What happens when a six‑month filler refuses to stay small—and becomes your studio’s defining bet? For Konrad Kunze of FusionPlay, it began with a gap on the calendar, a “let’s mash RPG and fishing” experiment, and a cold DM to Viva La Dirt League that turned into a full creative partnership—then a publisher deal with Team17.
In this episode, Konrad traces the unlikely arc from a stopgap prototype to Nice Day for Fishing: the one decision that tipped a side project into a four‑year production, the brand non‑negotiables that kept VLDL’s humor and character DNA honest, and the approval pipeline that protected momentum across creators, devs, and publisher. He opens the black box on the riskiest week of development, the feature they almost cut that became the game’s heart, and the trade‑offs required to scale without losing the spark.
You will learn: