About

Small bursts of Imagination

Hi. I’m Lance Priebe.

I’m the founder of RocketSnail. I’ve been building games, online worlds and digital toys for over 25 years.

I believe in small teams. Autonomous teams. Creative people who care deeply about what they’re making. No committees. No endless meetings. Just a small group exploring ideas, finding the fun, and delighting fans.

It’s the philosophy behind everything I’ve built. And it works.

Where It Started

In 2000, I built my first multiplayer penguin game called Experimental Penguins. Just me and my brother. Seeing what was possible.

That experiment later became Penguin Chat — a tiny online world where penguins waddled around and chatted. Simple. Silly. People loved it.

I kept building. I kept experimenting. Every small project taught me something new.

In 2005, alongside my co-founders Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko, we launched Club Penguin. A safe, imaginative virtual world for kids. It grew faster than any of us expected. By the time Disney acquired it in August 2007, we had built something that mattered — a place where millions of kids could waddle around and meet new friends.

More than 300 million players joined Club Penguin over its lifetime. That still blows my mind.

The Spin-Offs

I’ve always believed the best ideas need room to breathe. When a project outgrows a small team, the answer isn’t to build a bigger team. The answer is to spin it off and let it become its own thing.

That’s how Hyper Hippo was born. Founded in 2012, the studio grew out of RocketSnail’s DNA and went on to create AdVenture Capitalist — one of the most-played idle games ever made, with over 40 million players worldwide.

That’s how Open Owl Studios came together. Starting as OOMM Games in 2019, it evolved into a studio focused on beautifully crafted, immersive board games. Kickstarter campaigns. Physical games you can hold in your hands. A completely different medium — and just as exciting.

Small teams. Big ideas. Spin off when it’s time.

Being Early

One thing I’ve noticed looking back: we’ve always found success by being early to a new channel.

Penguin Chat and Club Penguin rode the wave of browser-based web games. The internet was becoming something families actually used at home, and we were there — building worlds that ran right in the browser, no download required. That accessibility was everything.

AdVenture Capitalist caught a different wave. We were early developers on mobile. The App Store was still young. The idle genre was barely a genre. We shipped something simple and strange, and it connected with millions of people who had a phone in their pocket and a few minutes to spare.

With Open Owl Studios, we did it again — this time on Kickstarter and the board game market. Physical games were having a moment. Crowdfunding let small teams go directly to players. We got in early, learned the craft, and built something real.

The pattern is the same every time. Find the emerging channel. Experiment fast. Be there before it’s obvious.

That’s still how we think.

How I Think About Building

I love the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. It put into words what I’d always felt intuitively.

Constraints are a gift. Small is powerful. Ship early. Stay curious. Cut the stuff that doesn’t matter and protect the stuff that does.

The best work I’ve done came from small, autonomous teams of creatives who were free to explore. Not following a rigid plan. Not chasing a competitor. Just asking: how can we delight our fans?

That question drives everything. The delight. The joy. The moment a player tries something and their face lights up. That’s what we’re chasing. Always.

Start small. Experiment constantly. Find the fun. Everything else follows.

What’s Next

The fire hasn’t dimmed. It’s bigger than ever.

I still wake up every morning thinking about online worlds. Box Critters is proof that the dream of building the next great virtual world is alive and well. Digital toys. Mini games. Worlds where strangers become friends and imagination runs wild.

Right now, we’re deep in development on Tails of Adventure: The Curse of Count Catula — a papercraft dungeon crawl board game made with the Brothers Quigley, the artists behind the original Club Penguin parties. It’s warm. It’s funny. It’s the kind of game the whole family can sit around and play together.

More worlds are coming. More games. More experiments. More small bursts of imagination, aimed straight at the joy of play.

Thanks for play!

Lance Priebe aka “rsnail”

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