Smash hit cyberpunk storekeeper Probably Stolen was originally a different, non-cyberpunk game that seemed destined to sink without trace

Publisher tinyBuild celebrates turnaround after very underwhelming demo numbers

Space station trading game Probably Stolen – Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim has been doing rather well on Steam, attracting over 162,000 concurrent players last night. I've been feeling the urge to fire it up again myself, after my brief launch-day trawl through its quagmire of black market economics and factional rivalries.

The game's big numbers come as a shock given that it began life as another, non-cyberpunk kiosk job sim called Deepspace Emporium, which still has a Steam page as of writing. Deepspace Emporium seemed doomed to fizzle out in obscurity. But publisher tinyBuild got behind it regardless, working with developers Questing Goose to overhaul the art direction and lay on extra brainchips. The gamble paid off.

"Probably Stolen was initially a game under a different name with a released demo," summarises tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik on Twitter. That demo peaked at 28 concurrent players. We loved the concept and gameplay, and worked with the dev to reinvent the visuals and focus on what works design wise. This is the result."

The original Deepspace Emporium seems very similar to Probably Stolen in broad strokes. The core of the game is haggling with strung-out ne'er-do-wells, buying or selling goods of varying quality and legality in order to surf a fluctuating market and pay the rent. It's Papers, Please, but you're searching for fake watermarks on cigarette packets, and wondering whether you dare stock contraband weaponry. You also have to appease or outmanouevre factions with competing interests, from station security to underworld barons.

From what I've played, Probably Stolen essentially takes all that and pumps up the Netrunner parallels with posher visuals. Not having played the now-unavailable Deepspace demo, I can't say how much intrigue it adds to all the shady transactions going on beneath the hood.

I'm not blown away by Probably Stolen's pixelart – I find it quite flavourless, as depictions of cyberpunk space stations go – but it has pleasing texture. I am disproportionately fond of the rolled-up sleeping mat beneath my counter. Looks nicely padded! Still, the meat of this game is undoubtedly the vast collection of items you can get your greasy fingers on, with a choice of retail lines and vocational pathways such as gunsmith and chemist. You can sell rat corpses, tins of caviar, robotic hands, scavenged shotguns, and purple tubers of uncertain origin. I am Commander Silverhand, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel.

It's lovely to think of a developer transforming a probable write-off into a chart-topper by means of some canny plumping and reorganising. The situation is almost certainly more complicated than Nichiporchik makes it sound. Still, let's take the opportunity to reminisce moist-eyed about a few other games that underwent a dramatic visual transformation during development.

The obvious one is Team Fortress 2, which once upon a time looked like a prototype Silent Hill environment with some khaki toy soldiers. Gearbox worked similar sorcery upon Borderlands, which once looked like a hungover Fallout 3. The prevailing wisdom is that piping in some colour and whimsy propelled these games to greatness, but who knows, perhaps if they'd clung to the old "football stadium toilet bowl" vibe, they'd have made an extra billion apiece. Any other precedents come to your mind?