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[ashecitism]

http://www.pcgamer.com/frozenbytes-new-stealth-game-demo-is-also-a-pricing-contest/

Trine developer Frozenbyte revealed its next project, Shadwen, a few months ago, with a trailer, some screens, and a promise that it would take the stealth genre “back to its roots.” Today the studio announced the release of a “sneak peek demo,” and a pretty good reason to give it a try: The more that it's played over the next five days, the lower the price of the full game will be when it comes out.

The exact formula is a closely-guarded secret, but the short version is that as the global community score goes up, the launch price goes down. Currently, the community score is 55,665, and the launch price is sitting at $34.7242809, which I expect will be rounded appropriately when the time comes. You can play as much as you want to push down the price, and Frozenbyte retains the right to push it back up if it turns out that shenanigans were afoot at any time during the demo period. No cheating, please.

http://www.shadwen.com/

This goes till the 29th and there's a limit it can go down, but they didn't specifiy the number.

 

[Xamtheking]

This is the good version of "Augment your Pre-Order"

 

[ashecitism]

This goes till the 29th and there's a limit it can go down, but they didn't specifiy the number.

This is the good version of "Augment your Pre-Order"

lol

 

[Glass Rebel]

That's a pretty cool idea. Will download and play.

 

[JaseC]

This goes till the 29th and there's a limit it can go down, but they didn't specifiy the number.

Wok said in the Steam thread that the maximum possible discount is 16.66%, which aligns with the rules saying that the final launch price may be 10-20% cheaper than the base price, but it's also stated that FrozenByte reserves the right to change either price, so the discount could end up being higher if enough people get involved.

 

[AJLma]

Woah. That is a genius idea if you're confident that your will find an audience game. Downloading.

 

[EDarkness]

The game looks great. I'm not really a fan of stealth games, but I might give it a try to help those who are interested in it.

 

[shortsFortallPeople]

an interesting way to build up some good will after having left Trine 3 somewhat half baked.

 

[JoelFB]

Wok said in the Steam thread that the maximum possible discount is 16.66%, which aligns with the rules saying that the final launch price may be 10-20% cheaper than the base price, but it's also stated that FrozenByte reserves the right to change either price, so the discount could end up being higher if enough people get involved.

Just to be clear, that's incorrect. There's some reasonable limits but it can go way down from the starting price for sure. Can't go free and we won't start paying you if you cheat the system, but the more players we have, the cheaper it will be.

- Joel, Frozenbyte, developers of Shadwen

 

[Beast780]

It worked on me, downloading!

 

[iamsirjoshua]

Will definitely be downloading this later tonight. Great idea!

 

[Ludens]

Isn't 35$ a bit too much? I was expecting 20$ or something like that as full price.
How long is the game?

 

[JaseC]

Just to be clear, that's incorrect. There's some reasonable limits but it can go way down from the starting price for sure. Can't go free and we won't start paying you if you cheat the system, but the more players we have, the cheaper it will be.

- Joel, Frozenbyte, developers of Shadwen

Ah, nice.

 

[Resilient]

Isn't 35$ a bit too much? I was expecting 20$ or something like that as full price.
How long is the game?

for real??
I lol'd

 

[Ludens]

for real??
I lol'd

A price similar to Trine 3. I need to understand the scope of the game, is it comparable to Styx?

 

[Metroidvania]

A price similar to Trine 3.

Didn't Trine 3 go over pretty poorly, though? I imagine this is at least in part a response to that whole issue.

Cool incentive, at any rate.

 

[Ludens]

Didn't Trine 3 go over pretty poorly, though? I imagine this is at least in part a response to that whole issue.

Cool incentive, at any rate.

Dunno, I found it great, the only bad thing is the game is incomplete, but what is playable is good.
Anyway I did my part and completed the demo.

 

[Lumination]

The skeptic in me thinks this is a ploy to have people ok with the price of the game because they "earned" it.

Doesn't matter though, cool idea is cool.

 

[ebullientprism]

This looks amazing.

 

[Fitz]

I only heard of this about an hour ago, I just finished playing through the demo after about 30 minutes and it's really quite nice. It feels like a game based around the Trine thief character but in 3rd person, which was probably the intent. It seems a little wonky in places, setting the angle of the dart trap for example, and some of the animation transitions, but the core is really fun, hopefully with a bit of polish the full game will provide a nice sandbox experience.

