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Arena combat game Forced now on Steam, 20 percent off until Halloween
Action arcade game Forced is now available on Steam. The multiplayer-focused combat arena game is 20 percent off ($11.99) until October 31. Forced is described as a mix between Diablo and Left 4 Dead, featuring local and online cooperative battles for up to four players. Players control slaves in one of four skill classes in "the toughest fantasy gladiator school of them all, condemned to fight to the death." Forced is available on PC, Mac and Linux and also comes in a four pack bundle, currently discounted to $35.99, for those that know exactly who they'll team up with in the game's campaign. The game's developer BetaDwarf has a unique history, as the group of eight lived in an abandoned classroom at Aalborg University in Denmark for roughly seven months while creating Forced. After the developer's hideout was discovered by one of the school's instructors, the team of ten lived together under one roof while continuing development. Additionally, BetaDwarf raised $65,413 on Kickstarter in December 2012 to fund the project.
Indie developer BetaDwarf lived in a classroom for seven months
Denmark-based developer BetaDwarf raised $65,413 on Kickstarter in December 2012 to fund its action arcade game, Forced. Similar to other developers, the team relied fully on the crowdfunding campaign in order to make its game a reality: As BetaDwarf CEO Steffen Kabbelgaard Gronning put it at PAX Prime, the Kickstarter "pretty much saved our asses... If that hadn't went through, we'd have had to abandon the game, I think." Described on its Kickstarter page as a mix between Diablo and Left 4 Dead, Forced has players battle enemies in a combat arena. The game's development traces back to January 2011, when BetaDwarf was founded at Aalborg University in Denmark. During the summer, classrooms at the university went unused, so Gronning and his friends took over one abandoned room to use as their studio. "We moved in and we didn't really want to go home, so we moved in beds and microwaves and refrigerators and things like that and until there are like, eight guys living there our whole vacation," Gronning said. That "vacation" turned into an extended stay, as the group "managed to be there for five more months" since the university "didn't really want to use that classroom," he explained.
