Відео

Haha hopefully so. Good luck on the sales!

I aim to please. There's a sales update after my first discount period (during a Steam fest) too: ua-cam.com/video/jJ3k0VJ975g/v-deo.html You'll have to wait about 32 seconds to get what you want on this one though ;)

Thanks for the idea! That could be an interesting video. I'll try to get it out next week. For now, I'd generally say to go into your prototyping with a goal. Could be something like getting a general feel for complexity of code, testing interest on socials, etc. Let that be the guide for what you work on and what you don't with an aim to validate yes or no very quickly (say a week or two)

MicroProjects. Then merge them

I've seen a couple ways to deal with this, and the most common is to just include some NDA language in the contract. I'm no lawyer so I can't tell you specifically what that is though. At the end of the day people have to have access to do their job so it's difficult to avoid. IIRC you can specify per-user branch permissions in Plastic though it has been some time since I used it. I commonly do that with git-based systems to protect things like "you can't delete the main repo". Another option like (that @jpnzo2k12 mentioned below) is to separate the portion of your code that our into a separate repo and have to new contractor/employee work there. As long as you can easily segment off the work they're doing, that can work well. It can be really messy to merge though if it's a deeper piece of work. I'd def recommend you do routine merges of this instead of waiting until the end to do it once.

It's probably one of the most useful practices I developed over the course of the game. I at one point planned to publish them on Substack, but never got around to it.

For sure! I hardly ever listen to anything when I'm out walking around. I'd rather just listen to everything going on around me instead. I'm apparently one of the few haha

Gotta keep it fun! I'm a big Star Wars fan so no shortage of these kind of things

Thanks for the reminder. I have a few of those I need to go back and add in my videos now. Glad you liked this video :)

Thanks! Great question, there's a lot to unpack here. A couple thoughts: I think it's important to differentiate "fast" from "careless". You can quickly develop a product (game or otherwise) by staying super focused on just the core pieces that matter. You also don't have to develop every system fully. For example for AI that hide behind barriers you could simply have them stand there and use this as a test build with players rather than fully implementing the AI behavior, animations, etc. You'll get tons of feedback, and probably the same feedback, that you would have otherwise much more quickly. Inevitably though you will find bugs or choose to leave things "kind of broken". As long as you're tracking the work somewhere you get to choose when/if you fix them. If you happen to remove the associated feature entirely at some point, you just saved yourself time by not fixing those bugs immediately.

Totally! Thanks for watching and hopefully it helps you out with your games :)

Glad you're enjoying it :). Hopefully this kind of information is useful for people working on their games!

No problem! Hopefully it's been helpful. From what I can tell Steam cares more about wishlist velocity than absolute number of wishlists. If you can have day over day wishlist growth leading up to an event, then you can see some really big impact. I did this in a small way for Trace Hunters in Next Fest and it seemed to work well (at least for a small game)

Glad to hear! Absolutely agree, these techniques go beyond gaming. Hopefully it's helpful for you as well :)

That's a cool idea to add a section like that. Could be an interesting way to track ideas if you come back to a game to make DLC after a long time away. 🤔

Thank you! So far my goal is to release another game before the end of the year. It's going to be a bit tough, but I've got this. Appreciate your support

The base price is $5.99, but I had a 10% launch discount so the price there was $5.39.

@@MoonMantisGames ty

I looked into that quite a while ago. The gist was something like this: The vehicle combat genre is incredibly small on Steam, which I chose to pursue as a possible blue(r) ocean. Looking at other vehicle combat game sales through other places, sales are also incredibly small. Mech games have a very similar issue, though a slightly (but only slightly) larger audience. Both niches is just very small by comparison.

Thanks for the idea! I looked into this and opted Trace Hunters in for GFN. If you do play it on there, will you let me know how it goes? I've not used GFN before so curious what the experience is like for you

@@MoonMantisGames We lost our home to fire back in 2022. Lost everything, and I just couldn't afford to spend another 5 grand on a gaming PC. But I had a surface tablet, has the keyboard and all that, so I started using GFN. It's no different than using a PC as far as playing games goes. Plus, they use the best Nvidia tech for it, so I play at 4k and get 120 FPS constantly. And you can play on a pretty low end internet connection, I live in Hawaii which is 2500 miles from the closest server, and have a ping of about 70 most of the time, and you'd never know. Anyone who wants to do PC gaming without a PC should try GFN. There are some limitations, but I have never had any issues that would cause a complaint. I'll watch for your game. They add new games on Thursdays, and it usually takes a week or two for them to show up, but I have it wishlisted. Cheers!

I'll see what I can get together without going full on corporate training mode haha. Any specific topics you're interested in?

Thanks for the thoughts. Admittedly I have a huge amount of actual story for Trace Hunters, though most of that just didn't make it in the game. Instead you get a little glance via the in-game chatter.

Haha as long as you move on from it eventually, a little time to be pissed about it is probably due. For game jams, I do think they can be valuable depending on the jam/purpose. For prototyping things yes, but as a way of making progress on a game already in production they are just a distraction.

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it. I'll have a few more of these financial overview type videos as I hit other milestones with Trace Hunters. Sharing some numbers from my recent fest participation soon :)

Thanks for the feedback! Looking back at the trailer now that I've been away from active dev for a while, it does need an update. Doesn't really communicate some what the game is very well beyond drive+shoot (which you do quite a lot haha).

Thanks for the wishlist! Not currently looking for playtesting for Trace Hunters since it released in July, but maybe for some upcoming games. I'll talk about those at some point in later videos :)

Thanks for watching! You're right, I don't have plans to expand Trace Hunters any further for now. I'll keep you in mind though

Trace Hunters is my first commercial game. I've made several others, mostly prototype projects or game jams, over the past couple years though

For sure! I am planning to do a video to talk about having the game on discount both during a Steam fest and during non-fest time. I think that should be an interesting comparison. Roughly speaking for now though during my last discount (for the Steam Planes, Trains, Automobiles fest) I saw a slight uptick in sales, but nothing too much different than baseline.

Haha I see what you did there. No scope creep if the project is done, right?

Glad you liked it! Scope creep can for sure drag things to a halt. Just have to be intentional with the work you take on :)