Backpack Battles hits 640k copies sold in first month, with China accounting for nearly half of total

Backpack Battles has become one of the surprise indie hits of 2024. In its first month, the inventory management auto battler reached an impressive milestone of 640k units sold on Steam.

Gamedev couple PlayWithFurcifer and publisher IndieArk shared the figures for Backpack Battles with GameDiscoverCo’s Simon Carless. Here are the key takeaways:

• Backpack Battles reached the 640k mark on April 8, one month after its Early Access launch;
• Given that the game sold 500k units in its first two weeks, it took two more weeks to sell another 140k copies;
• China accounts for 48% of total sales, followed by Japan (11%), the US (10%), Germany (8%), and Russia (3%);
• The game surpassed 500k wishlists directly before release: Japan and Germany are the two top countries with 16.3% and 16.2% of the total, followed by the US (15.6%), China (9.9%), and Brazil (6%).

Speaking about the factors behind the success of Backpack Battles, PlayWithFurcifer cited a long-lasting demo that has been live since June 2023. Not only did it peaked at nearly 19k concurrent players, which is more than most indie titles get at full launch, but the devs also released 38 content patches for it. “The basic idea behind this approach was to build a community early. Getting players to see, try, and wishlist your game is not easy for indies,” PlayWithFurcifer told Carless.

Another reason was the game’s Asia-focused marketing, especially since publisher IndieArk is based in Shenzhen, China. Even before its EA launch, Backpack Battles was localized into Chinese and Japanese.

IndieArk and PlayWithFurcifer closely collaborated with influencers by offering them to stream the game, adding special content for the Asian audience, and sending keys in advance (two months before release!).

Last but not least, Backpack Battles also bundled with successful games in fellow genres. For example, its bundle Slay the Spire sold over 173k units, and the one with Brotato reached 57.8k copies sold.

“With a loyal and huge player base in Asia especially China for these two amazing titles, both bundles sold wildly accounting for about 35% of the total sales of Backpack Battles,” IndieArk said. “The later cross promotion with Balatro in accordance with the Deckbuilder Fest event has then successfully extended the launch heat thanks to LocalThunk & Playstack.”

At launch, Backpack Battles peaked at over 36k concurrent players on Steam, ranking 16th in peak CCU among all new 2024 releases. It currently has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 91% of the 7,817 user reviews being positive.