 

[Schlomo]

Seems fun, but I couldn't play it for more than 10 minutes without controller support.

 

[AmaterasuOni]

Better than the latest Thief? I'm in.

 

[Thraktor]

I quite enjoyed the demo, the combination of physics based grappling hook mechanics and rewind button allows for some fun tightly-timed actions (such as causing a barrel to drop on an enemy, and taking out a second enemy at the exact second it hits him). The only thing that bugged me was that I wasn't able to watch a real-time replay of the level after I completed it. It would be a fairly easy thing to implement, and it would be pretty satisfying to watch my "perfect run", as if I hadn't been constantly screwing up and rewinding.

Seems fun, but I couldn't play it for more than 10 minutes without controller support.

It's got controller support, I played through the demo without issue on my 360 controller.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Interesting offer. Looking forward to playing it later tonight in any case, I've always liked Frozenbyte's work.

 

[shandy706]

They should have started it at $500, LOL

 

[Haunted]

Interesting experiment. That's one way to get people to check out your demo.

 

[zerokoolpsx]

Why the hell not. Will be downloading it tonight.

 

[cackhyena]

Right up my alley.

 

[shiyrley]

I just tried the game and had a blast. It's awesome, I love it, it's so much fun, the rewind / pause mechanic makes the game unique and fun as hell.

Killing guards from ledges seemed a little buggy tho, I hope that gets sorted out. Also awesome promo.

 

[magwizsorc]

Going in, I just prefer third-person stealth so much.

 

[-Horizon-]

That's pretty cool of them to do.

 

[justjim89]

Performance feels really poorly optimized. Can't get above like 15 fps on any settings.

 

[PapaEmeritus]

Nice marketing campaign to launch a game at 19.99 when you wanted it at 19.99

Makes it seem like people are getting a "deal"

 

[Ivan Amiibo]

Stealth back to its roots...crack down?

 

[vg260]

Nice marketing campaign to launch a game at 19.99 when you wanted it at 19.99

Makes it seem like people are getting a "deal"

That's my gut reaction to this.

 

[Thraktor]

Performance feels really poorly optimized. Can't get above like 15 fps on any settings.

I had no problem running it at 1080p at near max settings on my R9 280, which is hardly a top of the line card. Are you using the higher AA settings? Those use supersampling, so they're going to require a very beefy machine no matter how well optimised the game is.

 

[Lijik]

Played through the demo twice, once lethally and using all the gadgets and other nonlethally. This game is really fucking cool, cant wait for the final version.

I wonder if the time rewind mechanic was there from the beginning or added later to ease the chaos the physics can produce. At one point I thought I was being real slick pulling down a stack of crates with my grappling hook to distract guards - until one of those stray boxes killed someone from above without my knowing and caused an alarm. Wouldve been frustrating if the game had a hard game over, but instead its just a kinda funny mishap.

 

[justjim89]

The rewind definitely seems like a byproduct of the physics chaos, but it really works. It's like having a continuous quicksave going. I have no idea though how you're supposed to go non-lethally since the little girl only follows the critical path right through the guards' patrol paths. Ended up killing most of them since there's no knockout. Or at least not one I noticed. I thought dropping a crate on a guard's head would do something, but nothing happened.

This seems like a really cool game, though.

 

[Lijik]

My nonlethal run was mostly making noise with the crates/barrels to distract guards from their post which then clears a path for the girl. Theres also a gadget that runs in a direction to distract guards in a pinch. Its pretty easy to get around the patrols yourself so its a matter of figuring out where the best place to make noise is.

 

[justjim89]

Hmmm, I'll have to try that. Just the exploring with the grappling hook is fun. When I figured out you could kill shield guards from above, I went on something of a murder spree.

 

[I speel my dreenk]

Cool concept and pretty fun, but pretty rough in the physics and AI departments - feels like a Frozenbyte game. Which, all things considered, I'm down for!

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Very cool concept for the demo event. Great to see a middle tier 3D stealth game, efforts like this are pretty much nonexistent these days, and this one is very ambitious. I'm keeping an eye on this one.