Xitilon, a developer and publisher based in Ukraine, has been creating and producing games since 2015. With an extensive Xbox catalog, the indie publisher is set to expand even further this year. We had the opportunity to ask Xitilon a range of questions"”covering the challenges of working in Ukraine amid ongoing conflict, their efforts to support developers in getting published, and what's on the horizon for them in 2025.
While Xitilon is known for publishing “easy Gamerscore” titles and regularly updating games to the 5,000 Gamerscore cap, their catalog is more diverse than it might seem"”not every game is an easy completion. Having played every Xitilon release on Xbox, I was excited for the opportunity to interview them.
What's your experience in the gaming industry? What got you interested in publishing and game development?
Honestly, it’s a stretch to say I’m in the “industry”, I’m actually a small indie developer that became a small indie publisher because our game went through Steam Greenlight in 2015 and there was no one to be written into the “Publisher” field of the Steam’s digital store page. A decade ago I was going to work in Blizzard or something, but realized the working conditions in the then-current state of gamedev are something I’d like to avoid completely. Namely the meaningless crunches dedicated to stupid shareholders ruining the author’s vision for the sake of pursuing an unrealistic release date, and then everyone gets laid off. And it got only worse. Mobile gaming? 1% games, 99% ad networking. MMO? 1% games, 99% gambling. But I still, perhaps naïvely, live for the games. The closest I got to the industry was looking at a so-called “game designer” job application test that consisted entirely of in-app purchase offers, and I don’t miss these days.
I have been gaming since 4, my first console was Atari 2600 (which I actually hated and even feared because it had ugly graphics and sounds), and I started drawing game designs at that same age. I learned English simultaneously with Ukrainian, because I wanted to understand and eventually make games. I studied programming and participated in multiple game jams until I got to Steam, then to Xbox and then to PS4. Nintendo never registered me for no understandable reason, but I don’t care much anymore.
What type of developers are you looking to work with and help get published?
2D GameMaker developers specifically, because that’s the engine I have nearly 20 years of experience with, so I’ll be able to help with just about any issue on any stage of development or porting. 3D games are cool, but there is a world of things that work in 2D, a lot of subgenres and niches underdeveloped and unexplored. GameMaker can do a relatively simple 3D game as well, by the way, “Post Void” and “Buck Up And Drive!” being my favorite examples. Aside from the engine, as long as the game is not some AI-generated slide show with 6-10 fingers on each hand of each character, I’ll be glad to consider publishing it.
I can accept other engines, but only if the developer ports the game themselves.
Also, I consult anyone who wants to self-publish. Some developers want full control over their game including publishing – I help with that. Ternox Games is the first indie developer-publisher I instructed, and more are onboarding to the consoles with my help right now.
You've been known to publish "easy Gamerscore" games in the past. Is this something that will continue to do or are there different plans on the horizon?
In the beginning, our releases had just random easy-to-stupidly-hard achievements. And if Microsoft wouldn’t have required achievements for the release, we’d better be off not making them at all, because in 2019 it felt like they are a joke already, as parodied by an aptly-named “Achievement Unlocked” flash game that throws out achievements for almost whatever you do in it – and it’s from 2008! But on Xbox achievements are a must, you can’t publish a game without achievements, and that’s how we got from whatever achievements to the current crossroad, after seeing people buying the games with easier achievements more readily.
Some words for the purists. How can you break what hasn’t been balanced in the first place? If we think this way, the first time I encountered “gamerscore devaluation” was in my childhood. A goal in soccer is worth 1 point and is hard to score. A goal in basketball is worth 2 or even 3 points and players get them consistently throughout each match. No one compares a soccer score to a basketball score, so why bother? Meanwhile, pinball machines started to inflate the score way back in the 1960s by adding a number of permanent zeros to the end of the score.
Perhaps there’s a better system to pool achievements in video games. The one where skipping through a kinetic visual novel without reading isn’t an achievement ever, and doing a noscope 360 won’t be worth less than pressing x to win. I’m all up for such a system, as I’m currently publishing Journey of Johann – a series of games with focus on completionism and speedrunning. We just aren’t there yet.
Like I already said in an interview on TrueAchievements, I only advise developers of the market, and they choose which achievements to make. On my publishing side, there is no specific plan to make easy or hard achievements except for the games that I make myself like CrushBorgs – these will have achievements that cover the whole game beginning to end. My games will be easy enough for a 10-year old me to beat them, and that’s an ideal quote to be cut out of context – I was a hardcore gamer that has beaten a hundred video games by that age.
