With hundreds of games releasing each week, discoverability is a well-known issue for game developers and publishers on Steam, even as the storefront has made moves to address the issue, like a personalized release calendar for users. Still, the final boss of game development for indies and their AAA counterparts is getting players’ eyes on their games.
What likely doesn’t help that issue? Releasing your game the same week as another game with the exact same name. That’s what happened to the developers of Piece by Piece and Piece by Piece, but they’ve made the most of it.
Gamkat’s Piece by Piece is a cozy management sim. You’ll play as an adorable orange fox who runs a repair shop. Neon gamexplores’ Piece by Piece, which came out two days later, is a puzzle platformer whose levels are divided into puzzle pieces. You’ll connect, move, and rotate them to progress.
A Reddit post gained traction last week when a user searched for one of the games, presumably this one that’s a literal puzzle platformer. “I feel this is going to mislead a lot of people,” the post was titled, with its description reading, “marketing should prevent this sort of thing.”
An employee of No More Robots, publisher of the cozy shopkeeping Piece by Piece, noticed and commented on the post. “The actual situation is that both ourselves and the dev team behind the other Piece by Piece somehow managed to announce the same week of release for both our games, had a good laugh about it together, and then put both games into a Steam bundle together,” they said. “Not exactly sure how anyone is being ‘mislead’, but on our side, we’re all happy and having fun with it :)”
A developer at Neon gamexplores, the makers of the puzzler Piece by Piece, also chimed in. “As a small indie team you might imagine how we felt when we first saw No More Robots’ Piece by Piece. They’ve handled this coincidence with nothing but grace and we’re honored to share the same name/launch week as them. Cheers guys.” In a separate thread, the Neon gamexplores developer said they “had been warned about the potential risks in reaching out” to the people behind the other Piece by Piece, but are glad they did. “The folks at No More Robots & Gamkat are top-notch people.”
Both games are currently on sale with introductory discount offers, and both have positive player ratings so far. Gamkat’s Piece by Piece is discounted by 20% until March 25, and Neon gamexplores’ Piece by Piece is on sale for 15% off until March 27.
Like the No More Robots employee mentioned, you can snag both games in a bundle for $18.57, or 17% off the total price of both games. “It’s crazy to think that if you act like human beings about a situation, it somehow ends up great?? Who would have guessed,” they commented.
