About an Discount

About an Discount

About an Elf (Meringue Interactive) is an offbeat “point-and-click-ish, rpg-ish, visual-novel-ish” game that uses toyetic models and stock footage backgrounds to tell the story of elf Princess Dam. Dam wields marbles she calls “Magiballs” in combat and her sidekick is a giant talking cat called Roland. It’s absurdist, unserious and, until now, only on the Switch eshop.

With its PC release on Steam in June, the game and its successor Miss Rosen’s WOWTASTIC! Marching Band permanently dropped in price from the initial $11.99/£10.79 to $7.99/£7.19, matching Steam’s $7.99/£6.69 (not a smooth conversion in the UK).

Curious if the change was due to mistaken obligation to Steam’s PC price parity, diminished sales or something else, I reached out to Meringue. Developer Samuel Barahona got back to me saying :

“Given that the economy is not being kind to anyone, we decided to change the standard pricing for our games from $11.99 to $7.99, and that'll even apply for future releases, which will launch at $7.99 from now on. We're trying to keep pricing parity between all platforms as much as possible, though there may be times in which sales or promotions won't align perfectly. Have fun!”

To this end, the 30% launch discount on Steam was also applied to their games on the eshop. Although I can’t confirm whether this was also motivated by sales for Miss Rosen since its release in December, I did want to highlight this pro-consumer decision in our current landscape. The studio’s next game, The Cosmic Backyard, is set to release in 2026 and can be expected to cost $7.99.

If you are or know a developer or publisher with experience dealing with Steam’s price parity, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me via the information shown in my BlueSky profile and my sources will be as anonymous as they wish to be.

About an Elf is an offbeat game developed and published by Meringue Interactive for Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. All images copyright of Meringue Interactive. If you liked this article or anything from Memory Card, consider supporting me on Patreon or with a one-time donation on Ko-Fi. You can follow me on BlueSky if you want to, and of course make sure to sign up for the newsletter if sent this by a friend or foe. See you next time!