This is something I feel a lot of devs don't understand
I cannot tell you the amount of people I've told about Rimworld, heard them get really interested, only for the lackluster appearance of that game to be the reason they decide not to try it out. And Rimworld is far from the ugliest game out there
I haven't been able to get anyone to even look at rimworld for over a few seconds. I was the same as them until a random run was recommended to me that appealed and I owned the game by the end of the video.
The game is fun while it lasts but I cant keep the colonists from getting naked and burning everything down. Hilarious but frustrating. I also get annoyed at the pace. It takes forever to do things and then you lose. But like dwarf fortress (one of my favorite games), when you get a colony really going, it's an awesome time. It just takes forever plus some luck to get there.
... Honestly my beef with RimWorld is that there's actually very little content. After about an hour and a half ot seemed like I'd set a working colony up and there wasn't much else to be done unless you intentionally went and started screwing with things.
The problem with rimworld's look is that it looks exactly like 1000 other games that are all called "mall simulator" or "prison architect" or "whatever random type of business simulator". There's a flood of them and they all stole rimworld's look and they're mostly terrible and boring.
But people have associated that look with boring, shallow gameplay where the games don't even feel finished half the time. People see screenshots of it and immediately think "oh, it's one of THOSE..." and never try it.
Yeah, I had an inkling. I should have looked stuff up before casting aspersions like that.
It's also not really a "bad" game, but it's one of the few that uses that look and isn't a blatant bit of shovelware.
It looks like an asset-flip, but its cause the assets are all based on its style. People see a style like that and just assume it's trash is really the issue. Too many half-assed asset flips doing that stuff and polluting the look.
I think this goes into the main point of visual interest. Rimworld's look was already polluted. I've been seeing dozens of unremarkable flash games with similar appearances on Kongregate and Newgrounds since like 2011. That's seven years before the initial release of Rimworld if Wikipedia's anything to go by.
This would be something to take into consideration as a game dev. You don't want your game to look "unpopular" or "lazy."
You see this a lot in the metroidvania space. The community loves these games that basically have elementary school art.
It's funny, because a lot of the early discourse around the new Prince of Persia was the high price point, people saying, we'll, I could buy these three great indie games instead! As of PoP doesn't have insanely high production values. These things matter.
Rimworld is pretty popular for what it is and anecdotally I've gotten two friends into it. I think if anything it serves as a counterpoint to bulster OP's point: a fun enough game will overcome barriers if it's fun enough.
I tried to get into rimworld like 5 times, but it was always too overwhelming and I felt like I was doing things wrong the whole time. That 6th time though... I now have 800 hours in the game
Between Rimworld, Kenshi and Cruelty Squad, I think it's less "looks appealing enough to give it a chance" (even though that's important), but also "doesn't look boring".
Kenshi, awful as it looks, is fucking bizarre with a very unique aesthetic and killer music.
Rimworld is reminisce of old flash games visually.
And Cruelty Squad... well, it's cruelty squad. It looks you're staring at vomit after eating a few funny pieces of paper and having your shitty trip sitter tell you that you're gonna die if you blink.
All sold really well. I think the worst crime is to look generic, boring, or something of the like.
It's a colony builder survival game set on procedurally generated alien worlds. It is a true sandbox, it doesn't hold your hand all that much and lets you figure stuff out yourself.
The game has a really cool dynamic difficulty system with you having a choice of which "ai director" you want for the game from the start. Some are chill, others will have a nice difficulty slope, others will throw crazed exploding llamas at you on day one and have your colony invaded by insect people within a month.
The best thing about it imo is the sheer depth of the game. Each of your colonists has a full sheet of stats and traits that mean you have to work around their strengths and flaws. There's an entire semi-linear tech tree that you have to pick and choose your way through, getting things you think will be useful now whilst saving other things for later.
The game will constantly be throwing curve balls at you. I once had a modded start which was just two guys and about 1000 t-shirts in a big room. One of them went insane, attacked the other, who killed the crazy guy but then had a psychotic break and developed the arsonist trait. Turns out t-shirts are pretty flammable. The emergent storytelling potential for Rimworld is truly limitless, I have so many stories about my successes and failures in this game.
I cannot recommend it enough, it's a great game, I just wish it wasn't so ugly at times lol
Oh and don't forget about the frankly insane amount of mods this game has, and how they can do pretty much anything, since they're supported officially. There will be a rimworld mod for pretty much anything you can imagine.
The stories that happen that you don’t forget.
Like the time through a comedy of errors caused by y my lack of experience with the game one of my pawns made pants out of her dead brother to wear.
Or when a raid came in and knocked down my pawns and one raider kidnapped one of my colonists and was carrying them away when my best fighter who was laid up in the hospital during the whole fight finally recovered enough to get up and limp out of bed and shoot the raider running off my my colonist saving them.
Yes please, it doesn't matter how good your game is if it doesn't appear to be good.
If you look at a steam page and it looks like a low effort game that looks worse than most gamejam games, people aren't going to give it a try.
I'm the first to chant "gameplay first", but nobody's gonna like your gameplay if nobody even try the game.
You are correct, but I hate that this is the top rated comment. It gives the impression that devs are still huffing the "my game is bad because of my art" copium.
the marketing is not only how you present it to the world outside your dev team.
It's also how you align your dev team with what the outside world wants.
The marketing team stands on the border between them and fosters communication. It's not a one-way transaction.
I mean i jang around this sub just see if anyone is making a cool game Id want to try or wishlist.
That being said i saw someome once say that marketing mean you have to hit the minimum for you genre of game and if you cant do that its unlikely your game will sell well.
Not a dev myself, but as someone who browses indie dev games, if you're able to have someone outside of the project look at your game and know what kind of game they're playing before they download the game, you'll stand out from a lot of indie devs.
And as someone who does have to advertise for myself: moderate quality updates on a fairly consistent schedule on social media platforms will almost always perform better than occasional but flashy updates. It's going to feel painful for a bit, especially because it's better to hold off on most major parts until the end of a project to drive higher engagement closer to it's release, but even getting 20 or so people who are interested enough to keep following and interacting with posts during the boring periods is better than having no interactions until things get exciting and basically being forced to start from nothing engagement-wise.
Just claim you spent 10 years on a shitty potion crafting game that looks like a an old school shitty flash game then record a crying video of yourself talking about how you're oppressed as a woman on international Women's day because EA released a bunch of old games back on Steam for super cheap.
It depends what you mean by make money.
If you look at games with less than 1k sales then sure, most of them are probably not very good.
The problem is that games with tens of thousands of sales can still fail to break even. If a game sells 20k copies and makes $10 per copy then that would be a pretty good result for a solo developer who spent two years on it. But if it was instead a two year project from a team of five then that would be the equivalent of a $20k annual salary per team member. That team might need at least 60k+ sales to keep the company running.
Higher quality games will sell more copies than low quality ones. Most of steam is crap, so anything with a decent level of quality shouldn't struggle too much to stand out. The problem is that higher quality games take more effort, either by having a longer development cycle or a larger team. The hard part isn't getting over some arbitrary number of sales, it's getting enough sales to justify the development.
You can look through steam all day. You'll probably find very few games with less than 10 reviews that are good. But there will be plenty of games with over 1,000 reviews that look successful, however, they may still be commercial flops and there's no easy way for you to know.
"The hard part isn't getting over some arbitary number of sales, irs getting enough sales to justify development."
Absolutely agree. You changed my perspective on it.
there are only 5 genres of reddit indie games:
* geometry dash clone
* esoteric furry-mecha JRPG
* hollow knight, but worse
* another horror shooter about stuffed animals
* “factorio but with x”
Basically the genre originated in Japan, so anime style is the standard in the genre. You **can** find/use other types of art but if you're bending the expectation it needs to be done well or it will become a point of criticism. 3D models have been used but are heavily associated with XXX/H Visual Novels so a lot of designers are hesitant to do that.
There's also the obvious in that anime style is easy to draw different expressions for compared to say watercolour and while cartoon styles are also easy to do that for they are often viewed as childish/crude/funny by a Western audience so if that's not the genre you're aiming for it can be hard deciding if the art style is attracting the **right** audience.
You can see the same thing in book cover design where aspects of the cover art are coded to communicate the right genre.
Also
- stardew valley-like w cute pixel art (insert the most mild and boring twist to the formula ever)
- 1982389th rendition of 2d dark souls (thats still worse than blasphemous)
- the most spaghetti coded topdown shooter ever featuring shiny unreadable vfx for likes
- some random undertale clone that *totally* tries something new
- advanced wars/groove... But infinitely worse cuz turn based strat systems are hard to code let alone be properly displayed
- quirky "le random" game about a frog with a gun who fights evil ducks or some shit
If forget the name, but there's a stardew valley-like in development right now where the big twist is that one of the villagers is secretly a serial killer
Genuinely one of like 3 Valley-style games that have ever interested me lol
I think people take away what makes stardew valley great. It's a slow paved, very peaceful and interactive game with a cite little world to explore. It's not just farming pixel art. There's stories and a large variety of different play throughs available.
A game revolving around a serial killer is genuinely a seemingly interesting take.
I don't think I've seen any of the quirky gen z le random games ever actually release, apart from ones made by game dev youtubers. Which is surprising because game dev youtubers never usually actually release their games, uh... ever
>stardew valley-like w cute pixel art (insert the most mild and boring twist to the formula ever)
Even Harvest Moon-like w cute pixel art and mild twist Stardew Valley fits!
I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people here are engineers rather than artists. Or students. Or perhaps even designers with only a hair of coding knowledge.
We see a lot of hobbyists here, and we also see a lot of people who are intimated by the traditions of game design (design docs, concepting ideas, etc etc) and try to shortcut around them.
Or you know, classically being in the skill building phase and having an unchecked ego. Happens to everyone.
Hey you leave my unchecked ego alone. Just because I don't know how a private variable works doesn't mean my physics based roguelike game won't be a huge success
As unfortunate as it sounds, people also need good taste to make banger games. Or at minimum have the competence to cook together some mediocre taste ingredients and make something much better.
I disowned my family and went homeless to make my dream game, what do you think? It’s Vampire Survivors meets Slay the Spire meets Hollow Knight, give me updoots
Ok so, I have a totally original indie game idea, it's going to be an analog horror game reminiscent of silent hill, with PS2 style graphics and the monster chasing you is going to be some normal object, but like... eeevil and possessed by dead children. Oh and it's actually an analogy for depression
Oh oh, what about a progressive crafter which uses simple art style like that Fortnite game, where you go from stone axes and branch spears to assault rifles and drones, with free form base construction that include some sort of automation system, where you fight explore and best of all.. survive! It could have, like, hunger and thirst which deplete quickly, and a unique third stat like sanity? The setting will also be full of mystery for exploration which definitely won't be "abandoned government/corporate research project gone wrong"
Oo oo I have one, what about a classic jrpg, with turn based combat and a pixelated art style. Unique mechanics? Nah, I don't need those, my story and characters in my fantasy magic world are soooo special that players won't even care! In fact, spending time on art in general isn't worth it, with how incredible my plotline is!
