From as far back as Josh can remember he's always wanted to make video games, to give people the same excitement and escape that he was able to experience with some of the first games he played - Simpsons Hit & Run, Jak & Daxter, Rez, RuneScape..

His family who were funding his education had other plans, and he was told to "pursue a more stable career" and that it "wasn't realistic". Disheartened, he chose to study Mathematics at University instead of Computer Science, in the view of becoming an accountant.

However, as his studies went on he took up more and more Computer Science modules, achieving first class results and refound the passion he originally felt.

After graduating he decided to go for it, and teach himself as many programming languages as possible to get a job as a software developer, and hopefully later teach himself game dev.

At the start of 2020, a few months in to his first junior software developer position, he opened up Unity for the first time.

Over the first 2 years he participated in game jams and made a handful of small games - Limb-o (a rage game where you start as a single leg and collect more limbs as the game goes on), Pistol Shrimp Escape (a point and click puzzle game), Full Metal Cannon (a rogue-lite shoot em up arcade game), all published to itch.io as he learnt the ropes of not only game dev but software dev too.

Then came the big one. While still working the full-time day job, Josh spent 2.5 years building Wizard Shrimp in his evenings and weekends — a bullet-hell roguelite starring a magical crustacean. The company was officially incorporated as PISTOL SHRIMP GAMES LTD in April 2022, later rebranding to WIZARD SHRIMP GAMES LTD in February 2024.

Wizard Shrimp launched on December 13, 2024. After two weeks: 65 sales — mostly friends and family. By late January, it had crawled to 120 copies.

Then everything changed. On January 28, 2025, a single TikTok video went nuclear — 2 million views in 48 hours. The comments were brutal. Thousands of strangers called the game "trash" and said Josh had "wasted his life."

But in the attention economy, visibility wins. Content creators rallied. YouTubers covered the game. Within 4 days, sales exploded from 120 to over 1,100 copies. By the end, lifetime sales hit 1,800, generating ~£2,000 net profit — all with zero marketing spend.

Every penny was reinvested back into the company.

At the start of 2025 while still supporting Wizard Shrimp, Josh had an even more ambitious plan for the next project.

He frequented a local cafe called "The Hop", and inspired by an old flash game he used to play called "Winterbells", he came up with an idea for a custom built mini arcade machine that would fit perfectly with the cafe's brand and vibe.

After approaching the owners, they were very keen on housing the arcade machine so Josh set off on the journey of creating it.

Knowing absolutely nothing about arcade machines, electronics or woodworking it was an incredibly optimistic project not without its twists and turns but it turned out really well.

A big YouTube video showing the whole process of this project is currently in the works and will be published to his channel when editing is complete. Subscribe so you don't miss out!

The £2,000 gained from Wizard Shrimp, in addition to another £2,500 out of his own pocket was invested to hire Toltus, a professional pixel artist from Malmö, Sweden, to create stunning high-quality sprites, animations, and UI for the next game.

The result: Mushroom Clicker — a cozy idle game launched on November 28, 2025. Professional translations in 12 languages opened the global market. In just 72 hours, the game moved 464 units and recouped 25% of its £4,000 budget.

Josh adopted radical financial transparency, sharing exact income, expenses, and tax breakdowns on the studio's YouTube channel — building a devoted community invested in the studio's success.

Now, the studio's third title — Vanquish Karn, a puzzle adventure game set in the bizarre extra-dimensional town of Harde Drivea — is in development. Steam page and more information coming soon!