It all started in March 2017, amidst the rumors of Steam, the largest games digital distribution platform, closing their Greenlight program and replacing it with an unknown yet submission fee.
The time was right to launch our Greenlight campaign for Gorescript, a classic shooter, inspired by the 90s first person shooter games, such as Doom and Quake, developed by a single person, Sergiu Bucur, in a custom build engine.
From the start, the game got a bit of attention because of its minimal graphical style and it’s abstract enemies (yet full of meaning for some players – \o/ Illuminati Confirmed \o/).
The game aimed to capture the fast paced, frantic action game play from the retro shooters and we’re glad some players caught on to that. As a bonus in our campaign, we prepared a staged launch for a demo, and we got players involved in the game from day 1 of the campaign.
Our game got picked up by several press outlets and youtubers even some from Romania, where the FPS culture is quite strong, thanks to famous multiplayer titles.
Being able to play the game got us the attention we needed from the communities interested in playing games before their launch and we greatly benefited from their feedback.
Talking about our game with other game developers and sharing our experience was also a key factor in focusing the attention on our Greenlight campaign. Sergiu, the game developer wrote a piece that was featured on Gamasutra, talking about the experience of developing Gorescript’s predecessor, Gorescript Classic.
All of this managed to get enough votes under the belt, with 66% Yes votes, and Gorescript was greenlit on March 30th.
As the campaign ended, our plans for the pre-launch began to unfold, we set up a game launch date, went several times through the pros and cons and continued to engage the people who already fell in love with Gorescript.
We updated the demo of the game and gave our eager players one more level to explore and talk about. We managed to get picked up by one of the famous Romanian youtubers, I Hate Pink, as we promised him there won’t be any pink in the game.
His videos (he made 2 of them) managed to gather over 85.000 views with a lot of his followers hitting the “like” button.
Another interesting step before, just before the launch was Sergiu and Nikos appearance in the SML Podcast, where the masterminds of Gorescript got the chance to talk about the game, its inspiration, its special features and unpronounceable names.
And let’s get to the juicy part :D!
Launch day came and it felt like several days all packed into one!
Just in the launch day, we arranged for an appearance live on one of the most watched technology shows in Romania, I Like IT, and since pixelated horrors do not kill themselves, Sergiu and Nikos went on the show.
As the weekend unfolded, more good news came in, we got on the radar of two of the most famous game press outlets: Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer.
Here’s what they had to say:
“…this is a classic-style FPS, but oh so much more deadlier, and presented with some charmingly enormous pixels.”
RockPaperShotgun
“We’ve seen a few other classic FPSes on this list and Gorescript fits right at home among them, a lot of fun in its own right.”
PC Gamer
Right now the game is also part of the Steam Summer Sale with a 15% discount, until the 5th of July.
But this is not the end, we’re planning to treat our players with some more surprises and, in about a month, we’re going to launch a level editor for the game and enable the fans of the game to torture their friends with custom made levels containing craziness we’re not even capable of conjuring.