It’s been roughly a month or so since the multiplayer medieval survivalbox Bellwright made it into early access, and it looks as if Donkey Crew have captured a lot of gamers’ interest in spite of the Last Oasis debacle, as the studio proudly announced some high numbers in terms of unit sales and player concurrency.
According to a press release over the weekend, Bellwright has moved over 200K units, achieved “a higher than expected level of player retention” with concurrency that has moved past its launch day all-time peak, and seen “a significant portion” of players put in over 20 hours into the title, according to the studio. The game is also doing numbers on Twitch, with over 975K hours watched on the platform.
Despite the initial post-launch climb, Steamcharts does show that player numbers are beginning to settle; we do note there were just over 2K players in-game in the last 24-hour peak at the time of this writing.
The devs offered players a note of thanks, remarking its relief and excitement at how well Bellwright is being received despite the worries of entering into early access:
“Releasing a game to you, the player, is terrifying. Really, genuinely, terrifying. After years of work there is always the fear that you completely missed the mark, or – possibly worse – that you graced the mark but missed anyway. […] Over 150.000 of you [as of the blog post’s date] have decided that Bellwright is a game worthy of your time and money, and it’s growing steadily every day. It is hard to explain just how much this means to us. You have taken away the anxiety and replaced it with motivation, encouragement and even trust.”
Players have reciprocated that trust with a continued “Mostly Positive” review score on Steam, with many calling the game addicting despite its grindy nature, though there are negative reviews that complain about floaty combat or crashes. “Its basically a hybrid of The Forest, Medieval Dynasty and Life is Feudal. But with far more intuitive game mechanics,” reads one astute review.
Meanwhile, the game has continued to get multiple fixer-upper patches and a promise of a content update coming soon. As for Donkey Crew’s first early access survival title Last Oasis, there still is no news beyond April’s modkit release and repeated promise of a Season 6.
