Furnish Master: a spare-time decorating game nets its solo dev $407K in year one

Alex Blintsov, a game developer who led teams at Pixonic, wanted a side project that could justify itself financially. He spent two years building Furnish Master in his spare time: a cozy game about furnishing rooms, where players can even change the weather outside the window, with a story mode of puzzles alongside a free sandbox.

Make the decorating sim people actually relax with — open sandbox furnishing plus story puzzles — then publish every dollar, refund and wishlist number openly.

Furnish Master entered Steam Early Access on February 20, 2024 after Blintsov had spent about $11,500 on assets, ads on Twitter, Reddit and Meta, and other pre-release costs, plus $4,000 after launch. He chose a relaxed genre, priced it low, and collected the game into a wishlist machine — 96,000 wishlists at launch growing past 205,000 in the first year.

The game sold more than 65,800 copies in 12 months and grossed over $787,000 on Steam; after the platform share, taxes and other payments Blintsov kept about $407,600. That made the project far more than self-funding even when his time was counted at roughly $85,000, and it earned a "Very Positive" rating on Steam.

Alex Blintsov, co-founder of Enraven Games and a former team lead at Pixonic, built Furnish Master in his spare time over two years. The concept was deliberately unambitious in scope: a relaxing decorating simulator in which players furnish rooms and can even adjust the weather outside the window, with story puzzles layered over a free-form sandbox.

Furnish Master launched into Steam Early Access on February 20, 2024. Blintsov had spent roughly $11,500 before release — about $1,600 on assets and $8,000 on ads across Twitter, Reddit and Meta — followed by $4,000 after launch. Counting the value of his own time, he put the total cost of the project at around $85,000.

The game outperformed that investment by a wide margin: more than 65,800 copies sold in its first year, with about $787,000 in gross revenue and $582,000 net after Steam's share. Blintsov himself received about $407,600 after all royalties, payments and taxes — several times the project's budget even at the fully-loaded cost.

He also published the messy parts: a 17.8% refund rate driven by players who found the UX confusing or the sandbox locked behind a tutorial, median playtime of 1 hour 14 minutes, and wishlists that grew from 96,000 at launch to over 205,000. The open report, shared a year after release, gave other solo developers a rare complete look at what one small, calm game could earn.

A low-pressure decorating genre faced little competition and matched what casual Steam audiences were already buying.

Early Access let him ship a solid core and keep a stream of updates and wishlist growth going without a publisher.

Tight, honest spending — $11.5K before launch — meant even a modest hit would clear its budget many times over.

Publishing the full numbers built goodwill with the developer community and turned the report itself into free distribution.

Pick a genre people pay for comfort, and treat transparency as the marketing: publishing exact revenue and refunds turned one developer's data into a story other creators shared.

In February 2025, for the game's first anniversary, Blintsov published the complete income report on Notion — revenue, refunds, wishlists, costs and playtime — and both Game World Observer and app2top covered it in detail, spreading the story to other indie developers. Furnish Master stayed in Early Access with a "Very Positive" rating on Steam, its wishlist count still climbing, an example of a side project that paid for itself many times over and funded whatever Blintsov wanted to build next.