“If the sales don’t stagnate, we can actually live off of this”: Dev of open-world horror game says “lifelong dream” may come true after promising early access launch

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Envelope is out now on Steam

A man wearing a white shirt stands in a convenience store in the game Envelope.
(Image credit: Skaar Game Productions)

Norwegian developer Skaar Game Productions is enthusiastic about early access sales for its new open-world horror game Envelope, emphasizing the importance of community support for independent games. 

"If the sales don't stagnate, we can actually live off of this [game]," Skaar writes on Twitter. "Keep streaming and uploading videos, everything helps a lot. Even a single sale is very valuable to us.

"My lifelong dream of making games for a living is so close!" the developer continues. 

Low-poly horror Envelope follows a convenience store clerk on a deadly mission to save his girlfriend. You'll guide him through a small open world as rotten as his prospects to complete missions and achieve one of multiple possible endings. 

"We will keep updating the game," Skaar says. "It's still just in early access, so it will improve even more over the next few weeks." 

Early Steam reviews seem promising.

"The idea is very neat, really like the concept of having an open-world that is of a manageable size and where you can decide what to do or not," says a popular review. 

"It's a very bizarre game with equally strange NPCs," adds another recent review. "Not really the kind of game I usually play, but once I started, I didn't stop till I got to the end, so it's clearly doing something right."

In a Reddit post earlier this year, Skaar described Envelope as "our first commercial product."

"We have high hopes for it," the developer explains. "Working professionally as game developers is a lifelong dream for both of us, and finally it seems like the dream will come true."

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.