Enjoy this Eldritch autopsy

David Pittman, developer of Eldritch, has published a post-mortem on his game’s development and sales performance. In it, Pittman reveals that the Lovecraftian rogue-like game was a modest success for his fledgling company, generating about $215,000 in revenue. There were some bumps in the tale. Most notably, Pittman admits that he should’ve explained the roadmap for development to purchasers during the Early Access phase of the game.

What I could have done better is to effectively communicate that the game was content complete. In this age of early access games and perennial updates, calling Eldritch a “beta” while presenting a Minecraft-inspired aesthetic invited players to misunderstand the state of the game and my intentions for it. (To this day, some users still mistake Eldritch on Steam for an early access game!)

Pittman also says that the sales revenue generated by his free expansion based on Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness were not as robust as he had hoped. He theorizes that the timing of the release may not have been the best since it was so close to the Christmas holiday. Still, Pittman is positive about the performance of the game overall. He is now considering whether to move on to his next project or spend a little time adding minor features to Eldritch.

Check out my review of Eldritch here.