Sweet 16

King of Dragon Pass was first released on 29 October 1999 — sixteen years ago today.

Since then, we updated the game and adapted it for iPhone and iPad, and licensed it for Android and Steam (both Mac and Windows). And GOG made the original version available for download. To celebrate its birthday, the game is 50% off on all platforms for a limited time!

Over the years, it has been a well-regarded indie. For example Metacritic gives it a score of 90. Rock Paper Shotgun says it’s one of the top 5 strategy games of all time. And players give it 5 stars.

It’s also sold pretty well for an indie game, over 120,000 copies on all platforms. (The exact number is a little hard to determine, since our early records seem to have vanished, and we don’t get specific numbers for channels like Humble Bundle.) But we sold the most copies on iOS. And the original has been downloaded almost as often (probably because GOG periodically runs sales that make it ridiculously cheap).

To a large degree, these numbers reflect apples and oranges. The Steam version came out only 3 months ago, and this is the first Steam sale. And there is no way of knowing how many people have bought the game for both mobile and desktop (or even more often than that). So they aren’t really a way to compare platforms or predict anything.

Still, they give us hope that an indie game can find some success in today’s market, and and helped us decide to go ahead and start working on Six Ages, the spiritual successor. Thank you to everyone who has supported King of Dragon Pass so we could do that!