Brigador Killers devs embrace being 'boy slop' — and think chasing mainstream appeal is a trap

Stellar Jockeys, the studio behind hardcore mech sims Brigador and the upcoming Brigador Killers, isn't losing sleep over players who bounce off their games. In a recent conversation, lead artist Jack Monahan and lead designer Hugh Monahan laid out a surprisingly clear-eyed philosophy about making games that aren't for everyone — and why they think that's fine.

The quote that sums it up came from a vtuber who streamed Brigador Killers, found it wasn't her thing, and told her chat plainly: "I don't care about mechs! I care about the engineers! I care about the people who pilot them! Give me that stuff. All this mech stuff, it's all boy slop!" Jack's response? "I think we make boy slop, but that's okay. First of all, somebody's got to do it." The Monahans see the challenge of getting players to buy into their dense, crunchy world as a design problem worth solving — but they don't resent the ones for whom it never clicks. Jack also pushed back on the idea that chasing mainstream appeal is a safe creative bet, arguing it produces a strange inversion: "When you're trying to deliver what you think people want, you're actually holding a weird mirror not to them, but to yourself. It creates this weird inversion of saying, 'Actually, I think you're idiots, and I think you're idiots in this way, and so here's what I think idiots want.'" He also pointed to an unintentional detail in Brigador's 50-plus 90s-style pre-rendered character portraits — a fan noticed every character had the same cheekbone structure as Jack himself. The lesson he drew: "Be honest, be true, because it's all going to come leaking out one way or another."

Brigador originally launched to poor sales before finding its audience and becoming a cult classic in the mech sim space — which gives the Monahans real credibility when talking about niche games and financial survival. Stellar Jockeys sits in a lineage of studios that made uncompromising, deeply systemic games and paid a commercial price for it; the Monahans name-check that tension directly. Hugh Monahan framed the approachability question through a literary lens, comparing Ursula K. Le Guin — deep but widely readable — to Dostoevsky, whose genius came wrapped in genuine difficulty. The implication is that both modes are valid, and that the market has room for games that demand something from the player.

Brigador Killers is still in development, and the interview suggests Stellar Jockeys has no intention of sanding down the edges to chase a broader audience. If anything, the Monahans sound more committed than ever to the crunchy, uncompromising design that defines their work.