If you've also participated in this festival, please let us know how it went! I'm actually very curious Checkout Secrets of Shadows here store.steampowered.com/app/3111150/Secrets_of_Shadows
somehow I completly missed that event, despite Steam knowing I have multiple games with tags such as turnbased, strategy etc. and I even check discounts almost dayly
@@maxmustermann-zx9yq unlucky.. i think the event was shown only through steam's home page and not in pop up windows when you launch the game, which is how I usually find out about discounts
Same :) I'd call this a knock-on effect. Because the festival didn't get me to wishlist (because I didn't see it there), but as a result of the video (which is a result of the festival) I am here and have wishlisted. Looking forward to it! Now I want to see a video on wether this video was worth it ;P
Happy to see other people digging and sharing data analysis like that, despite the rough estimates, it is highly valuable ! Also, leaving a comment for the algorithm as well.
I love Next Fests, but with this one I didn’t even realise that it _was_ a Next Fest. I just thought it was a theme-based sale of sorts and never clicked that front page banner
Before the steam meta was "get steam store page up as soon as u have any graphics and demo up when u have anything playable". But now with recent changes u really wanna have polished page and demo. It is still a benefit to have them up early BUT first impressions matter A LOT more now than before. For this months next fest they changed the algorithm to not favor games with massive wishlist gathered before the event starts and tries to give every game equal chance to prove themselves (still genre specific i believe as it seems to target games to store page browsers depending on what kinda games they play) - so for next fests only new wishlist might matter from now on. I wonder if they are using or will start to use this for other fests and events for both full games and for people setting release date so that the "up and coming" is triggered.
That's interesting thanks for sharing. I've also heard the advice that first impressions - especially with demos matter a lot now. Also, it's good to know that smaller games get a better chance at next fests now too. Hopefully that'll still be the case in february when i plan to enter then
Hm, I find it interesting that even though I had pretty much the same search filters as the ones you have in your vid but I had wildly different results when I was scrolling through offerings. For example I didn't even encounter your game even though I hit "show more" option like 15 times if not more. Anyway, wishlisted your game since it looks like something right up my alley. Can't wait to try it out.
Never heard about your game before this random YT recommendation, just wishlisted man. I love strategy games, but I must be honest, although I like the art style, I need to see a better trailer (the one steam didn't convince me yet), in fact, I would love to see the combat. Btw, the grid is too "highlighted" to my taste, the option to set it on/off would be great, even better if we can slide to choose the intensity. Good luck with the development man, the GBA/NES fire emblem vibes are real and this is a big compliment!!!
Thanks for the input! I agree the trailer is a bit weak cus I actually just made a rough version for the festival as my actual combat scenes still have a lot of placeholder assets lol On the grid thing i also agree, and i had planned to make it into a slider from fully transparent to the strength u see in the trailer. Good feedback, cheers
Well, this was an interesting find in my feed. Your game looks interesting, and the look behind the event was informative. I went in excited to find interesting games, but my excitement died down early on with it due to a lack of interesting games(I never got to yours for example). It's a good thing to know, so I can go look again on some of the other days for things I may be interested in but didn't have the patience to click show more so many times. I really wish steam did a better way of showcasing some of the games, but I get why they can't.
@@nono5564 Yes you really had to play with the tags a bit, maybe steam could have just shuffled around the games a bit throughout the event. Thanks for the feedback!
