Spirit Swap developer Alex Abou Karam on marketing a game in times of war

When Alex Abou Karam set out to found game studio Soft Not Weak in 2019, their main goal was to create an outlet that prioritized friendship and creativity over anything else. They had cut their teeth in gaming as a community manager and as an iPhone game developer, and like many other queer games industry workers, yearned for a space that felt driven by people like them.

Soft Not Weak's first game, Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To, was released in 2025 to a lot of acclaim, especially in the indie games world. It has great music, fun gameplay, and authentic characters with backgrounds similar to those of the devs. It has a similar vibe to the iconic match-three game by Bandai Namco, Sailor Moon Drops; this is by no means an accident.

“In 2019, I lost my job. I was a little bit disillusioned with everything, and I was playing a lot of Sailor Moon Drops,” Abou Karam said in one of our video calls. The licensed game was released in Japan in 2015 and the U.S. in 2016, but Bandai Namco cancelled the game in 2019. “I was really sad about it, and my best friends and roommates at the time were like, ‘What if we just make a substitute for fun? What if we make a little match-three game just for fun?’ And we started working on what would become, eventually, Spirit Swap.”