Three days on Indie DB and number 25 out of 75,000: the story of the indie game Lasso Sister
A free 3D western action game from a very small studio in Korea made the popularity ranking of a big indie game site
· Oreum Games
Oreum Games, a very small indie studio in Korea, released Lasso Sister on October 4. The Indie DB page went up on October 5, and on October 8 the game was in the TOP 25 of the popularity ranking, out of 75,628 games listed there. Three days.
Indie DB is where indie developers from all over the world put up game pages and post dev news. The first page of its popular list had Euro Truck Simulator 2, Slender and SpaceEngine on it, old and famous games. Lasso Sister was right there between them, up 14 places that day alone.
A western where you rope them in
Lasso Sister is a game where a baddie Black cowgirl hunts wanted outlaws with a lasso in the Old West. You pick a wanted poster from the town board, ride out to the hideout, and throw your lasso at the outlaw as they run. Catch them, drag them behind your horse all the way back to town, throw them in jail and collect the bounty.
A western usually means guns. The developer decided this one would be about the feel of the lasso instead, so most of the work went into the moment it lands. The screen freezes for a beat, the camera pulls in, and the loop slides up the body and cinches tight. The throwing range went from 9 metres at first to 30, because snatching someone from far away just feels good.
Fixing what players found, the next day
Alongside Indie DB we posted on a web game developer forum, and the first players there left detailed notes. The guide arrow was confusing when the target was behind you, the horse got stuck between buildings, there was no way to tell how far the lasso would reach, and losing your horse meant a long walk back to the stable.
All of that was fixed the next day. Six gaps between buildings got fences, a U-turn arrow shows up when the target is behind you, there is a lasso range gauge now, and if your horse dies you can buy a new one right where you are. The day after that another player beat chapter 2 on their phone and wrote back. They wanted to catch several outlaws at once, the drug dealer was too easy, and turning around on a phone was slow. Also fixed in a day. In chapter 2 every poster is open and you can drag three outlaws at once, the drug dealer throws white powder that clouds your screen, and the U-turn on phones is almost twice as fast.
After the fixes the developer played through to chapter 2 too, dragged three outlaws to jail in a row, and the first thing the developer said afterwards was that it was fun.
What number 25 means
To be honest about the numbers: Indie DB ranks by recent visits, so number 25 means 375 visits to the page so far and 33 on the day we checked. Not a flood. But it is the first time any Oreum Games game has climbed this high among more than 75,000. The best before was 300 A MONTH at 410, then Gosiwon Manager at 725.
A small studio doesn't have many ways to get a game seen abroad. No ad budget, just a game page, a dev post, and feedback fixed within a day and shared again. Lasso Sister is the first time that approach showed up in the numbers.
Lasso Sister is a free browser game with nothing to install. It works on PC and phones, and your progress saves in your browser automatically. The Korean version, 올가미 언니, is out too.