The way the second part of Remnant was announced at The Game Awards 2022 raised questions. Her trailer was shown at the end of the event mixed with clips of chamber indies. Because of this, it seemed that the organizers of the event did not understand the scale of the success of the first part.
Remnant II
Let’s talk a little bit about the success of the original. However, first let’s go through the numerous achievements that the sequel managed to achieve in less than a day from the moment of release. Recall that Remnant II was released on the evening of July 25 (if you focus on European time).
- As a result of last week (that is, even before it went on sale), Remnant II became the highest-grossing game on Steam (excluding freeplay titles).
- At the release, the peak online game on Steam reached 82.7 thousand players (it did not enter the top 10 online, having stalled at the 11th position, which is still very worthy for a project focused only on singles and co-op).
- The peak online broadcast of Remnant II on Twitch is 101.7 thousand.
- On Steam, the game’s rating reached 84% (based on more than 3,100 reviews). The average score of the game on Metacritic is about 80 points.
- Analytical services SteamDB and PlayTracker believe that only on Steam sales of the game by now could amount to more than 200 thousand copies (in parallel, the game was released in the Epic Games Store, as well as on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S).
This is a great start for the game, which, like the first part, is positioned as a niche cooperative AA shooter. Except that the base price of the second part is slightly higher than that of the original — $ 49.99 versus $ 39.99.
Is it a sudden success?
Remnant II
Rather, no, considering what the first part achieved.
But here it is worth making a short stop and reminding what the original Remnant was. Moreover, the basis of the gameplay in the second part remained the same.
At the release, many media called the original game “Dark Souls with Guns“. Perhaps due to the fact that the developers themselves positioned it this way. However, the game of the Texas studio Gunfire Games is no less suitable for another definition of “third-person Diablo“.
The player runs through procedurally generated mazes, destroys monsters, collects random loot from them, and then returns to the hub, where he receives quests. The sensations of racing for valuable loot and stripping giant maps are very close to those that the iconic Blizzard series gives.
Another key feature of Remnant was its strong emphasis on cooperative play. Up to three users could go on an expedition together. The developers were especially proud of the crossplay between the PC and Xbox versions (by the way, the second part lost this feature).
So what did the first part achieve?
Remnant
- In the first two years of Remnant, three million copies of the game were sold (from August 2019 to December 2021). This is without taking into account the free distribution of the game in the Epic Games Store and downloads to the Xbox Game Pass.
- From August 13 to August 20, 2020, the game was distributed for free in the Epic Games Store. During this time, more than 10 million people have added it to their account.
- Both paid additions to the game on Steam collected around 600 reviews. That is, sales of each of them could reach the mark of 30 thousand copies only in this store.
As John Pearl, design director of the first part of Remnant, stated a couple of months after the release: “We were very surprised at how well the game was received.”
And since we’re talking about developers. Formed in 2014, Gunfire Games was primarily formed from employees of the Austin division of Crytek and Vigil Games. So most of them have Ryse: Son of Rome and the first two parts of Darksiders in their portfolio.
Now Gunfire Games belongs to THQ Nordic, and the publisher of its games is another division of the Embracer Group — Gearbox. In the publishing portfolio of the latest Remnant II is the game with the highest peak online.
Games published by Gearbox