launch publisher support had been dramatically altered. "No matter what anyone else might say, our launch was absolutely sullied by this. Not just the practical stuff, but my entire emotional and psychological state. So much mental bandwidth got eaten up by pure insecurity about what the hell was going to happen next that the studio and I went straight into survival mode. Resources and energy that should have gone into nurturing the game in its critical first weeks instead went into just keeping our heads above water," Stair said.
Following its departure from Humble Games, Squid Shock had to adapt and fill multiple behind-the-scenes roles--like marketing, press, creator outreach, gathering storefront feedback and sentiment, QA coordination, localization fixes, and more--quickly, but the single biggest "nightmare" for the studio were the console patches.
Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus
Stair explained that Humble had been their middleman with console companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. When the publisher restructured, their connections to the big three were greatly impacted, ultimately resulting in an inability to release vital updates. "It really sucked reading player feedback about bugs and performance issues on certain platforms and knowing we literally couldn't do anything about it for months," Stair said. "I think this really irreparably damaged our reputation on certain platforms, especially Xbox, which had some nasty crashes on launch."
While sales of Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus were "moderately successful," they didn't meet the expectations that Squid Shock had for the game. "We were given a conservative estimate of how many copies we would sell in the first year and we really fell short of that," Stair added. "Is that because of the issues we had with Humble? There's no way to actually prove it, but obviously that whole situation only hurt our ability to deliver a better product over time."
Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus
The tragedy here is that Squid Shock had a good working relationship with Humble before its sudden closure. Stair says that while they weren't perfect, the publisher knew what it was doing and it "provided incredible support throughout development" that would not have been there if the studio had gone down the self-publishing route. As Stair explained, publishers do far more than just help get a video game out the door, as a good company can help with QA, localization, production timelines, porting, trailers, subscription deals, and so much more. All essential factors in a game finding success in a crowded and very competitive market.
Squid Shock is now working with Good Games Group,a publishing group founded by former Humble employees. If you're interested in seeing Bo: Path Of The Teal Lotus in action, it'll be featured in a Games Done Quick livestream this weekend.
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