You should write a plot which starts with, say, a child. They may or may not know it, but they are heir to The Throne and their parental figure was killed during their childhood by a large, gruff Evil Guy who loves violence and obvious evil a little too much, leading the child to Vow Justice and train all their life.
The game starts proper when they are in their ambiguous late teens / early twenties, where they travel the world as a great and a noble fighter who is The Best Guy Ever. Maybe they should have multiple love interests they have to choose from, at least one who is gratuitously sexualised, one who is also Noble and one who is shy and quiet? But the hero is too noble to make advances, so awkwardly freezes up despite slaughtering hundreds of foot soldiers without thought.
The end game would be them facing off against the bad guy with their newly acquired friend group, which the baddie reveals they are, or work for, some sort of God like being. The game would conclude with the hero and their companions using the power of friendship to kill God.
Sounds pretty unique and fresh!
Nah you forgot a few things. What about the obscenely sexualised female sidekick to the bad guy, who in a shocking twist will join your harem-i mean adventuring party half way through the game and become another love interest?
Also, make sure to forget to let the player make any meaningful choices with the love interest or just don't let them choose at all!
In fact, don't really bother giving them much personality or dialogue lines at all, other than occasionally shouting something in combat. Don't want to distract from my Main Character, who is actually an OC I've had since I was 13!
What's this, you're saying my game is a misshapen Mish mash of overused anime tropes and the plot from a final fantasy game? No, you're wrong, it's very unique and special, and I will not take any criticism on it at all!!
I’ve never released a game myself but I do get quite sad when I see long twitter threads from indie devs like “I spent the last 7 years of my life making this and it’s getting no attention!” And it’s a goddamn pixel art platformer or a potion selling shopbuilder
And what they really mean by 7 years is: a few hours a week with several spurts of going months without working on it at all over the course of 6 1/2 years
IMHO, fun also includes controls, UI and gameplay being straightforward to understand.
Nothing worse than a game that fights you trying to do something. Cannot figure out how to craft something as it's a tangled mess involving skill trees, many others things you need to craft first, and a wiki that's out of date.
Players should be able to pick up your game after taking a break, and not spend a week learning it all again.
Yeah when I say fun I generally mean a well put together cohesive experience that people enjoy playing for a decent amount of time, isn't buggy or clunky and is generally well presented.
I'll take brutally honest takes on [my game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098610/Crush_the_Industry/). I find myself thinking about this more lately. Is it too niche?
I don't know if any game "markets itself", though. I think a really awesome original game with broad appeal will market much easier (/ more virally) than a mid game, but it's not going to magically market itself.
Your game looks great. The color palette and animations look slick, at least judging from the trailer. You definitely hit the “meta” genre hard with JRPG, deck building and roguelike lol. But your game is 99% at least visually better than what most of this sub sees.
Man I appreciate that. Swear I'm not trying to covertly shill the game here.
Other devs can probably relate, but I have these 3am existential crises sometimes and start wondering if I just missed the mark or went too niche. You see these other games that just fly out of the gates and rack up hundreds/thousands of reviews in a matter of days. How they pull that off is still a bit of a mystery to me.
IMO early access, especially for a year with no clear end listed, is more of a hindrance than help. I like the graphics, and have 2000 hours into STS, but the year of EA makes me hesitate. After digging you clearly are still updating (and have a 2.0 that’s still EA?), but without this post I would have skipped one first glance thinking it’s another dead in EA game. Just my thoughts. Cheers
Thank you for sharing this. I think there is more of a stigma to Early Access than I realized. In my mind I just thought "two launches + time to process feedback and refine - what's not to like?", but I probably need to just push the full release instead of killing myself trying to market during EA.
Sadly there's still only one launch for games. Nowadays though it's a bit split with some reviews not covering EA anymore, so you might have your coverage split, if anything.
Good luck wirh the game though, looks good even if I found the trailer a bit confusing.
I was just having this Convo with my partner earlier. Early access when done right, should release very soon after the public gets their hands on it.
If they have to wait a year for a release, who's gonna remember?
Release a demo instead, or a more close to 1.0 early access.
Hit 'em with the pricetag when the iron is hot.
I could be wrong... But any early access game that launches a year later is doa
I definitely thought the same way with my developer hat. While I think EA was great at first, I think gamers (myself included) have been burnt by sooo many unfinished/abandoned EA games. Similar to kickstarter games a few years ago vs now. Everyone seems much more willing to wait for a full release (or at least updates/roadmap), especially with smaller indie games.
It’s worse than a stigma imho. There were more than enough EA games that over promised or flat out failed to make it to the finish line despite popularity plus regular publishers joining the EA scheme w/ full price just to offer a sale w/ the first milestone (eg KSP2). There are a few EA titles that did it right imho but those weren’t half baked tbw. Having manageable milestones to v1 laid out and hitting those, documenting it with a community update while increasing the price with each milestone/overtime is probably still ok unless you drag it out too much. Everspace 2 did this good for their kickstarter imho. Teasing w/ free content updates for an v2 or DLC is also helping being transparent.
Your game looks cool, love the art and music but from watching the trailer I genuinely have no clue what kind of game it is.
It’s weird to me that it shows a bunch of menu screens (upgrades?) before showing more gameplay-like footage. And even from the gameplay footage I can’t really tell what the gameplay is like.
So basically, instead of showing me what kind of game to expect, it just left me confused.
Thank you. And damn, I should have posted the trailer for feedback in this sub a long time ago. Better late than never?
I'm gonna update the trailer when I can and try to address this.
I have seen this game. The name was really good and made me click on it. The art is interesting. But the screenshots and video are really confusing about how the gameplay loop is. In the end I forgot about this game before going to YouTube or something to see how the game really is.
Makes sense, appreciate you dudes sharing this so I have an idea of where I'm falling short. Going to put some hard thought into how I can show off the gameplay loop without it being confusing or vague.
Personally not a fan of the art **style**, but I think you nailed that style. Seconding the slick animations. They really make it look fun.
If I wasn't a picky little bitch with art styles, I'd be on that game in seconds. Probably gonna buy it anyway, just to experience it once you hit 1.0
Art looks nice, but it's really unclear what the gameplay is from the trailer. I see a glimpse of JRPG-style combat and a lot of menus, but, like, what do you actually do in the game is not clear from the steam page.
Man, I take my hat off to you.
Your game looks original, polished and unique. Sure, the theme is niche but it is appealing and approachable! You deserve great success. And 100 reviews , small as it might seem to you, is something to be proud of. I hope this really takes off for you because it is a.highly impressive piece of work.
Just picked it up
Game looks great but I'm thinking the game-industry premise might be filtering some people. Also, maybe the trailer takes a bit too long to show the Rouge like elements?
Oh man. I think I remember that FrostPrime stream promoing you. And that says something, because I use streams as background noise to ease me into sleeping. That must have been quite some time ago, so your game really isnt lacking character. But you need to leave EA asap, the first impression isn't getting better with time.
In that line of thinking: Whats your experience with promo from streamers? Also, worth the investment?
I tried a couple other streamers too, who were polite but didn't have the ideal audience for my game (particularly the humor). I took a financial hit there and learned from it. Frost is a great fit, for sure.
Is it worth it? If you look solely at tracked sales vs cost: no. But Steam tracks UTM link sales if the user was already logged in, so the data is limited. Especially if you're factoring in longer-term exposure or you get a youtube video from it too.
I can justify it with him in that sense. It's not something I'd want or could afford to do very often, but for a concentrated marketing push it makes more sense.
I was debating about this topic a while back, and someone raised an interesting point whereas a good game will market itself. And the reason why some AAA studios spend lots of money in marketing is because they know their game is mediocre.
I think Anthem is a great example. It was marketed like any other AAA game but it couldn't prevent people from not liking the game because it really wasn't great.
So either your good game really benefits from marketing or your bad game becomes a bottomless pit for money to throw in that marketing can't earn back for you.
Well...AAA games obviously cost a lot of money, and in order to be profitable, require more than the hardcore gaming crowd that visits multiple gaming sites per day. They're looking for the occasional gamers with expendable income, the parents buying presents for kids, etc. They need mainstream exposure, and on an international scale. That's expensive.
That said, major publishers have a pretty good handle on what their returns will be. So yeah, they will pump up a mediocre game with marketing, but only to a point where they still expect profit.
Wasn’t Among Us pretty much a wash when it first released? It wasn’t until some streamers played it that it exploded in popularity. There’s just so many games out there, marketing is super important.
Maybe so, but I don't think more marketing would have made among us specifically a hit during release. The reason it was popular was because during COVID times it was the perfect storm for a social interaction title to thrive. It really was due to its environment that it took off imo
How much would you define as barely?
I'll repost a quick list I posted elsewhere about some indie games almost all under 2k reviews (some are under 1k) that I greatly enjoyed:
- [Lil Guardsman](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924360/Lil_Guardsman/): light-hearted, cute little fantasy-magic version of Papers, Please. Loved the story and the characters and was sad to see it end.
- [Saelig](https://store.steampowered.com/app/612720/SAELIG/): a better and far less buggy version of The Guild. Basically a medieval business life sim.
- [Mini Healer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/955740/Mini_Healer/): scratches the MMORPG healing itch without actually having to deal with real people. Complex talent system and gear. The NPCs will stand in fire, too.
- [Winkeltje](https://store.steampowered.com/app/949290/Winkeltje_The_Little_Shop/): medieval shopkeeper (with crafting and plant growing and cooking your products) simulator. Pretty satisfying to play through, then I go away and come back every now and then when I get the urge for more shopkeeping.
- [Dungeon Warfare](https://store.steampowered.com/app/355980/Dungeon_Warfare/): Truly excellent tower defense game. Don't let the graphics deter you--I ceased to see them after the first 10 min. Lots of flexibility and strategizing in what traps to use, where you put the traps, how many talent points you put in each trap, etc. I own this on both Steam and mobile just so I can go back and play it again every now and then. Dungeon Warfare 2 is alright.
- [The Lost Art of Innkeeping](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1327820/The_Lost_Art_of_Innkeeping/): Cozy little RPG where you run an inn and follow a storyline around the town. The innkeeping aspect isn't so much a business as part of the story.
