Greetings to everyone who is, and even those who... aren’t. We sincerely greet you too.
Today, we’d like to share the results of the Breathedge 2 demo — along with a few thoughts, both on-topic and completely uninvited. And yes, in case you missed it (which you very well might have — who knows, maybe that was the plan all along), Breathedge 2 had its very own playable demo during the recent Steam Next Fest, featuring the Man, the Suit, the Bum, and a few other essential participants of our outer space nonsense.
The demo is now over. Gone. Vanished. Vaporized into the vacuum of space.
But don’t worry — we wrote a very serious report. So buckle up. Let’s go.
Why Even Bother With a Demo? Well, as fans of all things outdated and unnecessary, we naturally love demos. Ah, the good old days — when you could buy a gaming magazine, pop in a CD, and mess around with a dozen demo versions until your PC begged for mercy. It tickles our nostalgia in all the right places. For us, as players, demos have always been a way to poke a game with a stick and decide whether it’s worth your money, time, and remaining will to live. And that’s important.
Sure, some players might try the demo, realize the game’s not their cup of space soup, and never come back — instead of buying it blindly and leaving angry reviews. But hey, why ruin lives when you can just… not?
Also, demos are a great way to gather feedback, stats, and check if the game’s development vector is on track — or, you know, kind of... hanging low. The good news? In our case, the vector’s looking pretty perky. Don’t believe it? Yeah... us neither.
Beyond blind faith and eyeballing the angle of whatever's hanging wherever, there are more precise metrics — and yes, we're talking about numbers. We love numbers. They look like letters, but they’re numbers. We tried counting with letters once. It didn’t go well. So we crunched some actual digits and here’s what we got:
1. This is number one. It's very important. It starts finger-counting, this list, and arguably the entire concept of numbers. So, respect.
2. Alright, alright, to the point. As a result of the recent Steam Next Fest, the Breathedge 2 demo ranked #20 among the most popular demos of the entire festival. And considering there were over 2000 demos (2,421 if you trust Steam’s filters — or a hundred million billion if you don’t), that’s not too shabby. This clearly means people know about the project, people are waiting for the project, and it makes perfect sense for the Man to keep fiddling with duct tape. Not Gothic levels of popularity, sure... but come on — that would’ve been weird.
3. Steam reviews: 92% positive (around 700 reviews in total). That’s a solid situation. What did the negative reviews say? Well, if we exclude the ones that looked like they were typed with feet, most of the criticism surprisingly wasn’t aimed at our razor-sharp, high-IQ humor, but at certain gameplay things — like oxygen limits and intuitive clarity. Since it was a demo, not the final build, we hope the polished release version will satisfy even the pickiest players. As for the foot-typers — unfortunately, we can’t help them. They’ve been excluded from the stats.
4. New wishlist additions: 35,000. This number is usually pretty wobbly and depends heavily on media exposure. And as you all know, our marketing strategy is: we don’t have one. So +35k in a week? That’s not just good — it’s very good. What does a wishlist mean? No, it’s not just something to show our moms. It’s an indicator of value — the more wishlists, the higher your project ranks on Steam and the more visibility, support, and goodies you get during release. The more awesome you are, the more awesome you become. That’s the algorithm.
5. Our current Awesomeness Ranking™ is around #118 among all upcoming games on Steam. If we were GTA, that’d be kinda "meh". But we’re not. For us, that’s ridiculously cool. Being small has its perks. Seriously, floating in the top 100-ish is great. Thank you to everyone who wishlisted the project — it powers our chicken hearts with joy. As we mentioned earlier, we love numbers. Even if we can’t count.
6. And for the curious (especially those making games themselves): what does #118 actually mean in raw numbers? It means over 250,000 wishlists. Is that a lot? Oh yes. Is that too little? Oh yes. Depends how you look at it. We’re happy with it.
And now, some more numbers — slightly more grounded this time, directly tied to the game itself and player activity within it. As you might’ve guessed, we were collecting stats (no personal data though — sadly, we still don’t know the name of the maniac who managed to die 624 times). Gameplay stats helped us figure out what’s lagging, what’s putting people to sleep, and what’s waking them up. It’s useful stuff — especially if you know how to analyze it and configure it properly... which, frankly, is not exactly our strong suit.
Warning! Mild spoilers ahead. Nothing major — more like “if you know, you know.” Anyway, the numbers:
- 57,518 people played the demo.
