Indie game Dear Esther profitable in less than six hours

Experimental indie game Dear Esther is profitable - less than six hours after going on sale.

It sold over 16,000 units during its first day on sale (yesterday), its creators announced this afternoon.

thechineseroom and Robert Briscoe's £6.99 first-person ghost story paid off its financial backing from Indie Fund in just under five and a half hours after strong sales on Valve digital download platform Steam.

Dear Esther was originally released in 2008 as a mod for Half-Life 2 developed as part of a research project at the University of Portsmouth.

In 2009 Briscoe, a former environment artist on Mirror's Edge, took the project on, overhauling the visuals and level design for release as a commercial game.