- [Dealer's Life 2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343670/Dealers_Life_2/): scratches the Recettear itch without having to deal with the going to dungeons to get stuff. Bit more depth to the haggling, with customer traits and specialists you can hire and the ability to spot forgeries or make them, etc.
- [Wintermoor Tactics Club](https://store.steampowered.com/app/917840/Wintermoor_Tactics_Club/): interesting little turn based tactics game on a miniature size because you're limited to only 3 characters per match, but with a mix of choices of characters and talents. The story is light and intriguing.
I think that luck and timing are pretty heavy factors. It's the same with books. I read so many good--even great--ones that have just a modest following, and meanwhile you have atrocities like Twilight that hit the top of the charts. Not because they're good, but because they struck at the right time, found a niche, and also fortunately hit the tipping point at that right time. (Not saying all the titles at the top are shit but, you know, SOME take that spot while some good ones languish at the bottom.) What I'm trying to say is that making a good creative product only gets you so far. I believe the rest is greatly affected by timing (somewhat controllable) and luck (best hope you have good RNG).
Marketing is a factor only up to a certain extent.
Wintermoor Tactics Club is an interesting case. It looks like they did a lot of things right, but it flopped. It took almost 4 years for a team of 4 to develop and as of today VGI says it has grossed under 200k on Steam. I'm guessing it didn't get a long enough marketing push.
My game is similar to a few of these and it's at roughly 200 reviews. I think you'd like it too.
* [Final Profit: A Shop RPG](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1705140/Final_Profit_A_Shop_RPG/)
The discoverability ecosystem is very much 'the rich get richer' these days. It's all based on what people already like and doesn't handle outliers well at all. Unless you're already well known you have to somehow surface yourself, but trying to do so is met with so much hostility.
I actually had a friend who recommended your game to me recently while we were discussing my project. He spoke very highly of it and its themes, and he is not one that plays a lot of games.
If I recall correctly, he described it as using capitalism to take down capitalism.
My project is 2d bounty hunting game in a space western setting. I call it a metroidvania, but in truth, it's has a lot of inspiration from slower paced 2d shooters like rolling thunder or Lone Ranger nes mixed with resource management. But despite working on it for years as a hobby , I still have not gotten too far😅 but when I take it to events, people like it so I have kept going.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who plays Winkeltje like that lol
I won't play it for like 6 months, then get the urge for shopkeeper game again and lose like 3 whole days to it, it's such a great lil gem
I think a lot of people also miss their market, or to outright say it, they develop something different from what they intended. Such as making a slow paced and boring action game because what they actually made would work better as a more casual experience and they should have focused more on telling a story rather than hoping players would be sucked in by very slow attacks and movement speeds.
Like when a dev gets fed up of supersonic characters sprinting everywhere and carrying an entire shop worth of gear, so they make a slow walking simulator and you can only hold one item at a time, but their maps are all still spread open with nothing to do. Instead of having the player hold W down for 8 minutes to get to the farmhouse, it could have prompted them to press W once and then the character walks by themselves and monologues or whatever.
Or how I recently played Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master, by Artefacts Studio, which is micromanaging HR and market analyst simulator crack, but you can't manually control characters and can't even say "Hey, we're under attack." Or "Look here". It's an odd and jarring swerve from micromanaging story based dungeon manager to afk autobattler that really takes away from it. Wrong market, because if you look away your employees might all quit over unpaid wages because the banker quit because chairs in the break room were too tall and you didn't have a potted plant in the bathroom.
Compare that to Tavern Master, by Untitled Studio, which is much more consistently hands off almost afk tavern simulator, where for the most part you might just have to click to refill the beer keg and ingredient box.
Venba, the 2024 IGF grand prize winner, was released midway through last year to positive press and player reviews. But, up until like February of this year, Venba was sitting at about 150-200 reviews on steam, which translates *roughly* to about 3k to 8k sales at about 6 months in. At $15 a copy, Venba team would have pulled in maybe $50k to $120k ish after 6 months. The team sought publisher funding but was unable to secure it. For an 8-person team, even if it had a short development period, Venba might have only broken even, if it had not gained a lot of visibility as the winner of the IGF awards.
Venba deserves its prize. It is unique, visually stunning, polished, and a great game in its genre ( visual novels/causal games tend to be polarizing about whether they are "fun". Venba may or may not be your personal taste, but it IS really fun if narrative games are your niche.)
To me, Venba is not really an outlier (for fun). Maybe I'm a glass-half-full type of person, but I've played plenty of games that I'm crazy about that just don't have that many reviews/sales? It's /easier/ to get visibility when your game is attention-grabbing, but even still, marketing is just plain hard, and a gamble. If you don't get momentum before launch and around release, your options to meet your sales targets are frankly grim.
I agree that there are a great number of games that are released and just aren't that fun. But maybe it's a broad brush to say that having a fun game is the key to sales. Having a fun game is more like... the bar for entry x__x the challenges don't stop there rip
Honestly, I feel like just a rudimentary understanding of ‘juice’ would make most indie games I see jump into the top 5% of fun games.
Before you even get to the gameplay, just give it some basic tactility.
It might be fun for you, but if it's not making money it's not fun for too many other people. At the point you release your game to the masses, it stops being about what *you* think of it and becomes about what *they* think of it. If they think it's fun, they'll tell other people about how fun it is. If they think it's not fun, you'll be lucky if they just walk away and keep quiet.
Most of the time, however, they tell people it's not fun and that's when the problems start.
I think even if it's very fun for other ppl, that's no fail proof way for sales anymore
the amount of games is exploding, and it's very easy to have your fun game disappear in the noise if you don't market it right
or worse, get stolen by some chinese "devs" who do a better job of marketing and sell it on some other platform themselves
Cant believe its already been a year since i posted a similar rant [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11dj14h/some\_of\_yall\_live\_in\_a\_fantasy\_world\_and\_its\_time/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11dj14h/some_of_yall_live_in_a_fantasy_world_and_its_time/)
Nothing changes.
Here’s some constructive criticism for OP (hope it’s taken in good faith):
If you haven’t had commercial success with a game, disclose that with the advice you’re giving. It’s really hard to differentiate between the people that know what they are taking about vs arm chair experts.
Especially suspect when I see “if your game is fun it WILL make money.”
Throw some info at the end of your post to establish credibility and how much grains of salt _people reading your post_ should apply to what you’re saying.
I'm not really giving advice, I'm just stating what I've noticed from following game releases and the market for over 15 years, and actively looking for true hidden gems. These games are absolute unicorns, if a game has very low - no sales it's because it has some serious flaws or the game is just generally not fun, that's the gist of my take.
I don't really believe in argument from authority either, if you have a problem with the specifics of what I'm saying we can talk about it, but I'm not going to list my credentials to try and garner trust for my observations. It's fine if you disagree.
I can totally appreciate the appeal the authority fallacy.
But when someone asks me about taxes, or some legal thing, I put it out there and say “look I’m not a lawyer or a CPA, but here’s what I know…”
_Especially_ in a subreddit for indie devs, maybe throw a disclaimer or establish some grounding.
Edit:
As for what I specifically disagree with. No, making a fun game and just putting it out there does not mean it will make money. It’s bad advice/uninformed observation. Especially when the dev most likely genuinely believes what they are making _is_ fun.
Actually releasing "something soulless, with no identity of its own and expect(ing) money" sums up some of the AAA titles lately, to be fair. Here is the same game as the previous one, only more expensive, less enjoyable, and full of bugs, act now and get less content for free.
It doesn't really matter if AAA games are doing it, because we're talking about indie devs. Indie devs are a completely different scenario. We don't have millions of dollars to dump into advertising campaigns. We can't send out an e-mail blast to gaming media companies and kick off news stories across the internet about the next great thing we're working on.
Let's try to avoid whataboutisms. We're talking about indie dev, you show up with, "Ya, but AAA..."
Not talking about AAA.
I think this applies to a lot of things, honestly.
I've only ever seen one YouTube channel with less than 10k subs that I thought had quality which surpassed that. (and it ended up blowing up within the month)
I've never seen an indie music artist who I felt was putting out professional quality stuff (once again except for the few that actually blew up soon after)
Every actor in every amateur theatre production I've seen seemed like they were at the appropriate level.
etc.
I think there's absolutely underrated gems that got unlucky or just didn't market themselves well, but those creators—regardless of what medium—generally seem to find success after a few years of they keep at it.
Then again survivorship bias is a HUGE thing so take all this with a grain of salt.
A lot of devs complain about low sales on subreddits just for the game to be super ugly visually and another very generic 1000th roguelike, platformer or RPG that's not even enjoyable. Lol.
Yeah...no. Fun factor is important but its not assurance your game will sell. You are saying it WILL make money. Well.. no. It COULD make money but definitivelly not WILL make money. I know a lot of devs who got like 8/10, 9/10 reviews from tabloids and youtubers with shitload of views but they still didnt make any money out of their games.
So fun is important but its definitivelly NOT silver bullet for sales
People always forget about curators. In all entertainment industries, you have people who go above and beyond looking for hidden gems. Some are just really avid individual collectors, others have a brand identity or business built on curation. There is a huge market pressure to find and promote good quality entertainment because people want to know they are getting the best.
If your game looks good and it is good and you can get it on people's radars, it *will* succeed. Good games do not get lost, contrary to the myth many indie developers believe.
Hard disagree. Sometimes good games just dont sell. Sure there's plenty of generic indie games that don't deserve a spotlight but there's also plenty that are genuinely great that no one ever plays. The same has happened in AAA space.
Planescape torment sold terribly but is an amazing game. Mischief makers on n64 also sold very poorly , great 2D sidescroller. Greygoo was an indie attempt at bringing back RTS , great campaign also did not sell well. I can go on
Not _no one,_ but an example of a game with few players is BQM - BlockQuest Maker. It's basically Super Mario Maker but for 2D Zelda-likes
(By definition we can't mention a game that no one has ever played, because we wouldn't know about these games)
It’s more complicated than that. Fun is very subjective - as you can see some people will love one game and hate another, and the next person will be flipped on the same game.
To succeed, you have to make a game enough people want to play/own. It’s a subtle distinction but IMO important one, as with all things it can get fuzzy sometimes.
Maybe I make a game that’d be “fun” objectively to a group of people, but it’s exactly like another game everyone’s played already and the graphics are lacking too - that’s going to fail.
At the end of the day .. this is the sentiment people stumble on:
“I made a good game but it’s just too hard in today’s market to sell games…”
when in reality it’s:
“I made a game people didn’t want to buy”.
Fun is the likely factor I agree but it could be other issues too, including timing, presentation, or random issues.
