Developer BetaDwarf Entertainment has had a very unconventional history, to say the least. The team began as a group of squatters, living out of an unused university classroom for several months, to work on their dream game: an action role-playing game called Forced. However, they were caught and thrown out, forcing the struggling developers to pool their savings and rent a place to live and work from. Eventually, they took their game to Kickstarter, and the campaign almost didn’t make it, but supporters who told their story caused a sudden upsurge in funding.
Despite a number of trials and setbacks, BetaDwarf was able to release its first game, and now works from an actual office in Copenhagen. It’s also preparing to launch Forced Showdown—a competitive battle-arena game, where players use collectible in-game cards to enhance their characters with special abilities and skills. In some ways, it’s like Diablo meets Hearthstone, with a combative sci-fi game show as the backdrop.
A team with such an unconventional start clearly needs to have equally unique methods of promoting its second game, so it has taken two things gamers love—Twitch streaming and discounts—and combined them to create a week-long pre-launch campaign that inventively follows the game show theme.
BetaDwarf partnered with a number of Twitch streamers and gave them early access to the game. In turn, they’re livestreaming it on their channels for a week. The campaign, which started on March 23 and ends when Forced Showdown releases on Tuesday, discounts the game in accordance to how many cumulative minutes it’s watched. Viewers might get a reward for watching, including additional discounts and early access to the game.
There is still plenty of time to watch Forced Showdown and help drive down the price of the game when it launches next week.