That’s the entire population of Greenland, or 66 Vaticans, or 0.001 Tokyos — take your pick. - 88,668 added the game to their accounts.
(31,150 of them never launched it. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. And that’s fine.) - 1,541,120 oxygen warnings triggered.
Oxygen is pretty easy to find in the demo, so it’s not a super common threat.
Which means only one thing: our players are hardcore oxygen minimalists, willing to flirt with death rather than inhale a dirty worm.
We salute you. - 45,978 installed the Attendant’s head.
It doesn’t do much in the demo, but we promise it’ll be more fun in the full version.
(Promise to promise.) - 64,468 deaths of the Man.
Statistically, each player died at least once.
Realistically, some died many times, some never at all.
Either way — poor guy. - 48,074 interphones repaired.
Which means 9,444 players never made it past the first quest and probably suffocated somewhere between the main menu and the opening cutscene — or just decided to settle down with the Hobo in the train vestibule. Respect. - 34,702 completed the FineBot quest.
It’s a bizarre and mind-blowingly optional side task, but hey — you did it. - 20,546 unlocked the WTF area.
That’s less than half who finished the FineBot, which is... interesting.
This matches feedback we’ve seen in reviews and on streams: it’s not always clear which quests are critical and which are just background noise.
We hear you. We're fixing it. - 19,417 completed the main questline up to the Arrow.
Which raises the question — who are the 1,129 players who opened WTF but gave up five minutes later?
Reveal yourselves. - 10,562 discovered the 10G antenna.
Not bad, considering it’s a secondary point that’s barely emphasized. - 5,101 cracked the code-locked train car.
We hid the code well. Maybe... too well.
We’re scratching our feathers trying to decide whether to ease it up a bit.
In addition to this delightful batch of stats (of which we actually have way more — but cramming all of it in here would’ve been... odd), we also collected your feedback directly from inside the game using the built-in feedback form. Did anyone actually take advantage of this unique opportunity to tell us to go screw ourselves from within the game itself? Yes — a couple did. We’re still going through that couple of messages: sorting, reviewing, and processing.
One of our chickens — the one with the bloodshot eyes from sleep deprivation — is now fully dedicated to this task. So far, over 4,000 player messages have been reviewed — ranging from simple “I liked it” comments to long, thoughtful essays on every bolt and oxygen leak. It’s awesome. Seriously — huge thanks to everyone who took the time to write in!
Almost forgot — an important announcement: YES-YES-YES-YES-YES WE’LL ADD Y-AXIS INVERSION!!!!111 Whew... that was close.
And finally — a general generalization. We’ve watched a ton of streams, big and small. We’ve seen plenty of reviews, read your feedback, sipped tea, analyzed stats, and personally sat through a decent number of playthroughs — with friends, grandmas, and testers alike. Amazingly, even our studio cat Arseny managed to finish the demo... which is surprising, since we don’t have a studio. Or a cat.
At this point, it’s clear: the overall direction is correct. We’ve managed to fix most of the major issues from the first game (thanks in no small part to your relentless criticism — so keep being relentless, critics). Sure, there are still a few rough spots — like the mentioned quest confusion and occasional hiccups with intuitiveness — but nothing too critical, even for our crooked chicken wings to patch.
Right now we’re actively working on the full release version, crafting the roadmap we promised to craft, drinking tea, and trying very hard not to look at the ever-rising value of our stock.
Ha! Gotcha. Of course, we are watching our stock value very closely. Always. That’s just how we roll. We’re also watching the development of our second project very closely. Some people say we should not only be watching but actually doing something — just like with the stock market. But we believe in ourselves. And in our belief in ourselves. If you haven’t added Canyons to your wishlist yet, and you're currently experiencing an acute phase of wishlistitis, here’s a helpful little link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2708860/Canyons/
You can reach out to us on our Discord.
Alongside good old email, it’s a real chance to knock directly on our foreheads with your thoughts, feelings, ideas, or even irrational emotional outbursts. Go on — we can take it:
https://discord.gg/uezQcU7
We mentioned email, so here it comes — our dear, beloved, slightly electric communication channel: [email protected]
And of course, if by some cosmic mistake you still haven’t added Breathedge 2 to your wishlist — you’ve got time exactly until June 27, insert_year_here. After that, it’s over. So hurry up:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2412960/Breathedge_2