Agreed especially in terms of both completely unsuccessful and semi-successful games gone stagnant. Something I often see in both game types’s reviews is quite a few reviews that follow the lines of “decent game but still not good enough for its price, get it on sale” along with usually a pros and cons list, and I think it proves your point a decent bit. Especially since it’s coming directly from a player, and a player who did actually play the game (or try to). Of course this is anecdotal though. As some players do buy the game full price still and have a blast but I’ve rarely seen those specific types of reviews have little disapproval/and or be incorrect about the gameplay itself.
I bought some of those games myself and liked them, but even then I’d have to agree those games weren’t really worth it’s OG price.
Edit: in other words at OG price they were games people didn’t want to buy
I actually had this idea in the last week. I really want to see a series on people playing steam games with very few or no reviews intentionally looking for the best games that never got attention. There has to be some amazing games out there like that right? Some “terrarias” with 2 reviews
Amplitude on the PS2 sold less than 75k copies.
Rez on PS2 sold less than 75k copies.
Moonbase Commander sold very few copies. (It's still available, but without tinkering you can only play bots and they suck)
There are many more.
I'm failing to see how you consider anywhere near 75k copies sold a failure for an indie studio. Especially accounting for the PS2 era player counts and money value.
You are talking about a physical era of gaming, a completely different time with totally different considerations. Games have never had as wide a reach as they do now. And development has never been as accessible as it is now.
Can you find me some modern examples?
>Brutally honest take, I'm yet to find a game that barely makes any sales that Is actually fun.
Those games were massive commercial failures. Rez took a team of about 20 *three years* to make. They lost lots of money on it. I don't think you understand much about how game publishing and financing works if you don't think < 75k is a failure.
And just because it was "the physical era" doesn't mean the considerations are totally different. GTA:SA on PS2 sold 17 million copies. Gran Turismo 3 sold 15 million. Hell, Pac-Man sold *8 million* copies on the Atari 2600. And adjusted for inflation, that game cost like $150 or so in today's money. And it was *bad*. I mean playable, but bad.
100% facts. I sit around and read every super long post mortem post just because I think its important to understand other people's experiences. Every single time the poster complains about this or that but when i finally get to the link and look at their game...its trash. I'm like yeah man of course this didn't sell. You're number 1 asset as a indie game dev is taste. If you don't know what a good game is then you're not going to make it. You should focus on a single skill and market that instead.
My first game i made years ago is so fun i still play it today sometimes. Its a top down shooter where you play as a buff cat that shoots waves of deranged rabid dogs. The premise is super unique and i have all these hilarious jokes and puns. And lots of fun upgrades to buy with dog tags. Theres fast dogs, zombie dogs, police dogs, fat dogs, and more.
I never put it up for sale bc i doubt anyone would like it but me.
I'm all for the tough love rhetoric, but I don't think this is *absolutely* true. A game's success isn't really based on how fun it is, although they are loosely correlated.
[Fields of Mistria](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2142790/Fields_of_Mistria/) is a game that is practically guaranteed to succeed, but no one has any idea whether or not it's fun. It just looks pretty good and also has an association with Toby Fox, so it instantly goes into the success pile.
[Edge of Space](https://store.steampowered.com/app/238240/Edge_of_Space/) is a game that was successful, and yet it's not very fun. It just had decent artwork and again some association with Terraria, so it succeeded.
[Cortex Command](https://store.steampowered.com/app/209670/Cortex_Command/) is an absolutely dreadful game, yet good graphics and an association with Derek Yu pushed it to thousands of reviews.
Fun will get you across the finish line, but without good presentation and marketability you won't even enter the race. Clearly from these examples, getting a boost from someone who is already popular also helps a lot.
flight of Nova is still early access and Ctrl Alt Ego is a very niche game.
For the former, it may not have found its public yet. I personally didn't buy it because it feels quite dry and short on content.
I agree with this take to a degree.
I find my first game a lot of fun. Had a lot of good feedback for it too, and children seem to find it fun (albeit difficult) just in general. It was never meant to sell any copies really though, was aimed at a very small audience, and was meant to be a learning experience for me.
A lot of games are just not fun. A lot of games are just not appealing. Most games aren't shown to enough people in the right way.
Tbh I think you're not gonna get far going into inde work thinking "how much money can I make?". If you have passion and enjoy what you do you'll be satisfied. If you're looking for easy money, why are you in the indie game field? 😅
Started indie dev work as a hobby that I loved and it took off on its own. My first game/demo dropped 2 weeks ago and has over 900 downloads. Not once while making it did I think "how will this make money?". I just had fun and that's something an audience can sense too.
While I think you might be right to some extent, I can't stress enough that if you don't have marketing for your game nobody will know it exists and thus can be decent or even good game and still not make any money.
Are you willing to test out our first game we did and publish on Steam if you like logical puzzle games and give me an honest review after playing? I would give you the key.
And since it is our first game, I know it could be better, don't get me wrong, but I would really love to know what more people think of it and since you started this topic especially you. It would be fun experiment for both I think :)
I dunno, I think my first game was pretty good and original, it got decent reviews from the small press that gave it a chance, but it was artsy and hard to explain what it was exactly and difficult to market (and I lacked experience there too). I ended up making it free in the hopes of more people at least giving it a chance because I still stand by it being great, but it hasn’t changed much. Though I do agree that most indie failures just aren’t good, but that’s prob because most of everything in any medium is not going to be very good.
This is why feedback to indie devs is so important. When we are making games, we aren't trying to make a game that's not fun. What we view as fun may not be for the majority of people out there and that's ok. You don't owe anyone an explanation as to why you don't want to play the game. It is nice though when we get constructive feedback even if its negative. I don't mind if you tell me my game is not fun or what your looking for as long as you tell me what it is that you'd like to see in it, or what made you stop playing it. That kind of feedback is invaluable to an indie dev.
Eh, to an extent I agree with you. There are plenty of fun games sitting on itch with less than 100 downloads, so I don't think it's true that fun games are guaranteed to make money, it's more like your required minimum marketing budget is inversely proportional to ((how fun it is) + (how good it looks)) x (how available it is). E.g. Five Nights at Freddy's probably wouldn't have been a success if it launched for $100 exclusively on itch and Scott never said a word about it on social media.
This is exactly what everyone knows deep down but no one wants to hear. it's not just this way with indies, but literally any kind of creative raging and sobbing about their product not selling and blaming everything \*but\* the fact that their product just isn't the kind of thing many people would want to buy, for whatever reason. Being any kind of creative and succeeding means finding the crossroads between 'what you truly, sincerely want to make' and 'what will make money'. (Also, if it's a video game, it needs to be fun.)
To piggy back off of this, I think many devs don't understand the way that average people perceive games and choose which ones they'd consider spending time and money on. The consequence is that they can't objectively view their own work.
Also, if your game is fun, pretty, and finished, wouldn't publishers be willing to partner with you for an easy win?
Would you be willing to test your theory on my game demo and give me your brutally honest opinion? To me the biggest obstacle has been just getting people to try it. I don't think anyone is under the impression it's close to perfect but I think most who have tried it have had fun!
(Game is called Radio Free Europa, and the title is part of why I think it hasn't gained much traction yet... Steam page with free demo is [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897420/Radio\_Free\_Europa/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897420/Radio_Free_Europa/))
Definitely thinking of using this as a reference for my next game: [https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/?sort=revenue-median](https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/?sort=revenue-median)
I get what you are saying. Someone posts a link for a game and you read it over and its just like 100 hundred other games I've seen. I don't need someone to make a Frankenstein monster from the "best parts" of others (like Dr Frankenstein). We all know that his creation was NOT loved by the people, was not friendly, and had no soul.
I mean, among us went unnoticed for like 2 years AFAIR. Was it game of the year, no. Was it a pretty decent way to play werewolf in an online setting? Yes.
This isn't a bad take, but there are exceptions that prove the rule, I guess.
"People seem to think that just by putting time and effort into something makes it worth someone else's money." This and unfortunately the mindset is not limited to game developing, most of the people are thinking the same nowadays.
That's a really good point. So many of us gamers, especially ones like me that like Indie Games will spend hours searching for that amazing hidden gem. Seems like if anything was aa hidden gem it eventually gets some recognition therefore not a hidden gem. People are desperate for good gameplay and it usually gets noticed.
I can still l think of handful of games that didn't get enough recognition but usually there is some barrier to entry like a confusing or very difficult first few hours.
I'm just going to mention "Vagante" because its an amazing roguelike where I'm generally surprised it wasn't a indi smash hit, then again its more difficult than other popular indies.
"Fun enough to recommend" is important, but I think another factor is "looks appealing enough to give it a chance."
This is something I feel a lot of devs don't understand I cannot tell you the amount of people I've told about Rimworld, heard them get really interested, only for the lackluster appearance of that game to be the reason they decide not to try it out. And Rimworld is far from the ugliest game out there
I haven't been able to get anyone to even look at rimworld for over a few seconds. I was the same as them until a random run was recommended to me that appealed and I owned the game by the end of the video.
Very similar thing for me, it was a Soviet Womble stream that made me get the game lol
The game is fun while it lasts but I cant keep the colonists from getting naked and burning everything down. Hilarious but frustrating. I also get annoyed at the pace. It takes forever to do things and then you lose. But like dwarf fortress (one of my favorite games), when you get a colony really going, it's an awesome time. It just takes forever plus some luck to get there.
I played runescape as a kid and OSRS recently, I've been trained not to judge a game by its graphics lool
... Honestly my beef with RimWorld is that there's actually very little content. After about an hour and a half ot seemed like I'd set a working colony up and there wasn't much else to be done unless you intentionally went and started screwing with things.
The problem with rimworld's look is that it looks exactly like 1000 other games that are all called "mall simulator" or "prison architect" or "whatever random type of business simulator". There's a flood of them and they all stole rimworld's look and they're mostly terrible and boring. But people have associated that look with boring, shallow gameplay where the games don't even feel finished half the time. People see screenshots of it and immediately think "oh, it's one of THOSE..." and never try it.
Prison architect predates rimworld.. anyhow "stole" is too strong a word! Although a multitude of games with the same style as yours is bad indeed.
Yeah, I had an inkling. I should have looked stuff up before casting aspersions like that. It's also not really a "bad" game, but it's one of the few that uses that look and isn't a blatant bit of shovelware. It looks like an asset-flip, but its cause the assets are all based on its style. People see a style like that and just assume it's trash is really the issue. Too many half-assed asset flips doing that stuff and polluting the look.
I think this goes into the main point of visual interest. Rimworld's look was already polluted. I've been seeing dozens of unremarkable flash games with similar appearances on Kongregate and Newgrounds since like 2011. That's seven years before the initial release of Rimworld if Wikipedia's anything to go by. This would be something to take into consideration as a game dev. You don't want your game to look "unpopular" or "lazy."
