Breath Of Death VII is, by at least one Kotaku reader account, the best role-playing game of the year. It costs $1 and, as of last week, sold 30,000 copies. How?
This chart appears in a recent post-mortem of the game by one of the game's creators, Robert Boyd.
That Kotaku spike is a result of this article.
Launched in April, Breath Of Death VII is a throw-back role-playing game made by two people and crafted to transport you to the late 1980s, reducing (improving?) your Xbox 360 into a Nintendo Entertainment System.
It costs a buck, but everyone who has written about it and played it (this reporter can't count himself among the latter yet), says they'd have paid much more.
Amid Boyd's frank analysis of what went right and wrong is the astounding report that two thirds of the people who downloaded the game for free then ponied up the asking price. Impressive.
Breath of Death VII: The Beginning Post-Mortem [Zeboyd Indie Game Reviews]