Your video popped showed up in my feed and your game reminded me of fire emblem and as a fan of the genre, I am hooked! Looking forward to the development :DD
@@bluciuswastaken Thats awesome, FE is one of the main inspirations for my game! im gonna try to get a demo out before the end of the year and I hope ull get to try it 🙏
I'm quite excited for the thought of playing the demo but I'd rather you focus on polishing and adding more to it till you deem it's good enough than rushing for a demo. We can wait, so take your time through if you're not on a deadline :DD
Do you plan on releasing a demo at any point? Your game piques my interest but with indie RPGs especially I'm always wary on just throwing my money out to try a game because it usually takes more than 2 hours to say whether I like it or not. Just a battle or two, giving me a feel on how combat and party management works
Yea absolutely, the plan is to make a free demo that's closer to a vertical slice than a trial (it won't lock you out after 30 minutes or something). The idea is to get some feedback too and see which systems players resonate with. It will be released before the end of the year if not a couple months into 2025
I feel like there is nowadays so many "steam festivals" that the impact of Next Fest has deminished the last few years on new/demo indie games, what do you think? Do you know the difference between the "wishlist rates" of this, other festivals and "normal" days? Thank you for the video! Your following will grow exponentially with this level of quality
Thanks for saying that! This is my first time doing a game on Steam so I'm just glad there are festivals for indies to join. Apparently Steam is changing the algo for how Next Fest work to be more "random" so smaller games get a time to shine too - that said, I do hear from other experienced developers that festivals tend to be less effective compared to a few years ago. In terms of wishlist rates, I was barely getting a single 1 if at all prior to the festival, and now I'm slowly getting 1-3 a day on "normal" days (though that could be because of my youtube lol)
@@secretsofshadowsgame there is definitely impact, we don't know how much, but I believe YT is now one of the best ways to start a game community. I've seen some research that shows that voluntary e-mail subs with ocasional updates on the project/indie company are still the best 'conversion funnel' path for indie game devs. But the most difficult part It is the beginning, as you said in the video. The festival maybe helped you get out of the initial "static inertia" and its free. I personally only saw you here on YT now, really liked your project and I'm going to wishlist it on steam
Well i dont know how useful this video is for me since I am no developer but your game looks interesting. I am curious how it will turn out. Best of luck to you
Thanks for watching, yea this vid is mostly for other small devs looking to enter festivals for their games, in 2-3 weeks I'm gonna do another update more on the progress of my game
If you've also participated in this festival, please let us know how it went! I'm actually very curious
Checkout Secrets of Shadows here
store.steampowered.com/app/3111150/Secrets_of_Shadows
somehow I completly missed that event, despite Steam knowing I have multiple games with tags such as turnbased, strategy etc. and I even check discounts almost dayly
@@maxmustermann-zx9yq unlucky.. i think the event was shown only through steam's home page and not in pop up windows when you launch the game, which is how I usually find out about discounts
Missed you on the fest, youtube's algorithm blessed you and now I am interested.
lets gooo
Same :)
I'd call this a knock-on effect. Because the festival didn't get me to wishlist (because I didn't see it there), but as a result of the video (which is a result of the festival) I am here and have wishlisted. Looking forward to it!
Now I want to see a video on wether this video was worth it ;P
same!
Happy to see other people digging and sharing data analysis like that, despite the rough estimates, it is highly valuable ! Also, leaving a comment for the algorithm as well.
I love Next Fests, but with this one I didn’t even realise that it _was_ a Next Fest. I just thought it was a theme-based sale of sorts and never clicked that front page banner
@@MrGrayNk i think a lot of ppl did the same, most devs i talked to said the impressions from this was quite low 😅
Before the steam meta was "get steam store page up as soon as u have any graphics and demo up when u have anything playable". But now with recent changes u really wanna have polished page and demo. It is still a benefit to have them up early BUT first impressions matter A LOT more now than before. For this months next fest they changed the algorithm to not favor games with massive wishlist gathered before the event starts and tries to give every game equal chance to prove themselves (still genre specific i believe as it seems to target games to store page browsers depending on what kinda games they play) - so for next fests only new wishlist might matter from now on. I wonder if they are using or will start to use this for other fests and events for both full games and for people setting release date so that the "up and coming" is triggered.
That's interesting thanks for sharing. I've also heard the advice that first impressions - especially with demos matter a lot now. Also, it's good to know that smaller games get a better chance at next fests now too. Hopefully that'll still be the case in february when i plan to enter then
Added your project on Steam and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this :D!
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing and keep up the videos I want to see more devlogs!
Will do! ill keep an eye on your new uploads too!
Hm, I find it interesting that even though I had pretty much the same search filters as the ones you have in your vid but I had wildly different results when I was scrolling through offerings. For example I didn't even encounter your game even though I hit "show more" option like 15 times if not more. Anyway, wishlisted your game since it looks like something right up my alley. Can't wait to try it out.
Hmm that's weird, glad you're able to find it though! Thanks for wishlisting 🙏
Never heard about your game before this random YT recommendation, just wishlisted man. I love strategy games, but I must be honest, although I like the art style, I need to see a better trailer (the one steam didn't convince me yet), in fact, I would love to see the combat. Btw, the grid is too "highlighted" to my taste, the option to set it on/off would be great, even better if we can slide to choose the intensity. Good luck with the development man, the GBA/NES fire emblem vibes are real and this is a big compliment!!!
