Better together than apart
Piece by Piece And Piece by Piece are two different games. The first is a cute title in which we follow a little fox who opens his shop and has to manage the requests of his customers, while the second is a platform game mixed with puzzles in which you have to put the pieces together to move forward. In short, apart from their name, the two titles share little in common.
But seeing that the two games were released a few days apart, the press did not fail to relay this information, which allowed both titles to benefit from quite a spotlight. It could have stopped there, until the two studios decided to work hand in hand, rather than making the other invisible. Like a Barbenheimer video game version, which this time would not need to find a name that would bring together the two titles, Gamkat (and its distributor No More Robots) and Neon Polygons had the good idea of creating a bundle bringing together the two games on Steamwith a small reduction which would therefore encourage you to buy both Piece by Piece. Which turned out to be a great marketing coup.
Mike Rose of No More Robots explains that the launch of Piece by Piece (the cute store management game) had decent numbers, without being particularly good. Seeing the other Piece by Piece being launched in the same period, the idea of a bundle came up and completely changed the trajectory of both games:
“ When the game was initially announced, we found that another game, Piece by Piece, was also announced around the same time. This didn’t worry us too much, because our releases didn’t coincide, which risked creating confusion… And they announced their release date: two days after ours. Oh. My first reaction was that it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Then, after talking with the developers of the other game, we thought maybe we could make the best of the situation. So, we grouped the two games together in a pack and applied a 10% discount on them, just for fun. »
Result : the first Piece by Piece sold three times more than expected, and 50% of its sales came from the bundle :
“ 50% of people who bought our game acquired it in a bundle with the other Piece by Piece. But it’s not just about the bundle: awareness of the game has exploded and we now have an impressive number of wishlists that we hope to convert into sales soon. It’s hard to draw a real lesson from all of this, because we didn’t plan to do anything other than “do the best we can in a potentially bad situation.” But I guess that’s a lesson in itself? Can good things happen when we try to act kindly in difficult situations? Let’s say that. »
A story which actually ends very well for two games which would undoubtedly have passed off the radar without this strange coincidence. Sometimes chance does things well, as long as you know how to take the right opportunities.