Indie game changes its price every hour to match the London weather

A quirky indie game has introduced a new pricing strategy, where the game is cheaper the colder it is outside.

The modern gaming landscape is rife with different pricing structures to accommodate different types of games, between high-end blockbusters, smaller independent titles, and free-to-play experiences riddled with microtransactions.

But no other game has a system quite like Good Snowman Is Hard To Build – a 2015 puzzle game which is now being sold at a different price every hour in accordance with London’s turbulent weather. So it’s dynamic pricing, Michael Fish style.

The game, which is usually priced at $14.99 (£12.79), currently costs $9.90 (around £7.85) to match the 9.9°C in London, according to forecast website OpenWeather. That’s 34% off for tolerating another freezing day.

This is all to celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary and broadly ties in with the theme, where you build snowmen in increasingly elaborate ways.

There are some caveats to the weather-based bargaining though. This deal is only available through itch.io (which is why everything is priced in US dollars), so you can’t buy it at a cheaper price on Steam, mobile, or Nintendo Switch when the sun goes down.

If you went full galaxy brain and thought you might be able to get paid when the temperature sinks below zero, the team has thought about that scenario as well. ‘Ha ha, nice try,’ a note reads. ‘The game will be free.’

That does mean if you wait for the winter months to roll around again, you will be able to download A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build for free, or at least at a very cheap price. It’s unclear, however, how long this deal will last for.

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is developed by Draknek & Friends, who previously created A Monster’s Expedition. The team’s next game is The Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition, which hopefully won’t be dictated by UK energy prices.

Remarkably, this isn’t the first time weather has impacted a game. Game Boy Advance title Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand – released in 2004 and produced by none other than Hideo Kojima – had a light sensor which required players to charge their weapons through sunlight.

Unfortunately, it was designed with Japanese weather in mind and was rendered effectively unplayable in the UK – as you could never seem to get enough sunlight to play it properly.

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