By Sagar V. Mankar 
Since its early access launch on March 8th, the unique auto battler Backpack Battles has been an absolute smash hit for the small indie team at PlayWithFurcifer.
Within just 2 weeks of launch, Backpack Battles had already sold over 500,000 copies on Steam!
It peaked at over 36,000 concurrent players, making it the 15th biggest launch of 2024 on Valve’s platform.
Even more impressively, it debuted at 21st on the Steam weekly top sellers chart despite being made by a tiny two-person team rather than a major studio.
With over 6,000 user reviews giving it an incredible 94% positive rating, players are clearly loving this innovative spin on auto battlers.
What is Backpack Battles?
For the unfamiliar, Backpack Battles takes the classic video game concept of managing an inventory and gear and turns it into a fresh, competitive auto battler experience.
Players construct decks of items and equipment, which their character automatically equips and uses in battles against others online.
So What Drove the Hype?
Part of Backpack Battles’ success can likely be attributed to its long run-up of building anticipation. By February, it had amassed over 471,000 wishlists on Steam from players intrigued by its fresh inventory battler premise.
But the game’s quality and depth are what truly seem to be driving the fervent word-of-mouth and player engagement.
Players praised the deep strategic gameplay around constructing item loadouts and combos, all wrapped in an appealing retro pixel art aesthetic.
Where Will It Go From Here?
With such a hot start, all eyes are now on developer PlayWithFurcifer to see how they’ll sustain and build upon this breakthrough success with Backpack Battles.
They’ve already released one major patch 0.9.2 rebalancing character classes and items based on player data.
They are also collaborating with roguelike deckbuilder – Balatro for the “Can’t Put It Down” bundle.
Source: gameworldobserver