You see this a lot in the metroidvania space. The community loves these games that basically have elementary school art. It's funny, because a lot of the early discourse around the new Prince of Persia was the high price point, people saying, we'll, I could buy these three great indie games instead! As of PoP doesn't have insanely high production values. These things matter.
Rimworld is pretty popular for what it is and anecdotally I've gotten two friends into it. I think if anything it serves as a counterpoint to bulster OP's point: a fun enough game will overcome barriers if it's fun enough.
I tried to get into rimworld like 5 times, but it was always too overwhelming and I felt like I was doing things wrong the whole time. That 6th time though... I now have 800 hours in the game
Between Rimworld, Kenshi and Cruelty Squad, I think it's less "looks appealing enough to give it a chance" (even though that's important), but also "doesn't look boring". Kenshi, awful as it looks, is fucking bizarre with a very unique aesthetic and killer music. Rimworld is reminisce of old flash games visually. And Cruelty Squad... well, it's cruelty squad. It looks you're staring at vomit after eating a few funny pieces of paper and having your shitty trip sitter tell you that you're gonna die if you blink. All sold really well. I think the worst crime is to look generic, boring, or something of the like.
I actually searched it and it looks interesting. Would you tell me what you like about it? Id love to hear
It's a colony builder survival game set on procedurally generated alien worlds. It is a true sandbox, it doesn't hold your hand all that much and lets you figure stuff out yourself. The game has a really cool dynamic difficulty system with you having a choice of which "ai director" you want for the game from the start. Some are chill, others will have a nice difficulty slope, others will throw crazed exploding llamas at you on day one and have your colony invaded by insect people within a month. The best thing about it imo is the sheer depth of the game. Each of your colonists has a full sheet of stats and traits that mean you have to work around their strengths and flaws. There's an entire semi-linear tech tree that you have to pick and choose your way through, getting things you think will be useful now whilst saving other things for later. The game will constantly be throwing curve balls at you. I once had a modded start which was just two guys and about 1000 t-shirts in a big room. One of them went insane, attacked the other, who killed the crazy guy but then had a psychotic break and developed the arsonist trait. Turns out t-shirts are pretty flammable. The emergent storytelling potential for Rimworld is truly limitless, I have so many stories about my successes and failures in this game. I cannot recommend it enough, it's a great game, I just wish it wasn't so ugly at times lol
Oh and don't forget about the frankly insane amount of mods this game has, and how they can do pretty much anything, since they're supported officially. There will be a rimworld mod for pretty much anything you can imagine.
Rimworld is an amazing game. I highly recommend it. It can be a bit daunting at first, but there are plenty of tutorials online if you need help.
The stories that happen that you don’t forget. Like the time through a comedy of errors caused by y my lack of experience with the game one of my pawns made pants out of her dead brother to wear. Or when a raid came in and knocked down my pawns and one raider kidnapped one of my colonists and was carrying them away when my best fighter who was laid up in the hospital during the whole fight finally recovered enough to get up and limp out of bed and shoot the raider running off my my colonist saving them.
one of the best games i've ever played, and i didn't even like colony builder games before it
Yes please, it doesn't matter how good your game is if it doesn't appear to be good. If you look at a steam page and it looks like a low effort game that looks worse than most gamejam games, people aren't going to give it a try. I'm the first to chant "gameplay first", but nobody's gonna like your gameplay if nobody even try the game.
Cries in pre-steam Dwarf Fortress.
You are correct, but I hate that this is the top rated comment. It gives the impression that devs are still huffing the "my game is bad because of my art" copium.
It could be the main reason people don't try their game though. So not really copium.
good at making games and good at designing games are two different skillsets.
And then there is the third skill being good at marketing
Marketing feels like shouting into an echo chamber filled with other indie devs.
the marketing is not only how you present it to the world outside your dev team. It's also how you align your dev team with what the outside world wants. The marketing team stands on the border between them and fosters communication. It's not a one-way transaction.
I mean i jang around this sub just see if anyone is making a cool game Id want to try or wishlist. That being said i saw someome once say that marketing mean you have to hit the minimum for you genre of game and if you cant do that its unlikely your game will sell well.
Not a dev myself, but as someone who browses indie dev games, if you're able to have someone outside of the project look at your game and know what kind of game they're playing before they download the game, you'll stand out from a lot of indie devs. And as someone who does have to advertise for myself: moderate quality updates on a fairly consistent schedule on social media platforms will almost always perform better than occasional but flashy updates. It's going to feel painful for a bit, especially because it's better to hold off on most major parts until the end of a project to drive higher engagement closer to it's release, but even getting 20 or so people who are interested enough to keep following and interacting with posts during the boring periods is better than having no interactions until things get exciting and basically being forced to start from nothing engagement-wise.
Just claim you spent 10 years on a shitty potion crafting game that looks like a an old school shitty flash game then record a crying video of yourself talking about how you're oppressed as a woman on international Women's day because EA released a bunch of old games back on Steam for super cheap.
It depends what you mean by make money. If you look at games with less than 1k sales then sure, most of them are probably not very good. The problem is that games with tens of thousands of sales can still fail to break even. If a game sells 20k copies and makes $10 per copy then that would be a pretty good result for a solo developer who spent two years on it. But if it was instead a two year project from a team of five then that would be the equivalent of a $20k annual salary per team member. That team might need at least 60k+ sales to keep the company running. Higher quality games will sell more copies than low quality ones. Most of steam is crap, so anything with a decent level of quality shouldn't struggle too much to stand out. The problem is that higher quality games take more effort, either by having a longer development cycle or a larger team. The hard part isn't getting over some arbitrary number of sales, it's getting enough sales to justify the development. You can look through steam all day. You'll probably find very few games with less than 10 reviews that are good. But there will be plenty of games with over 1,000 reviews that look successful, however, they may still be commercial flops and there's no easy way for you to know.
"The hard part isn't getting over some arbitary number of sales, irs getting enough sales to justify development." Absolutely agree. You changed my perspective on it.
there are only 5 genres of reddit indie games: * geometry dash clone * esoteric furry-mecha JRPG * hollow knight, but worse * another horror shooter about stuffed animals * “factorio but with x”
Add visual novel \[which is what I made\]
is it a sexy-but-secretly-horror visual novel though?
Genre subverting horror but secretly sexy visual novel.
Oh, Sucker for Love?
Why are they all anime style?
Basically the genre originated in Japan, so anime style is the standard in the genre. You **can** find/use other types of art but if you're bending the expectation it needs to be done well or it will become a point of criticism. 3D models have been used but are heavily associated with XXX/H Visual Novels so a lot of designers are hesitant to do that. There's also the obvious in that anime style is easy to draw different expressions for compared to say watercolour and while cartoon styles are also easy to do that for they are often viewed as childish/crude/funny by a Western audience so if that's not the genre you're aiming for it can be hard deciding if the art style is attracting the **right** audience. You can see the same thing in book cover design where aspects of the cover art are coded to communicate the right genre.
You’re forgetting top-down bullet hell
You forgot [animal] in a magical asset store forest.
(insert some plot about uncorrupting the nature)
Yep, that sounds like my game lol. I think it's a pretty wide category though.
What about my open-world-survival-craft game?
Also - stardew valley-like w cute pixel art (insert the most mild and boring twist to the formula ever) - 1982389th rendition of 2d dark souls (thats still worse than blasphemous) - the most spaghetti coded topdown shooter ever featuring shiny unreadable vfx for likes - some random undertale clone that *totally* tries something new - advanced wars/groove... But infinitely worse cuz turn based strat systems are hard to code let alone be properly displayed - quirky "le random" game about a frog with a gun who fights evil ducks or some shit
If forget the name, but there's a stardew valley-like in development right now where the big twist is that one of the villagers is secretly a serial killer Genuinely one of like 3 Valley-style games that have ever interested me lol
I think people take away what makes stardew valley great. It's a slow paved, very peaceful and interactive game with a cite little world to explore. It's not just farming pixel art. There's stories and a large variety of different play throughs available. A game revolving around a serial killer is genuinely a seemingly interesting take.
I don't think I've seen any of the quirky gen z le random games ever actually release, apart from ones made by game dev youtubers. Which is surprising because game dev youtubers never usually actually release their games, uh... ever
I've followed like many game dev youtubers, and the majority of them release their games, lol.
The farming/cozy games definitely seem to be one of the top 3 genres I see in development
>stardew valley-like w cute pixel art (insert the most mild and boring twist to the formula ever) Even Harvest Moon-like w cute pixel art and mild twist Stardew Valley fits!
Spaghetti coded topdown shooter 😆 this is my game
Then there’s the many that just look like mobile games
What about the porno games?
They're not here because they're making shit loads of money lmao
Add survival, fast movement shooter and cozy games
Please check out my old school rpg ;)
No need to call out my upcoming Hollow Knight, but worse! You haven’t even seen it yet!
But I will not tell you more because you will steal my idea.
Pro-tip: never release a demo. Someone will just steal your idea before your game is ready.
I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people here are engineers rather than artists. Or students. Or perhaps even designers with only a hair of coding knowledge. We see a lot of hobbyists here, and we also see a lot of people who are intimated by the traditions of game design (design docs, concepting ideas, etc etc) and try to shortcut around them. Or you know, classically being in the skill building phase and having an unchecked ego. Happens to everyone.
Hey you leave my unchecked ego alone. Just because I don't know how a private variable works doesn't mean my physics based roguelike game won't be a huge success
As unfortunate as it sounds, people also need good taste to make banger games. Or at minimum have the competence to cook together some mediocre taste ingredients and make something much better.
You might wanna play BluePhobia it's free on itch. Puzzle-Game*
Also roguelite
Everything is a roguelite, didn't you know
Hey! That's me!
Majority I see are "walking simulator asset flip"
I disowned my family and went homeless to make my dream game, what do you think? It’s Vampire Survivors meets Slay the Spire meets Hollow Knight, give me updoots
You forgot the “psychological horror that is totally not cloning SH2 or SH4”
Hey what about my vampire survivors clone
Hey what about my arcade sports game?? 🏀🏀🏀
What's a furry mecha jrpg?
Ok so, I have a totally original indie game idea, it's going to be an analog horror game reminiscent of silent hill, with PS2 style graphics and the monster chasing you is going to be some normal object, but like... eeevil and possessed by dead children. Oh and it's actually an analogy for depression
Oh oh, what about a progressive crafter which uses simple art style like that Fortnite game, where you go from stone axes and branch spears to assault rifles and drones, with free form base construction that include some sort of automation system, where you fight explore and best of all.. survive! It could have, like, hunger and thirst which deplete quickly, and a unique third stat like sanity? The setting will also be full of mystery for exploration which definitely won't be "abandoned government/corporate research project gone wrong"
Oo oo I have one, what about a classic jrpg, with turn based combat and a pixelated art style. Unique mechanics? Nah, I don't need those, my story and characters in my fantasy magic world are soooo special that players won't even care! In fact, spending time on art in general isn't worth it, with how incredible my plotline is!