Thanks for the input! I agree the trailer is a bit weak cus I actually just made a rough version for the festival as my actual combat scenes still have a lot of placeholder assets lol
On the grid thing i also agree, and i had planned to make it into a slider from fully transparent to the strength u see in the trailer.
Good feedback, cheers
This was a great random recommendation, adding to my wishlist now.
Cheers!
Well, this was an interesting find in my feed. Your game looks interesting, and the look behind the event was informative. I went in excited to find interesting games, but my excitement died down early on with it due to a lack of interesting games(I never got to yours for example). It's a good thing to know, so I can go look again on some of the other days for things I may be interested in but didn't have the patience to click show more so many times. I really wish steam did a better way of showcasing some of the games, but I get why they can't.
@@nono5564 Yes you really had to play with the tags a bit, maybe steam could have just shuffled around the games a bit throughout the event. Thanks for the feedback!
Found out about this game from this video , instantly wishlisted. Any game with abilities / passives attached to equipment is A+ to me 😂
@@pallyplayerz 😂 I never thought about it like that before I just wanted to make a game with lots of customization but thats so true lol
Nice video, wishlisting this
oh, love a good spreadsheet
Lol I found ur channel thru a comment of urs on adamcyoonis’ channel 😂 keep up the good work!
lol nice, he makes really good stuff im a fan
Your video popped showed up in my feed and your game reminded me of fire emblem and as a fan of the genre, I am hooked! Looking forward to the development :DD
@@bluciuswastaken Thats awesome, FE is one of the main inspirations for my game! im gonna try to get a demo out before the end of the year and I hope ull get to try it 🙏
I'm quite excited for the thought of playing the demo but I'd rather you focus on polishing and adding more to it till you deem it's good enough than rushing for a demo. We can wait, so take your time through if you're not on a deadline :DD
Earned my wishlist with this video :) I wonder how many wishlists you got from this vid? xD
😂funny thing is i wasn't expecting this video to do this well, i thought only devs would be interested.. thanks for the wishlist!
Do you plan on releasing a demo at any point? Your game piques my interest but with indie RPGs especially I'm always wary on just throwing my money out to try a game because it usually takes more than 2 hours to say whether I like it or not. Just a battle or two, giving me a feel on how combat and party management works
Yea absolutely, the plan is to make a free demo that's closer to a vertical slice than a trial (it won't lock you out after 30 minutes or something). The idea is to get some feedback too and see which systems players resonate with. It will be released before the end of the year if not a couple months into 2025
I feel like there is nowadays so many "steam festivals" that the impact of Next Fest has deminished the last few years on new/demo indie games, what do you think? Do you know the difference between the "wishlist rates" of this, other festivals and "normal" days? Thank you for the video! Your following will grow exponentially with this level of quality
Thanks for saying that! This is my first time doing a game on Steam so I'm just glad there are festivals for indies to join. Apparently Steam is changing the algo for how Next Fest work to be more "random" so smaller games get a time to shine too - that said, I do hear from other experienced developers that festivals tend to be less effective compared to a few years ago.
In terms of wishlist rates, I was barely getting a single 1 if at all prior to the festival, and now I'm slowly getting 1-3 a day on "normal" days (though that could be because of my youtube lol)
@@secretsofshadowsgame there is definitely impact, we don't know how much, but I believe YT is now one of the best ways to start a game community. I've seen some research that shows that voluntary e-mail subs with ocasional updates on the project/indie company are still the best 'conversion funnel' path for indie game devs. But the most difficult part It is the beginning, as you said in the video. The festival maybe helped you get out of the initial "static inertia" and its free. I personally only saw you here on YT now, really liked your project and I'm going to wishlist it on steam
Interesting stuff. Curious why you haven’t put your trailer on UA-cam?
@@juliofoolio2982 the trailer i have right now is kind of a place holder, i need to add more gameplay and polish it up a bit
A Fire Emblem esque game? you got my money sir
@@ramstab 🤑🤑🤑
Well i dont know how useful this video is for me since I am no developer but your game looks interesting. I am curious how it will turn out. Best of luck to you
Thanks for watching, yea this vid is mostly for other small devs looking to enter festivals for their games, in 2-3 weeks I'm gonna do another update more on the progress of my game
I got you mate
I bought 3 games so it was a success for me
Guess you had nothing to lose with this fest.
im interested in the game and might buy it, but if u ever do a face reveal and are overweight, i will definitley unwishlist it and pirate the game
lmfao based