Commissioning
Custom browser games, for one audience.
Brand New Colors builds custom games that run from a link in any browser, each one made for a specific community, organization, business, or story. This page covers what commissioning one actually involves—so you can decide whether it’s right before you ever write to us.
Fit First
Is your subject good enough for a game?
Probably, if it’s specific. The subjects that work have a recognizable world, people who want different things, some kind of pressure, and decisions the insiders would recognize as theirs. A furniture shop qualified. A council district qualified. One person’s 2006 iPod qualified.
We wrote the full test down as a six-question checklist, and it’s the same one we use internally before we agree to build anything. If your subject clears it, the games get commissioned by the people closest to the world: owners, organizers, alumni, chapters, families, superfans, and teams who want their people to have something of their own.
If it can’t clear the test yet, the free Niche Game Brief exists to help you sharpen it—and a $750 Concept Session ends in a straight go / no-go recommendation, in writing.
Why the Browser
No install. No account. One link.
Zero friction
Your community meets the game the way they meet everything else you send them: a link. It opens on a phone or a desktop, plays in minutes, and asks for no sign-up, no download, and no permissions.
Yours to share
A browser game can live on your own domain, sit behind a private link, or travel through the group chat. Public or private is your call per project.
Built to keep
The finished game is deployed with a shareable link and can keep running long after launch week. Games your people want more of can grow through season drops and care plans.
What We Need From You
Bring the world. We’ll bring the systems.
The raw material of your game is knowledge you already have: the stories your people tell, the names and places that matter, the running jokes, the real constraints, the decisions someone in your world actually faces. Rough is fine. Half-formed is fine.
Practically, that means conversation time with someone who knows the world well, honest answers about who the audience really is, and feedback at the moments the game is still flexible enough to change—concepts, prototypes, and playtests. Our How We Work page walks through the collaboration in detail.
What you don’t need: game-design experience, art, a written spec, or a technical bone in your body. Close reading and systems design are our end of the table.
The Prototype
Every project starts with something playable.
A prototype is a focused three-week build that proves the core mechanic, tone, and world—one gameplay loop, one scenario, up to three screens, deployed with a shareable link your community can actually touch. Small on purpose.
The prototype is where the real design decisions get made: what the player does, what the pressure is, which details from your world carry the game and which stay in the group chat. Deciding what to leave out is half the craft.
The prototype costs $4,500, and the full fee is credited toward your finished game. Either side can stop after the prototype with nothing further owed—which keeps the risk honest in both directions.
Cost & Process
Real prices. Posted.
The full ladder lives on the Pricing page; the short version fits in three tiles.
The process runs the way How We Work describes it: you tell us about your people, we build the game together through concepts and playable prototypes, and your community stays close while the game is still flexible enough to change. A finished Niche Game runs about seven weeks of build after the prototype, with community playtest rounds along the way.
Honest Disqualifiers
When you shouldn’t commission one.
You mainly want a marketing funnel.
If the honest goal is conversions rather than the community, gamification vendors do that on purpose, and a hyper-niche game will disappoint you slowly.
The world has no decisions in it.
A subject where nobody chooses anything makes a slideshow. Some worlds are better served by a film, a book, or a very good dinner.
Nobody specific would recognize it.
“Everyone” is the one audience we can’t build for. If you can’t name the people who’d notice if we got it wrong, the idea needs the Brief before it needs a budget.
Ready when you are.
Share a few details about your people and the idea. A real person reads them and replies with an honest take.