Hi friends, I hope you've been doing well!
I have an update for you today on some upcoming changes:
Firstly, in two weeks (on August 25th), Winter Knight's price will be adjusted by a dollar, from 13.99 to 14.99.
Why? Well, Winter Knight is basically already discounted. It has more words than a full length novel, more visuals than the vast majority of VNs of its length, and a staggering amount of original music, all for less than 15 bucks. But, I wanted it to be something players could grab easily even without a discount, so I priced it at less than what I thought was fair to me.
Unfortunately, I've found that steam as a storefront doesn't work like that. It's very difficult to sell something here if there isn't a shiny discount slapped on, no matter what the actual cost might be. Combined with steam's high cut, it becomes difficult as a dev to do this often.
As you may have guessed, Winter Knight's sales figures have been rather dismal, converting at less than my most conservative estimates (around 2% at launch, and around 3 - 4% now. If you aren't familiar with steam's averages, yeah, that's pretty bad, haha.)
So, paradoxically, in order for me to offer it for less (and actually make sales), I have to increase it first. It will still be only fifteen bucks at base; if you've been waiting for a deeper discount, I hope you'll be patient a little longer.
I really, truly appreciate your understanding. It's been a rocky few months for me; I want to keep making games, and your support is what makes that possible.
Extra Content
As a thank you, I'll be adding bonus content to the base game in the form of playable short stories. These will be unlocked after getting the true ending, and show scenes and memories that didn't fit in the main story. I had thought about doing DLC, but feel now that it's better to just add it to the base for everyone to play.
I'm not certain how many I'll add at this point, but the first story is already written, and I hope to have news soon on when it will be playable.
Again, these will be available to everyone who owns the base game, and I hope you'll enjoy returning to this world to experience them.
Profile Features
Steam has finally unlocked profile features for Winter Knight, which I admit caught me by surprise. (I didn't think the game met valve's requirements so I wasn't prepared to add anything aaa). For now, you can display achievements from the game; I'll be working to add trading cards and point shop items as well, once I figure out how they work on the dev backend!