Dev of chill sailing game "blown away" as player count jumps over 282,000% following 2.4 million downloads as Epic Games Store freebie

Sail Forth
(Image credit: Festive Vector)

The chill and appropriately titled sailing game Sail Forth was originally released in December 2022 on basically all platforms, but it was only recently given out for free via the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Epic Games Store on PC. This freebie on January 11, 2024, and that same d𓃲ay the game's player count had apparently jumped a staggering ♒282,041% according to creator David Evans, who says he's been "blown away" by the response.

In a posted January 13, Evans added: "Sﷺail Forth has been downloaded 2.4 million times now on Epic (for free lol). Pretty blown away by this, I knew a lot of new players would be joining but this is insane."

. The correlation between Steam reviews and actual sales can vary wildly, and Sail Forth is available on consoles as well, so from this figure alone I can't confidently speculate as to how many people played it pre-Epic freebie. I just know that 357 is a much, much smaller number than 2.4 million, which goes to show much exposure these Epic Games Store deals can bring in. 

Sail Forth is one of two so-called "big" games from Evans and his one-man studio Festive Vector, the other being Bicyclism Extra Pedal according to his . Sail Forth is getting support to this day, with a new for Steam and Epic 🤪dropping just yesterday, January 16. It also received a DLC pack ahead of its Epic Games Store deal, . 

This massive influx o🃏f new Sail Forth players has naturally yielded a surge of feedback as well, and Evans picked through the chaff to dig out the true gems. Dread it, run from it, but "just add multiplayer" arrives all the same.

2023 was also a good year for sailing games thanks in large part to Dredge, a GOTY-contender horror fishing game that got its first DLC in November. 

Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism d𒆙egree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his p🌟osition is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.