Murderous Pursuits is free to keep forever if you download now

Murderous Pursuits, the PvP murder mystery game billed as the spiritual successor to cult classic The Ship, is free to keep forever if you download it on Steam before Monday. 

It could help solve the game's biggest issue: its lack of players. In Philippa's review, she struggled to find a game that had a full count of humans, and the average concurrent player count hovered around 40 in the month following its launch in April. However, since the free-to-keep offer went live yesterday, the player count has ballooned—as I write this, 50,000 people are playing, according to Steam's official stats page, and its daily peak is nearly 150,000.

That's a truly staggering jump. Those new players won't necessarily stick around long-term, but if enough people have a good time with it then it could create an audience willing to sustain the game for months to come. Philippa said it had the "potential for a lighthearted murder merry-go-round", and she had a good time when she jumped in with the rest of the PCG UK team, so it's certainly worth at least trying out. 

At the start of a round, you get assigned another player to assassinate, but you don't know their identity. Instead, you have to follow a "quarry compass" to get you in the right area and then watch other characters' behaviour, trying to spot a human player in a sea of NPCs. And, all the while, you have to watch your back to make sure you don't get stabbed.

The free-to-keep offer expires 10am PT on Monday. Grab it here—it's usually $20.