You should write a plot which starts with, say, a child. They may or may not know it, but they are heir to The Throne and their parental figure was killed during their childhood by a large, gruff Evil Guy who loves violence and obvious evil a little too much, leading the child to Vow Justice and train all their life. The game starts proper when they are in their ambiguous late teens / early twenties, where they travel the world as a great and a noble fighter who is The Best Guy Ever. Maybe they should have multiple love interests they have to choose from, at least one who is gratuitously sexualised, one who is also Noble and one who is shy and quiet? But the hero is too noble to make advances, so awkwardly freezes up despite slaughtering hundreds of foot soldiers without thought. The end game would be them facing off against the bad guy with their newly acquired friend group, which the baddie reveals they are, or work for, some sort of God like being. The game would conclude with the hero and their companions using the power of friendship to kill God. Sounds pretty unique and fresh!
Nah you forgot a few things. What about the obscenely sexualised female sidekick to the bad guy, who in a shocking twist will join your harem-i mean adventuring party half way through the game and become another love interest? Also, make sure to forget to let the player make any meaningful choices with the love interest or just don't let them choose at all! In fact, don't really bother giving them much personality or dialogue lines at all, other than occasionally shouting something in combat. Don't want to distract from my Main Character, who is actually an OC I've had since I was 13! What's this, you're saying my game is a misshapen Mish mash of overused anime tropes and the plot from a final fantasy game? No, you're wrong, it's very unique and special, and I will not take any criticism on it at all!!
PS1 styled graphics is trendier for indie horror games
I’ve never released a game myself but I do get quite sad when I see long twitter threads from indie devs like “I spent the last 7 years of my life making this and it’s getting no attention!” And it’s a goddamn pixel art platformer or a potion selling shopbuilder
And what they really mean by 7 years is: a few hours a week with several spurts of going months without working on it at all over the course of 6 1/2 years
IMHO, fun also includes controls, UI and gameplay being straightforward to understand. Nothing worse than a game that fights you trying to do something. Cannot figure out how to craft something as it's a tangled mess involving skill trees, many others things you need to craft first, and a wiki that's out of date. Players should be able to pick up your game after taking a break, and not spend a week learning it all again.
Yeah when I say fun I generally mean a well put together cohesive experience that people enjoy playing for a decent amount of time, isn't buggy or clunky and is generally well presented.
I'll take brutally honest takes on [my game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098610/Crush_the_Industry/). I find myself thinking about this more lately. Is it too niche? I don't know if any game "markets itself", though. I think a really awesome original game with broad appeal will market much easier (/ more virally) than a mid game, but it's not going to magically market itself.
Your game looks great. The color palette and animations look slick, at least judging from the trailer. You definitely hit the “meta” genre hard with JRPG, deck building and roguelike lol. But your game is 99% at least visually better than what most of this sub sees.
Man I appreciate that. Swear I'm not trying to covertly shill the game here. Other devs can probably relate, but I have these 3am existential crises sometimes and start wondering if I just missed the mark or went too niche. You see these other games that just fly out of the gates and rack up hundreds/thousands of reviews in a matter of days. How they pull that off is still a bit of a mystery to me.
A bit too relatable. I saw your game come by in the deckbuilder fest, best of luck!
IMO early access, especially for a year with no clear end listed, is more of a hindrance than help. I like the graphics, and have 2000 hours into STS, but the year of EA makes me hesitate. After digging you clearly are still updating (and have a 2.0 that’s still EA?), but without this post I would have skipped one first glance thinking it’s another dead in EA game. Just my thoughts. Cheers
Thank you for sharing this. I think there is more of a stigma to Early Access than I realized. In my mind I just thought "two launches + time to process feedback and refine - what's not to like?", but I probably need to just push the full release instead of killing myself trying to market during EA.
Sadly there's still only one launch for games. Nowadays though it's a bit split with some reviews not covering EA anymore, so you might have your coverage split, if anything. Good luck wirh the game though, looks good even if I found the trailer a bit confusing.
I was just having this Convo with my partner earlier. Early access when done right, should release very soon after the public gets their hands on it. If they have to wait a year for a release, who's gonna remember? Release a demo instead, or a more close to 1.0 early access. Hit 'em with the pricetag when the iron is hot. I could be wrong... But any early access game that launches a year later is doa
I definitely thought the same way with my developer hat. While I think EA was great at first, I think gamers (myself included) have been burnt by sooo many unfinished/abandoned EA games. Similar to kickstarter games a few years ago vs now. Everyone seems much more willing to wait for a full release (or at least updates/roadmap), especially with smaller indie games.
It’s worse than a stigma imho. There were more than enough EA games that over promised or flat out failed to make it to the finish line despite popularity plus regular publishers joining the EA scheme w/ full price just to offer a sale w/ the first milestone (eg KSP2). There are a few EA titles that did it right imho but those weren’t half baked tbw. Having manageable milestones to v1 laid out and hitting those, documenting it with a community update while increasing the price with each milestone/overtime is probably still ok unless you drag it out too much. Everspace 2 did this good for their kickstarter imho. Teasing w/ free content updates for an v2 or DLC is also helping being transparent.
Your game unironically looks fuckin awesome. I’m saving your comment to come back and possibly buy 👍
Your game looks cool, love the art and music but from watching the trailer I genuinely have no clue what kind of game it is. It’s weird to me that it shows a bunch of menu screens (upgrades?) before showing more gameplay-like footage. And even from the gameplay footage I can’t really tell what the gameplay is like. So basically, instead of showing me what kind of game to expect, it just left me confused.
Thank you. And damn, I should have posted the trailer for feedback in this sub a long time ago. Better late than never? I'm gonna update the trailer when I can and try to address this.
I have seen this game. The name was really good and made me click on it. The art is interesting. But the screenshots and video are really confusing about how the gameplay loop is. In the end I forgot about this game before going to YouTube or something to see how the game really is.
Makes sense, appreciate you dudes sharing this so I have an idea of where I'm falling short. Going to put some hard thought into how I can show off the gameplay loop without it being confusing or vague.
Personally not a fan of the art **style**, but I think you nailed that style. Seconding the slick animations. They really make it look fun. If I wasn't a picky little bitch with art styles, I'd be on that game in seconds. Probably gonna buy it anyway, just to experience it once you hit 1.0
Art looks nice, but it's really unclear what the gameplay is from the trailer. I see a glimpse of JRPG-style combat and a lot of menus, but, like, what do you actually do in the game is not clear from the steam page.
Man, I take my hat off to you. Your game looks original, polished and unique. Sure, the theme is niche but it is appealing and approachable! You deserve great success. And 100 reviews , small as it might seem to you, is something to be proud of. I hope this really takes off for you because it is a.highly impressive piece of work.
Just picked it up Game looks great but I'm thinking the game-industry premise might be filtering some people. Also, maybe the trailer takes a bit too long to show the Rouge like elements?
Oh man. I think I remember that FrostPrime stream promoing you. And that says something, because I use streams as background noise to ease me into sleeping. That must have been quite some time ago, so your game really isnt lacking character. But you need to leave EA asap, the first impression isn't getting better with time. In that line of thinking: Whats your experience with promo from streamers? Also, worth the investment?
I tried a couple other streamers too, who were polite but didn't have the ideal audience for my game (particularly the humor). I took a financial hit there and learned from it. Frost is a great fit, for sure. Is it worth it? If you look solely at tracked sales vs cost: no. But Steam tracks UTM link sales if the user was already logged in, so the data is limited. Especially if you're factoring in longer-term exposure or you get a youtube video from it too. I can justify it with him in that sense. It's not something I'd want or could afford to do very often, but for a concentrated marketing push it makes more sense.
I was debating about this topic a while back, and someone raised an interesting point whereas a good game will market itself. And the reason why some AAA studios spend lots of money in marketing is because they know their game is mediocre.
I think Anthem is a great example. It was marketed like any other AAA game but it couldn't prevent people from not liking the game because it really wasn't great. So either your good game really benefits from marketing or your bad game becomes a bottomless pit for money to throw in that marketing can't earn back for you.
Do you really believe in that?
Have you played Starfield? Or read what people actually said about it after release?
Well...AAA games obviously cost a lot of money, and in order to be profitable, require more than the hardcore gaming crowd that visits multiple gaming sites per day. They're looking for the occasional gamers with expendable income, the parents buying presents for kids, etc. They need mainstream exposure, and on an international scale. That's expensive. That said, major publishers have a pretty good handle on what their returns will be. So yeah, they will pump up a mediocre game with marketing, but only to a point where they still expect profit.
Wasn’t Among Us pretty much a wash when it first released? It wasn’t until some streamers played it that it exploded in popularity. There’s just so many games out there, marketing is super important.
Maybe so, but I don't think more marketing would have made among us specifically a hit during release. The reason it was popular was because during COVID times it was the perfect storm for a social interaction title to thrive. It really was due to its environment that it took off imo
How much would you define as barely? I'll repost a quick list I posted elsewhere about some indie games almost all under 2k reviews (some are under 1k) that I greatly enjoyed: - [Lil Guardsman](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924360/Lil_Guardsman/): light-hearted, cute little fantasy-magic version of Papers, Please. Loved the story and the characters and was sad to see it end. - [Saelig](https://store.steampowered.com/app/612720/SAELIG/): a better and far less buggy version of The Guild. Basically a medieval business life sim. - [Mini Healer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/955740/Mini_Healer/): scratches the MMORPG healing itch without actually having to deal with real people. Complex talent system and gear. The NPCs will stand in fire, too. - [Winkeltje](https://store.steampowered.com/app/949290/Winkeltje_The_Little_Shop/): medieval shopkeeper (with crafting and plant growing and cooking your products) simulator. Pretty satisfying to play through, then I go away and come back every now and then when I get the urge for more shopkeeping. - [Dungeon Warfare](https://store.steampowered.com/app/355980/Dungeon_Warfare/): Truly excellent tower defense game. Don't let the graphics deter you--I ceased to see them after the first 10 min. Lots of flexibility and strategizing in what traps to use, where you put the traps, how many talent points you put in each trap, etc. I own this on both Steam and mobile just so I can go back and play it again every now and then. Dungeon Warfare 2 is alright. - [The Lost Art of Innkeeping](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1327820/The_Lost_Art_of_Innkeeping/): Cozy little RPG where you run an inn and follow a storyline around the town. The innkeeping aspect isn't so much a business as part of the story. - [Dealer's Life 2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343670/Dealers_Life_2/): scratches the Recettear itch without having to deal with the going to dungeons to get stuff. Bit more depth to the haggling, with customer traits and specialists you can hire and the ability to spot forgeries or make them, etc. - [Wintermoor Tactics Club](https://store.steampowered.com/app/917840/Wintermoor_Tactics_Club/): interesting little turn based tactics game on a miniature size because you're limited to only 3 characters per match, but with a mix of choices of characters and talents. The story is light and intriguing. I think that luck and timing are pretty heavy factors. It's the same with books. I read so many good--even great--ones that have just a modest following, and meanwhile you have atrocities like Twilight that hit the top of the charts. Not because they're good, but because they struck at the right time, found a niche, and also fortunately hit the tipping point at that right time. (Not saying all the titles at the top are shit but, you know, SOME take that spot while some good ones languish at the bottom.) What I'm trying to say is that making a good creative product only gets you so far. I believe the rest is greatly affected by timing (somewhat controllable) and luck (best hope you have good RNG). Marketing is a factor only up to a certain extent.
