Interview Simulator Thank You for Your Application Recoups Its Costs in Less Than 24 Hours
"Larger budgets and longer schedules do not lead to better games."
If you want to experience the other side of job hunting, Thank You for Your Application is a game for you. It will remind you of Papers, Please and perhaps your own corporate experiences.
While IceLemonTea Studio's interview simulator is no AAA title, it managed to capture enough attention to recoup its development costs in just 22 hours after its release on June 19.
Publisher No More Robots told Game Developer that Thank You for Your Application had a five-figure budget and didn't spend that much time brewing: its production started in January 2025 and was scheduled for the start of 2026 but was pushed when the publisher realized "how big it was going to be, so that we could polish the crap out of it," said No More Robots founder Mike Rose, who doesn't think the continuing trend of prolonging game development results in masterpieces.
"I've said this many, many times before, but larger budgets and longer schedules do not lead to better games, and the industry as a whole really needs to finally learn that lesson."
IceLemonTea Studio
Before launch, Thank You for Your Application had over 135,000 wishlists on Steam, and now you can see why players were interested in it by buying the game on Steam.
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