Party time at Panic

Firewatch, a surprise hit from indie game developer Campo Santo, but published (and part funded by Panic) reached 500,000 full price purchases ($19.99) in just a month of launching.

Set in 1989 and based in Wyoming (of all places), Firewatch's main character, Henry has shunned the busy life to a mountain retreat within the Wilderness. With just a radio (with contact to a supervisor named Delilah) reconnecting you to the rest of the world. The game changes when he notices something 'strange', and takes off from there. We'll cover this im sure in an upcoming article, but right now this story focuses on the launch and partnership.

But wait Panic makes web design tools?

You're right! it does. But it also makes T-shirts, so Panic sort-of does its own thing. Thanks to @Drew, i'm also reliably informed that not only do they make the massively successful and popular Coda and Transmit tools, but Kablam itself was written using these tools. So cool things indeed (but not something i'm familiar with. Just putting that out there).

But Cable, Co-founder of Panic, has had a life long passion of video games and has been able to draw from the success of Panic to help co-fund and publish a game, possibly even utilizing Panic's reputation with developers (as lets face it, there will be a cross-over here), to help boost the game (which... you know is the aim of a publisher - to get it out there and noticed).

The actual investment made by Panic isn't public knowledge, nor will I doubt it will ever be (at least not for a long time), but I suspect whatever they spent, it will be a huge relief to Panic that they made the investment back at all.... but they did it in just one day. The launch day. Which is pretty incredible, especially considering the cost of actually making a game of this scale (staff costs, office costs hell even DSL and servers).

So what now?

Support the game and pay $20 of your hard earned bucks on the game! I know I have.

I hope this now sets a precedent for the good people of Panic, and gives them the ability to invest into future games, possibly even having a small offshoot of a publishing arm. They know how to make software, and its evident they have an excellent eye for design and know how to sell a product.

Game trailer

Obviously we are going to post the trailer. Here it is -

Published March 21, 2016
Filed under general
3 minutes to read (estimated)
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