**An interesting note on Pinball scoring inflation from Wikipedia: “The average score changed again in the 1970s with the advent of electronic displays. Average scores soon began to commonly increase back into tens or hundreds of thousands. Since then, there has been a trend of scoring inflation, with modern machines often requiring scores of over a billion points to win a free game. At the peak of this trend, Williams No Fear: Dangerous Sports and Jack-Bot have been played into ten billions and Williams Johnny Mnemonic and Bally/Midway Attack from Mars, have been played into one hundred billion.”
Being based in the Ukraine, how has this affected your ability to publish and develop your own games? Can you tell us a bit about your experience over the last several years?
In 2022, I lost 75% of my publishing, because, due to wartime laws, it was impossible to transfer the revenue out of the country to the foreign game authors. This was a huge hit, and I’m still financially recovering from that loss. Every plan I had for every year past 2022 was broken and forgotten. I had to tone down everything I was doing – there were several in-house games in the works, and they became indefinitely frozen or outright canceled.
The worst of all was finding out that our team mate, Esdeer, had passed away a week before the invasion, completely unrelated to it. He just vanished from the internet, but we (D.E.X. Team) knew it was a common thing when he wanted to be alone. Many months after that we found a registry record about his death. This means that the “Castle of no Escape” series can’t be properly continued anymore, as he was the author of the whole world where the events of these two games take place. We tried to make a third one for multiple years, but we weren’t happy with the prototypes. https://xitilon.itch.io/castle-of-no-escape-3-canceled – this is what’s left of ConE3 and I don’t think I will ever get back to this very series that was the start of my publishing in 2016.
Is there a specific genre of game or target audience that you like to focus on for your personal game development?
I don’t think so. Not for the moment, at least. I’m just publishing what was signed back in 2022, so that I can have a proper financial ground. In the future, I’d like to make and release games in just too many genres including shmups, platformers, fighting games, beat ’em ups, Doom-clones aka 3D Shooters, real-time and turn-based strategies and tactics, point and click quests, vehicular combat and racing, tycoons, puzzles, RPGs, rhythm games, visual novels, artillery games, collectible card games, survival horrors, sandboxes and last but certainly not least – microgames that maximize accessibility and can be played with 1 button. There are some even more wild ideas like FMV-based games, but those are for when I’d have just way too much time on my hands.
What can we expect from Xitilon in 2025? Any games being released that you are particularly excited about?
New Journey of Johann installments expanding to new biomes (snowy mountains, lava caves, and more), One-Button Games compilations, a less boring Cyber Tank reboot, more puzzles, and some secret projects.
One game I’m excited about is “Fall Asleep” – it was made by our Ukrainian developers entirely during the course of invasion, and I’m proud that I was helping this project to grow and release. It took a lot of time because of the circumstances, but it’s a promising debut. It gives me the vibes of Momodora – the very first one, which has gone a long way to what it has become today, and I’m sure “Fall Asleep” can follow in its steps, provided we have less wars in our country.
What is your favorite game of all time and why?
Cave Story. It was this game that has shown the world how one solo developer can entirely (including graphics, sound, code and story) make a game that lasts multiple hours, has several endings, and has a really polished game feel and mechanics. General public may disagree about whether it’s important, but to me as an indie game developer it definitely left a lasting impression, followed by The Desolate Hope by Scott Cawthon for the same reasons except he didn’t make the music. Why? Because I’m aiming to create whole games by myself, bigger than my old “SoulFrost” game which wasn’t accepted to Xbox. Back in the day I did some pixel art and I am an obscure composer after all.
Closing Remarks
I'd like to thank Xitilon for taking the time to catch up with Gamer Social Club. Check out their latest game releases below:
Fall Asleep
Fall Asleep is a fun single player platformer. Help Marsi wake up from her deep sleep and collect the five-star shards.
Available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows at the links below:
Xbox Series X|S
Xbox One
Windows
Xbox Store Bundle
Journey of Johann
Journey of Johann: Grasslands is a platformer built for speedrunners, offering a greater challenge than Fall Asleep. Navigate through levels and a boss fight filled with obstacles and unique challenges. Collect goblets, uncover secrets, and conquer time trials. Use your weapons not just for combat, but also as tools for climbing, blocking attacks, and overcoming enemies.
Available on PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows at the links below:
PS4
Xbox Series X|S
Xbox One
Windows
Xbox Store Bundle
Cyber Tank 2
Cyber Tank 2 is a challenging game with a fun take on the Sokoban puzzle genre.
Available on PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows at the links below:
PS4
Xbox Series X|S
Xbox One
Windows
Xbox Store Bundle
