Exo One Interview: Dev Reveals Game Pass Was Huge For The Title’s Success

Jay: My name is Jay Weston, I’m an indie developer in Australia, currently working in a 2.5 man team on Exo Rally Championship. I started in games dev right out of high school at Ratbag Games, working on Powerslide, an arcade post-apocalyptic racing game for PC and the original 3dfx cards. I worked there for 5 years as an artist and then a game designer before leaving to form a business selling skyboxes. I returned to game dev about 10 years ago and created a Zombie Outbreak Simulator for iOS, Exo One’s predecessor (also iOS), then Exo One.

Jay: I’ve read a few reviews with people saying they were pleased that it runs and looks as good on PS as it does on PC.

Jay: I think, luckily, the game is quite ‘sparse’ in terms of graphics. There’s no animation, swarms of enemies, AI logic, or anything, so it runs quite well on the last-gen, especially once you start reducing shadow distances, etc.

Jay: Given we use Unity, we essentially try and stick to what we know, and what’s most supported by Unity, so we can just try and focus 100% on making the game itself. Exo Rally Championship features far more dense environments and much more intensive physics, so there’s no chance that’ll be making it to older consoles.

Jay: I hope so! No news there yet, though.

Jay: We did talk to the team there about renewing Exo One for Game Pass, but it didn’t happen. I imagine we will continue asking them occasionally though!

Jay: I believe most games do a year (we had an 18 month one I think?), especially smaller indie games, but I’m not sure. Game Pass was really huge in terms of the level of success the game had, and it helped us reach around 2 million total players, which I love!

Jay: If you mean DLC or updates, it will depend a lot on what happens with Exo Rally. I would love to go back and do more with the game, so there’s a decent chance at some point in the next few years there will be something. We’re a small team though, so it’d have to wait until work is complete on Rally.

Jay: I have a small list of things I’d like to do in terms of free updates, endless running modes, for example, but a full-blown DLC with alternate storylines and more planets would be great. It is unlikely we will see that pre-2025-6, though.

Jay: Definitely! I worked on Exo One for 5 years, and Rhys Lindsay was also working with Unity and composing music that whole time as well. So it gave us much more confidence launching into a far more complex game.

Jay: Mostly, I’d say “content” was the biggest thing. As a 1 man team, just producing all the models and textures, animations, cutscenes, etc, is very slow, especially when you aren’t an expert in any of those. I had more plans for ‘sequences’ like the giant sphere that I just had to cut, again because the game took 5 years!

Jay: Exo Rally Championship is entering our first public playtest/demo phase on Steam in a month or two, so if you’re into racing games, sim racing, that kinda thing, please check it out on Steam! (just don’t expect it to be like Exo One!)