SecondWindGroup
patreon
Announcing Lost & Found - Second Wind's Work for Hire Arm
🕑 Added 2025-03-04 16:00:36 +0000 UTCToday we’re excited to announce Lost & Found, the new work-for-hire arm of Second Wind.
From day one, we planned to do work-for-hire projects to help keep Second Wind sustainable. Thanks to your incredible support during our first year, we were able to hold off on that and just focus on our core content.
Now that things have settled down, stabilized, and we’re into our usual weekly grooves again, we’re finally ready to start on this next part of our journey together.
Lost & Found will provide clients with multiple areas of support including premium asset creation, trailers, dev diaries, custom projects, social media assets, and outreach strategy.
Our goal is to provide affordable support to indie developers to help their games stand out in an increasingly overcrowded market. We’re in a unique position to bring a content creator’s mindset to indie developers looking to catch people’s attention, as we ourselves have years of experience and know what we’re looking for when deciding on what games to cover.
Lost & Found will be completely separate from any of our core Second Wind output, with its own social media pages and YouTube channel. And any of the games or projects we work on will not be covered on Second Wind’s official channels in any form.
This does not extend to our personal social media accounts, and clients may still do ad campaigns with us - which of course we will properly disclose as always.
This work-for-hire arm will also not impact any of our work on Second Wind as this is being led by myself (Nick) and Javed, with Omar and Matt providing support as needed.
Our core focus remains on Second Wind and all of the shows, podcasts and livestreams we provide every week.
Patreon is and will remain our core source of funding for all of the work we do, and we’re grateful for each and every one of you that has decided to support us. We’ve continued to add additional benefits to our Patreon tiers as time has gone, and plan to keep introducing new ideas and perks to make your subscription to us as valuable as possible.
If you want to keep up with the games we’re working on, you can follow Lost & Found over on Bluesky and subscribe to the Lost & Found YouTube channel. This channel will act as a showcase of our work and curation page for the titles we provide assistance to.
We’ve already been working together with our first client, the extremely talented team at Paint Bucket Games, on their upcoming game The Darkest Files.
The Darkest Files is a historical investigation and courtroom game based on true crimes during the Second World War. Investigate cold cases, search for clues, interrogate witnesses, immerse yourself in the crimes, and defend your case in court to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The trailer linked here was developed completely in-house by Javed Sterritt with assets and support provided by the Paint Bucket Games team. We’re also helping them with social media strategy, asset creation, and outreach strategy as they quickly approach their March 25th launch date.
If you’re a developer, publisher, or anyone else that is interested in working with Lost & Found, feel free to reach out. We’re also taking in-person appointments at GDC this year.
Comments
Russell Schafer
I'm very happy to see yall moving in this direction and expanding. While I certainly plan on continuing to stay a paying member for the long run as I have been from day one, I do think that you need to have a way to expand revenue streams rather than just relying on the mood of the public. I like that you have a separate company as well. Will the profits of this be reported as well in the quarterly numbers as contributing to Second Wind's overall financial picture? I wouldn't expect that as yall are treating it as a separate branch, but I am curious.
Nick Calandra
To be clear, we’re not funding any projects with this. This is specifically companies hiring Lost and Found for work for hire projects, not a publishing deal or any of that sort of thing.
Andrew White-Winter
I know this was one of the goals from the get go, using 2W as a means to support other independent projects for the creators and owners. I'm happy you're finally able to execute this (and love the name!) This may be too much inside baseball, but will Patreon subscriptions for 2W provide perks or benefits for Lost & Found in the future? And if it provides funding for Lost & Found projects, will a certain percentage of profits from Lost & Found be funneled back into 2W to support the company? I'm still supporting and happy either way! If Dunkey can do it you all can too!
jahr
More Javed seems like a win for whoever uses your services. Good luck!
Nick Calandra
Eh those claims will be made regardless of the truth of them. Only the four people listed here in the post are working on this project, and it's Javed's full-time role now in the company as well. We'll keep things separated as outlined in this post and answer any questions as they arise! And I do think you can pin posts here, though wouldn't want to pin something like this. We can make a collection though which will house all Lost and Found related posts.
jombilywobbily
That's an even better idea! One of the reasons I suggest keeping track on Patreon, specially, is that I don't want any claims of "preference" or "bias" towards certain studios hold any weight. You worked on something outside 2W's main content, you got paid, you're not covering, that's it. I think you can't pin posts over here, can you? This site is a little behind the times, I dare say.
Nick Calandra
Something we'll figure out, but the Lost and Found YouTube channel or social pages would be the place for info. We'll gauge with the community if they're cool with us announcing new projects we're working on here on Patreon, etc.
Tim Wilson
Sounds exciting :) You all clearly have a wealth of talent and industry know-how, so a new way to help indies find success in the modern market can only be positive!
Brian S
Congrats! I'm excited for you all, and I know you'll do great work.
Snakeinthegarden
Very good trailer. Dropped comment for the algorithm. This seems like a good idea. Best of luck team!
Nick Warden
Nice! Wishlisted.
jombilywobbily
But I was told by now 2W would be all but a memory! /s I love this idea. Nick knows indie gaming like the back of his hand (never understood that saying) and the video team lending its invaluable talents to studios is just lovely. Now, I've followed both accounts, but wouldn't it be more concise to just keep a list of the games and their devs somewhere on 2W's socials. Just a list, no more information. Maybe on Discord? Maybe right here on the Patreon for newcomers as well?
Matt Couture
Very cool! Javed and the team are insanely talented, love to see you all lending your skills to support indie devs.
Lil' Cass
Cool! This is so awesome!😄I'm very eager and curious to see what amazing games come out of Lost & Found❤