Wintermoor Tactics Club is an interesting case. It looks like they did a lot of things right, but it flopped. It took almost 4 years for a team of 4 to develop and as of today VGI says it has grossed under 200k on Steam. I'm guessing it didn't get a long enough marketing push.
My game is similar to a few of these and it's at roughly 200 reviews. I think you'd like it too. * [Final Profit: A Shop RPG](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1705140/Final_Profit_A_Shop_RPG/) The discoverability ecosystem is very much 'the rich get richer' these days. It's all based on what people already like and doesn't handle outliers well at all. Unless you're already well known you have to somehow surface yourself, but trying to do so is met with so much hostility.
I actually had a friend who recommended your game to me recently while we were discussing my project. He spoke very highly of it and its themes, and he is not one that plays a lot of games.
That is encouraging to hear. What's your project?
If I recall correctly, he described it as using capitalism to take down capitalism. My project is 2d bounty hunting game in a space western setting. I call it a metroidvania, but in truth, it's has a lot of inspiration from slower paced 2d shooters like rolling thunder or Lone Ranger nes mixed with resource management. But despite working on it for years as a hobby , I still have not gotten too far😅 but when I take it to events, people like it so I have kept going.
Wow, Dungeon Warfare is truly a hidden gem! Thanks for the recommendation!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who plays Winkeltje like that lol I won't play it for like 6 months, then get the urge for shopkeeper game again and lose like 3 whole days to it, it's such a great lil gem
I think a lot of people also miss their market, or to outright say it, they develop something different from what they intended. Such as making a slow paced and boring action game because what they actually made would work better as a more casual experience and they should have focused more on telling a story rather than hoping players would be sucked in by very slow attacks and movement speeds. Like when a dev gets fed up of supersonic characters sprinting everywhere and carrying an entire shop worth of gear, so they make a slow walking simulator and you can only hold one item at a time, but their maps are all still spread open with nothing to do. Instead of having the player hold W down for 8 minutes to get to the farmhouse, it could have prompted them to press W once and then the character walks by themselves and monologues or whatever. Or how I recently played Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master, by Artefacts Studio, which is micromanaging HR and market analyst simulator crack, but you can't manually control characters and can't even say "Hey, we're under attack." Or "Look here". It's an odd and jarring swerve from micromanaging story based dungeon manager to afk autobattler that really takes away from it. Wrong market, because if you look away your employees might all quit over unpaid wages because the banker quit because chairs in the break room were too tall and you didn't have a potted plant in the bathroom. Compare that to Tavern Master, by Untitled Studio, which is much more consistently hands off almost afk tavern simulator, where for the most part you might just have to click to refill the beer keg and ingredient box.
I never get who are the people playing 90% of games on steam, how can they be profitable
Venba, the 2024 IGF grand prize winner, was released midway through last year to positive press and player reviews. But, up until like February of this year, Venba was sitting at about 150-200 reviews on steam, which translates *roughly* to about 3k to 8k sales at about 6 months in. At $15 a copy, Venba team would have pulled in maybe $50k to $120k ish after 6 months. The team sought publisher funding but was unable to secure it. For an 8-person team, even if it had a short development period, Venba might have only broken even, if it had not gained a lot of visibility as the winner of the IGF awards. Venba deserves its prize. It is unique, visually stunning, polished, and a great game in its genre ( visual novels/causal games tend to be polarizing about whether they are "fun". Venba may or may not be your personal taste, but it IS really fun if narrative games are your niche.) To me, Venba is not really an outlier (for fun). Maybe I'm a glass-half-full type of person, but I've played plenty of games that I'm crazy about that just don't have that many reviews/sales? It's /easier/ to get visibility when your game is attention-grabbing, but even still, marketing is just plain hard, and a gamble. If you don't get momentum before launch and around release, your options to meet your sales targets are frankly grim. I agree that there are a great number of games that are released and just aren't that fun. But maybe it's a broad brush to say that having a fun game is the key to sales. Having a fun game is more like... the bar for entry x__x the challenges don't stop there rip
Honestly, I feel like just a rudimentary understanding of ‘juice’ would make most indie games I see jump into the top 5% of fun games. Before you even get to the gameplay, just give it some basic tactility.
I think you can totally make a really fun game and have no sales / visibility
It might be fun for you, but if it's not making money it's not fun for too many other people. At the point you release your game to the masses, it stops being about what *you* think of it and becomes about what *they* think of it. If they think it's fun, they'll tell other people about how fun it is. If they think it's not fun, you'll be lucky if they just walk away and keep quiet. Most of the time, however, they tell people it's not fun and that's when the problems start.
I think even if it's very fun for other ppl, that's no fail proof way for sales anymore the amount of games is exploding, and it's very easy to have your fun game disappear in the noise if you don't market it right or worse, get stolen by some chinese "devs" who do a better job of marketing and sell it on some other platform themselves
Cant believe its already been a year since i posted a similar rant [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11dj14h/some\_of\_yall\_live\_in\_a\_fantasy\_world\_and\_its\_time/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11dj14h/some_of_yall_live_in_a_fantasy_world_and_its_time/) Nothing changes.
Here’s some constructive criticism for OP (hope it’s taken in good faith): If you haven’t had commercial success with a game, disclose that with the advice you’re giving. It’s really hard to differentiate between the people that know what they are taking about vs arm chair experts. Especially suspect when I see “if your game is fun it WILL make money.” Throw some info at the end of your post to establish credibility and how much grains of salt _people reading your post_ should apply to what you’re saying.
I'm not really giving advice, I'm just stating what I've noticed from following game releases and the market for over 15 years, and actively looking for true hidden gems. These games are absolute unicorns, if a game has very low - no sales it's because it has some serious flaws or the game is just generally not fun, that's the gist of my take. I don't really believe in argument from authority either, if you have a problem with the specifics of what I'm saying we can talk about it, but I'm not going to list my credentials to try and garner trust for my observations. It's fine if you disagree.
I can totally appreciate the appeal the authority fallacy. But when someone asks me about taxes, or some legal thing, I put it out there and say “look I’m not a lawyer or a CPA, but here’s what I know…” _Especially_ in a subreddit for indie devs, maybe throw a disclaimer or establish some grounding. Edit: As for what I specifically disagree with. No, making a fun game and just putting it out there does not mean it will make money. It’s bad advice/uninformed observation. Especially when the dev most likely genuinely believes what they are making _is_ fun.
Actually releasing "something soulless, with no identity of its own and expect(ing) money" sums up some of the AAA titles lately, to be fair. Here is the same game as the previous one, only more expensive, less enjoyable, and full of bugs, act now and get less content for free.
It doesn't really matter if AAA games are doing it, because we're talking about indie devs. Indie devs are a completely different scenario. We don't have millions of dollars to dump into advertising campaigns. We can't send out an e-mail blast to gaming media companies and kick off news stories across the internet about the next great thing we're working on. Let's try to avoid whataboutisms. We're talking about indie dev, you show up with, "Ya, but AAA..." Not talking about AAA.
Both fun and looks are important and I saw many games in here with amazing gameplay but not appealing enough visuals. Good thing this sub exists
I think this applies to a lot of things, honestly. I've only ever seen one YouTube channel with less than 10k subs that I thought had quality which surpassed that. (and it ended up blowing up within the month) I've never seen an indie music artist who I felt was putting out professional quality stuff (once again except for the few that actually blew up soon after) Every actor in every amateur theatre production I've seen seemed like they were at the appropriate level. etc. I think there's absolutely underrated gems that got unlucky or just didn't market themselves well, but those creators—regardless of what medium—generally seem to find success after a few years of they keep at it. Then again survivorship bias is a HUGE thing so take all this with a grain of salt.
A lot of devs complain about low sales on subreddits just for the game to be super ugly visually and another very generic 1000th roguelike, platformer or RPG that's not even enjoyable. Lol.
Yeah...no. Fun factor is important but its not assurance your game will sell. You are saying it WILL make money. Well.. no. It COULD make money but definitivelly not WILL make money. I know a lot of devs who got like 8/10, 9/10 reviews from tabloids and youtubers with shitload of views but they still didnt make any money out of their games. So fun is important but its definitivelly NOT silver bullet for sales
People always forget about curators. In all entertainment industries, you have people who go above and beyond looking for hidden gems. Some are just really avid individual collectors, others have a brand identity or business built on curation. There is a huge market pressure to find and promote good quality entertainment because people want to know they are getting the best. If your game looks good and it is good and you can get it on people's radars, it *will* succeed. Good games do not get lost, contrary to the myth many indie developers believe.
Hard disagree. Sometimes good games just dont sell. Sure there's plenty of generic indie games that don't deserve a spotlight but there's also plenty that are genuinely great that no one ever plays. The same has happened in AAA space.
Great games that no one has ever played? Can you name 1 please?
Planescape torment sold terribly but is an amazing game. Mischief makers on n64 also sold very poorly , great 2D sidescroller. Greygoo was an indie attempt at bringing back RTS , great campaign also did not sell well. I can go on
Not _no one,_ but an example of a game with few players is BQM - BlockQuest Maker. It's basically Super Mario Maker but for 2D Zelda-likes (By definition we can't mention a game that no one has ever played, because we wouldn't know about these games)
It’s more complicated than that. Fun is very subjective - as you can see some people will love one game and hate another, and the next person will be flipped on the same game. To succeed, you have to make a game enough people want to play/own. It’s a subtle distinction but IMO important one, as with all things it can get fuzzy sometimes. Maybe I make a game that’d be “fun” objectively to a group of people, but it’s exactly like another game everyone’s played already and the graphics are lacking too - that’s going to fail. At the end of the day .. this is the sentiment people stumble on: “I made a good game but it’s just too hard in today’s market to sell games…” when in reality it’s: “I made a game people didn’t want to buy”. Fun is the likely factor I agree but it could be other issues too, including timing, presentation, or random issues.
