Indie game Backpack Battles surpasses 100k copies sold

Released in early access on March 8, Backpack Battles is a PvP game with automatic inventory management. Players take on enemies using items from their backpack, finding powerful synergies by combining different foods, weapons, potions, and other elements commonly found in an RPG inventory. In addition, asynchronous multiplayer allows you to compete with other players in ranked play.

PlayWithFurcifer, based in Germany, developed the game Backpack Battles. They started working on it as the side project while simultaneously developing their roguelite title Furcifer's Fungeon, similar to Vampire Survivors. But Backpack Battles turned out to be an unexpected success. As PlayWithFurcifer described in a recent YouTube video, the game was created using their favorite engine, Godot. In late May 2023, they released a demo that attracted over 100 concurrent players.

In June 2023, several popular Chinese influencers started streaming the game, attracting many new users. With the support of publisher IndieArk, PlayWithFurcifer quickly localized the demo to Chinese, which turned out to be a very smart move with a positive impact on player numbers. Backpack Battles became the team's main project after the 0.5 update. Soon after, the demo caught the attention of popular streamers around the world and reached nearly 19,000 concurrent players in November 2023. As of February 7, Backpack Battles has amassed more than 471,000 wishlists, indicating that the game has the potential to become a hit.

Over the weekend, PlayWithFurcifer announced that Backpack Battles has reached 100K copies sold in less than two days since launching in Early Access. "As a development team, our only desire is for people to enjoy our game. It's a dream come true to see the game resonate with so many. We will continue to work hard to make Backpack Battles the best game we can," the developers said.

Backpack Battles currently has an “overwhelmingly positive” rating on Steam, with 96% of 2295 reviews being positive. According to data from SteamDB, it peaked with more than 19 thousand concurrent players shortly after its release. The number of players is constantly growing, reaching 32,635 currently active users a few days ago.