Hello everyone!
I want to thank all of you who purchased Bonerooms and supported the launch! I did my best to jump into every single stream I saw on Twitch and watch/chat along, and it was a blast watching folks figure out the little quirks of the items and enemies. The highlight is always seeing folks interact with the Decoys for the first time :D
Now, it's no secret that Bonerooms didn't exactly explode in popularity. It wasn't really marketed heavily due to being just kind of a goofy side project of mine, and then releasing during a big Halloween Event didn't help much either! The game's player count has suffered because of this, meaning many of you who purchased the game have had no other players online to play with. This is obviously not the experience I wanted for you all, so with that in mind...
I'm going to be making Bonerooms Free to Play with its first update. I've been getting nudges in this direction from the community and from some fellow devs, and I think it's a good direction to move into. I had intended to sell Bonerooms in 4-packs for extremely cheap, and didn't find out until launch week that Steam had discontinued the ability to do multi-packs awhile ago, which threw a big wrench in the plans - but it was too late to switch it to Free, as this is something you must reach out to Steam to do and it was already closing in on Halloween.
Of course, there's one glaring issue with switching the game to a Free to Play model so soon after launch - what about those that have already paid for it? My first idea was to just refund everyone, as the game hasn't been out long enough for me to receive a payment from Steam yet, so it would be easiest to just refund those who paid for it and it'd be done. However, this wound up not being something I'm able to do through Steam.
So, plan B: a Supporter DLC. I'm going to be adding a Supporter DLC with this first update, that will go live at the same time the game goes Free to Play. This DLC will add a few cosmetic items to customize your character with, just as a very simple bonus for folks who want to support me as the developer - but is entirely optional. Those that purchased the game will GET THIS DLC FOR FREE, as well as maybe another little bonus if I can figure out how to get it work from the Steamworks side of things.
Hopefully this will spare any hard feelings of the game switching away from a paid model!
I'm hoping to have this update and pricing change in effect by Christmas, but some of that will depend on the logistics of switching things over.
In the meantime, here's a little tease of some of the stuff coming in the first update. Thanks again for supporting Bonerooms!
