2D platformer Chester free until tomorrow night to gain fans for Steam Greenlight
"If this helps to finally get the game onto Steam giving away a few thousand copies would easily be worth it."
Indie developer Brilliant Blue-G has discounted its 2D platformer Chester by 100 per cent off its usual $9.99 price on Desura for a couple of days to increase its chances of success on Steam Greenlight when it launches.
"This 100 per cent off of the usual $9.99 price point is an attempt to build up as many of you delicious Chester fans as possible before Steam launches their Greenlight platform, where fan support will hopefully be able to finally get Chester onto Steam," said the developer on its official blog.
The sale began on the 23rd and was supposed to last 48 hours, but Brilliant Blue-G's Benjamin Friedrich decided to extend the offer by 12 hours when we told him we'd be writing about it. The sale is now slated to end 6p.m. BST.
When asked about how successful the sale has been, Friedrich said that he gave away 3000 copies yesterday. Comparatively, he'd only sold about 2000 total prior to the giveaway.
"I'm not too concerned about having given away too much, as there are a lot of gamers out there and this may have finally given the word of mouth it's been lacking up until now. If this helps to finally get the game onto Steam giving away a few thousand copies would easily be worth it," he explained.
The only snag in his plan was that if users uninstall the game on Desura, they won't be able to reinstall without purchasing it.
"My intention with the sale was to give a permanent copy of the game to everyone who grabbed it in that 48 hours, so I'm currently looking into a few different solutions to this problem."
He brainstormed a few possible alternatives to continue his aggressive Chester promotion. "Currently I'm planning on returning the game to a 90 per cent off sale after this ends so those that want to grab it for one dollar can, and then I'll probably be using the Facebook page or Reddit to give away free keys to anyone that wants one for another 24 hour period."
So what is Chester, you may ask? It looks like a retro platformer with a very diverse art style. In fact, you can swap out environment skins to make each level look completely different.
See it in action in the launch trailer below, then download it on Desura.