Indie devs promised a Steam gift card to whoever beat their game using Kinect - two years later, someone did

Someone spent 14 hours using the practically defunct Xbox Kinect peripheral to beat an indie game where you harvest organs in space, a full two years after its devs offered a Steam gift card to the first determined soul to accomplish the feat.

The relatively niche indie game Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator has been out since December 2021. Your mission in the game is to "buy, sell, and trade organs in a strange and evolving universe" using mouse-and-keyboard, a compatible controller, or, if you dare, Xbox Kinect. The game has a dedicated FAQ section on Kinect compatibility where the developers strongly urge players to use any other compatible input. "Is Kinect the optimal way to play Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator?" reads one of the questions. "Absolutely not."

Another of the dev's self-imposed question asks why players would "play a fast-paced reflex-based economic tycoon using Kinect," and the response is, "I have no earthly idea." Regardless, on the most recent version of the FAQ page, the studio offers a $50 gift card to anyone who can beat Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator using Kinect, "primarily so I can meet the kind of person who would do that to themselves, and plead with them for mercy lest they destroy us all."

Ask and you shall receive – eventually, anyway. According to a reviewer going by, erm, Swag Gucci Balenciaga Corndog on Steam, they're entitled to that $50 Steam gift card.

"I can put the VODs up unlisted on YouTube if you wish, in their entirety or broken up into sessions," reads a Steam user review for the game. "If upon review the recordings are deemed unsatisfactory as evidence of my great triumph I WILL do it again and livestream it."

It's unclear if Swag Gucci will receive their prize, but the developers behind the game have certainly taken notice. "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ME BECAUSE HOLY SHIT," said Xalavier Nelson Jr., who founded Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator studio Strange Scaffold.

Sam Chiet, the developer who implemented Kinect compatibility simply asked, "Why did you beat the entire fucking game using this feature I tested for 5 minutes?"

Well, I think we now know why the developers don't recommend using Kinect to play their game, though Swag Gucci has yet to explain exactly why they spent 14 hours of their life doing exactly that. It could be because, in their words, they "fear no God anymore" and have "the heart of a child and the soul of a dog," or it could be that they really wanted that $50 gift card. We'll update this article if there's any development.

Here are the upcoming indie games we have on our radar for 2023.