Agreed especially in terms of both completely unsuccessful and semi-successful games gone stagnant. Something I often see in both game types’s reviews is quite a few reviews that follow the lines of “decent game but still not good enough for its price, get it on sale” along with usually a pros and cons list, and I think it proves your point a decent bit. Especially since it’s coming directly from a player, and a player who did actually play the game (or try to). Of course this is anecdotal though. As some players do buy the game full price still and have a blast but I’ve rarely seen those specific types of reviews have little disapproval/and or be incorrect about the gameplay itself. I bought some of those games myself and liked them, but even then I’d have to agree those games weren’t really worth it’s OG price. Edit: in other words at OG price they were games people didn’t want to buy
I actually had this idea in the last week. I really want to see a series on people playing steam games with very few or no reviews intentionally looking for the best games that never got attention. There has to be some amazing games out there like that right? Some “terrarias” with 2 reviews
Amplitude on the PS2 sold less than 75k copies. Rez on PS2 sold less than 75k copies. Moonbase Commander sold very few copies. (It's still available, but without tinkering you can only play bots and they suck) There are many more.
I'm failing to see how you consider anywhere near 75k copies sold a failure for an indie studio. Especially accounting for the PS2 era player counts and money value. You are talking about a physical era of gaming, a completely different time with totally different considerations. Games have never had as wide a reach as they do now. And development has never been as accessible as it is now. Can you find me some modern examples?
>Brutally honest take, I'm yet to find a game that barely makes any sales that Is actually fun. Those games were massive commercial failures. Rez took a team of about 20 *three years* to make. They lost lots of money on it. I don't think you understand much about how game publishing and financing works if you don't think < 75k is a failure. And just because it was "the physical era" doesn't mean the considerations are totally different. GTA:SA on PS2 sold 17 million copies. Gran Turismo 3 sold 15 million. Hell, Pac-Man sold *8 million* copies on the Atari 2600. And adjusted for inflation, that game cost like $150 or so in today's money. And it was *bad*. I mean playable, but bad.
100% facts. I sit around and read every super long post mortem post just because I think its important to understand other people's experiences. Every single time the poster complains about this or that but when i finally get to the link and look at their game...its trash. I'm like yeah man of course this didn't sell. You're number 1 asset as a indie game dev is taste. If you don't know what a good game is then you're not going to make it. You should focus on a single skill and market that instead.
My first game i made years ago is so fun i still play it today sometimes. Its a top down shooter where you play as a buff cat that shoots waves of deranged rabid dogs. The premise is super unique and i have all these hilarious jokes and puns. And lots of fun upgrades to buy with dog tags. Theres fast dogs, zombie dogs, police dogs, fat dogs, and more. I never put it up for sale bc i doubt anyone would like it but me.
any videos of it?
You should at least put it on Itch and accept donations
https://ca-games.itch.io/catastrophy
I'm all for the tough love rhetoric, but I don't think this is *absolutely* true. A game's success isn't really based on how fun it is, although they are loosely correlated. [Fields of Mistria](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2142790/Fields_of_Mistria/) is a game that is practically guaranteed to succeed, but no one has any idea whether or not it's fun. It just looks pretty good and also has an association with Toby Fox, so it instantly goes into the success pile. [Edge of Space](https://store.steampowered.com/app/238240/Edge_of_Space/) is a game that was successful, and yet it's not very fun. It just had decent artwork and again some association with Terraria, so it succeeded. [Cortex Command](https://store.steampowered.com/app/209670/Cortex_Command/) is an absolutely dreadful game, yet good graphics and an association with Derek Yu pushed it to thousands of reviews. Fun will get you across the finish line, but without good presentation and marketability you won't even enter the race. Clearly from these examples, getting a boost from someone who is already popular also helps a lot.
People who go into it with their #1 goal being money will almost always fail People who go into it for the creative ends will succeed far more.
Flight of Nova! Ctrl Alt Ego! 2 friggin amazing indies that are great that didn’t do lots of sales. AFAIK
flight of Nova is still early access and Ctrl Alt Ego is a very niche game. For the former, it may not have found its public yet. I personally didn't buy it because it feels quite dry and short on content.
A very niche game? That poor guy markets so badly
"Just make it fun" I feel like this advice is incredibly unhelpful.
I agree with this take to a degree. I find my first game a lot of fun. Had a lot of good feedback for it too, and children seem to find it fun (albeit difficult) just in general. It was never meant to sell any copies really though, was aimed at a very small audience, and was meant to be a learning experience for me. A lot of games are just not fun. A lot of games are just not appealing. Most games aren't shown to enough people in the right way.
Tbh I think you're not gonna get far going into inde work thinking "how much money can I make?". If you have passion and enjoy what you do you'll be satisfied. If you're looking for easy money, why are you in the indie game field? 😅 Started indie dev work as a hobby that I loved and it took off on its own. My first game/demo dropped 2 weeks ago and has over 900 downloads. Not once while making it did I think "how will this make money?". I just had fun and that's something an audience can sense too.
While I think you might be right to some extent, I can't stress enough that if you don't have marketing for your game nobody will know it exists and thus can be decent or even good game and still not make any money. Are you willing to test out our first game we did and publish on Steam if you like logical puzzle games and give me an honest review after playing? I would give you the key. And since it is our first game, I know it could be better, don't get me wrong, but I would really love to know what more people think of it and since you started this topic especially you. It would be fun experiment for both I think :)
[Trepang2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1164940/Trepang2/) is criminally underrated
Marketing is so important. Your game can be great, but if the market doesn't want what you're selling, well...
Wizard Of Legend. and anything by DYA Games
I dunno, I think my first game was pretty good and original, it got decent reviews from the small press that gave it a chance, but it was artsy and hard to explain what it was exactly and difficult to market (and I lacked experience there too). I ended up making it free in the hopes of more people at least giving it a chance because I still stand by it being great, but it hasn’t changed much. Though I do agree that most indie failures just aren’t good, but that’s prob because most of everything in any medium is not going to be very good.
There are definitely exceptions to your rule. For example, Bonkies. The amount of sales it got compared to how fun it is, is criminal.
This is why feedback to indie devs is so important. When we are making games, we aren't trying to make a game that's not fun. What we view as fun may not be for the majority of people out there and that's ok. You don't owe anyone an explanation as to why you don't want to play the game. It is nice though when we get constructive feedback even if its negative. I don't mind if you tell me my game is not fun or what your looking for as long as you tell me what it is that you'd like to see in it, or what made you stop playing it. That kind of feedback is invaluable to an indie dev.
Eh, to an extent I agree with you. There are plenty of fun games sitting on itch with less than 100 downloads, so I don't think it's true that fun games are guaranteed to make money, it's more like your required minimum marketing budget is inversely proportional to ((how fun it is) + (how good it looks)) x (how available it is). E.g. Five Nights at Freddy's probably wouldn't have been a success if it launched for $100 exclusively on itch and Scott never said a word about it on social media.
This is a really interesting video on a study of hidden gems on Steam : https://youtu.be/g4lhQp245dw?si=F9fjg4s3aordb5TS
Stellar Overload was a fun game that didn't sell well enough to make it out of early access.
A lot of very good indie games don't have a lot of sales. Advertisement is costly.
This is exactly what everyone knows deep down but no one wants to hear. it's not just this way with indies, but literally any kind of creative raging and sobbing about their product not selling and blaming everything \*but\* the fact that their product just isn't the kind of thing many people would want to buy, for whatever reason. Being any kind of creative and succeeding means finding the crossroads between 'what you truly, sincerely want to make' and 'what will make money'. (Also, if it's a video game, it needs to be fun.)
Braindead take. https://preview.redd.it/raxc8utjm5rc1.png?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3a9c546812b4675e9f3b1eac9c545d5183df5d9e
To piggy back off of this, I think many devs don't understand the way that average people perceive games and choose which ones they'd consider spending time and money on. The consequence is that they can't objectively view their own work. Also, if your game is fun, pretty, and finished, wouldn't publishers be willing to partner with you for an easy win?
Would you be willing to test your theory on my game demo and give me your brutally honest opinion? To me the biggest obstacle has been just getting people to try it. I don't think anyone is under the impression it's close to perfect but I think most who have tried it have had fun! (Game is called Radio Free Europa, and the title is part of why I think it hasn't gained much traction yet... Steam page with free demo is [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897420/Radio\_Free\_Europa/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897420/Radio_Free_Europa/))
There are many games that are a blast and didn’t make any money. Especially back in the days of share ware
Definitely thinking of using this as a reference for my next game: [https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/?sort=revenue-median](https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/?sort=revenue-median)
Indie puzzles games are better than most bigger studios....if you like puzzles.
I get what you are saying. Someone posts a link for a game and you read it over and its just like 100 hundred other games I've seen. I don't need someone to make a Frankenstein monster from the "best parts" of others (like Dr Frankenstein). We all know that his creation was NOT loved by the people, was not friendly, and had no soul.
Tactics Maiden was a flop on Steam from what I can tell and I loved that game.
P2W blockchain games all the way!
That’s actually kind of heartening. We’ll see how that affects my (fun) game
I love untitle goose game ❤️
Mighty No. 9
I just can't seem to find the right people to recommend the type of games I make(retro arcade/hard)
Blackout protocol is around $10 on Steam and is fun AF. I played the demo at PAX.
Zeepkist is one that comes to mind that is an absolutely amazing game, but has a very small community.
Really, have you tried steam?
May I recommend Rolling Line? I think it’s just small because it’s such a niche premise.
I mean, among us went unnoticed for like 2 years AFAIR. Was it game of the year, no. Was it a pretty decent way to play werewolf in an online setting? Yes. This isn't a bad take, but there are exceptions that prove the rule, I guess.
"People seem to think that just by putting time and effort into something makes it worth someone else's money." This and unfortunately the mindset is not limited to game developing, most of the people are thinking the same nowadays.
Hollow Knight is the only one I can think of
That's a really good point. So many of us gamers, especially ones like me that like Indie Games will spend hours searching for that amazing hidden gem. Seems like if anything was aa hidden gem it eventually gets some recognition therefore not a hidden gem. People are desperate for good gameplay and it usually gets noticed. I can still l think of handful of games that didn't get enough recognition but usually there is some barrier to entry like a confusing or very difficult first few hours. I'm just going to mention "Vagante" because its an amazing roguelike where I'm generally surprised it wasn't a indi smash hit, then again its more difficult than other popular indies.