Good question.
Luck is always an element of success. I’m confident there are other indie titles with similar levels of gameplay, music, and art style, with just as much passion poured in, that just never caught the viral wave. It’s a big world out there.
Obviously the dev set their project up well for that success, making it more likely, but it’s still a dice roll.
I’ve heard very successful movie/TV actors talk about seeing nobodies blow their minds in local theater productions, people who never got the stroke of luck required to make it big. Plenty of successful people forget that they owe no small part of their success to luck.
I suspect that was part of the idea. It’s a murder show taking place in NYC, but still limits the murders to a single building. It’s the extreme version of this quirk of the genre.
Major difference is it’s one(ish) murder per season, rather than one per episode.