How Successful was our First Game's Launch?
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- We released our first game! And it went... not so amazingly. Yet since our goal is to share our genuine experience with you guys, we will be going over all our stats, and talking a bit more about what we did and didn't do well.
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Timestamps:
00:00 We released a game
00:57 Expectations
02:18 Steamworks Portal
02:40 Wishlists
05:46 Demo Stats
08:09 Sales
11:49 Regional Sales
13:33 Refunds
16:41 What's Next?
18:44 Conclusion
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You guys are amazing for this transparency and honesty.
A lot of games don't make money. People have survivorship bias on what to expect but the truth is... most indie games are not successful. The stories on success dominate such that people never hear the millions more stories of times things didn't work out. So you guys are amazing for helping people see the truth.
I respect you guys so much.
They are really interesting !
The goal with the first game is indeed primarily learning (financial success is just a bonus) so the fact that you completed and released you first game is a huge success, congrats!
I absolutely agree with your decision to just publish this game quickly instead of continuing to work on it for many more months, what you learned from this quick release will really help you on the next one. I also agree with not going with EA, nowadays EA is brutal and you shouldn't go for it unless you have a very clear plan and lots of hype.
When it comes to Steam, you really need to jump the first massive barrier to get any visibility whatsoever, anything under 5000 wishlists pretty much rounds down to 0.
And on top of that if you get under 10 reviews then you literally get 0 visibility so it's really important to get those first 10 reviews as quickly as possible. I encourage everyone watching this video who picked up the game to post a review, they really genuinely do help a ton, you get a huge boost in visibility (relative to 0) as soon as you have 10 reviews, and another tiny boost at 50. (assuming they are >70% positive)
On the demo, yup you are correct, license means someone added it to their account, unique users means they actually played it.
Also the general consensus is you should keep the demo up after the festival, but then remove it on release.
Those wishlist conversion stats are usually based on total wishlists vs total sales, not specifically the wishlist conversion you see on Steam, that number is always going to be smaller.
And those numbers are really only accurate with a decent sample size, with just 2000 wishlists and 100 sales it's hard to get any meaningfully accurate stats, you didn't do anything wrong here.
Definitely always set a launch sale, even just 10% is enough.
For a high indie pricepoint (anything above $10) visuals are extremely important. Your Steam capsule is excellent, however the game itself, for a players eyes does not look like a $17 game.
The world looks great at night but during the daytime everything is very flat. For a somewhat similar comparison check out the game Timberborn, also very voxel based and it looks excellent.
The relative high pricepoint coupled with basic visuals coupled with
Thanks for the elaborate and kind comment!
While our game (Forge Industry, I'm one of the devs) wasn't successful commercially, it is as you seem to indicate, a successful game personally. We learned a lot of things on what to do (and even more on what NOT to do), and it was a thrill to bring a game to a full release for the first time. Reading your comment made me reaffirm that my decision to go full time BiteMe Games was the right choice. Smart? Maybe not, but definitely the correct one, no matter where we may end up.
Dafuq? Such a big comment?
You're really a Chad monkey😎👍
Wanted to write the part with the flat graphics too, glad you already did it.
And for you devs, I made just 5% of your income with my first game, so you had a solid start 🥲
This is a Top Tier comment. Bravo!
this guy should have a channel or something - but dev's, that's a key point too - probably better to make games fast and release more of them, not so much work on them - you quickly prolly reach a point as you did here where you feel obligated to have set at such a high price based on how much time you put into this. Diminishing returns. Honestly, lookin' at this, not to say it's chintz - but how fast could a game like this honestly be done? two guys? cheers and thanks for the vids - yeah, I'd say your trips to Japan resonated. How the hell the 9k licences? But not installed? Some magazine or something? bought the games and sent out?
Hey Codemonkey, I'm also an indie dev and a fan of yours. Just wanted to say thank you, I appreciate that you take the time to comment on videos like this. It's nice to get insight from a developer with your experience.
Hey there, so, im a game dev my self, i've released 3 games so far, i would say you look at it from the wrong perspective
Before i begin let me tell you that i enjoy your chanell and i really look forward to your next steps!
The Refunds, " Not Fun "
I Agree that you have a demo, but tbh most people dont have the time or the patience to first try the demo and then buy the game, the demo is mostly there as a teaser before the game comes out and not as a "play test" build
Then, take into account your audience, these types of games are not bought by children, its mostly adults with jobs/university that dont have much time to test a demo, they are just tired from their job and they want to play that new game that came out
20% on your first game is "fine" considering 10%-15% as an average, you said yourself the UI is clanky, in a game like that it is very important since almost every decision you make is made with the UI, its not a fps where you open the ui only to check the menu, the ui is a big part of your game and if it feels clunky it destroys the flow of your game
so, 10%-15% normal Refund rate + 5% Refunds cause of the Clunky UI, seems okay to me
The Sales,
I Know it took you time and effort + money to create the game, trust me i know! But this is a heavy price tag for a game that is not super polished, that has no marketing, and the dev is completely unknown.
Yes the launch discount plays a role in your numbers, but not as big as you think probably liek a +10% boost, but you would lose the revenue cause of the discount, in return those sales could generate Reviews! So yeah, missed oportunity
Release Date,
Doesnt matter what time of the year it is, if there are steam sales or what ever, from my analysis and from a partners that hsa released over 15 games in the last 4 years, i have to tell you that as long as you release between the 5th-10th of the month its okay!
Take away,
i think your price tag, no launch discount and that UI little "problem"/ Lack of Visual beauty/polishness harmed your sales
My tip is, try to polish your UI as much as possible, as fast a possible, make the update, write an update announcement, schedule a discount for the second week of september, (At least 20%)
This will send an email out to all of your 3k wishlists, they are gonna check your page, see that you are actively improving the game, see a good discount and BUY the game, and then you get your feedbacks that will help further development AND impact your sales!
Im planing to start uploading game dev content as well so a sub back would be amazing :)
I have to agree with your comment. I don't know how good the pricing is on other regions, but the game is very expensive for my country especially for an indie. So yeah, the pricing I will say that is too high and probably the biggest reason for the low wishlist conversion.
Hope this doesn't demotivates you guys. The game is not over and I hope you continue doing games.
amazing insight!
tbh i'll take your advices myself
I am not a fan of Indie games rushing to the bottom on price but the price is just too high with a lack of a launch discount lowering the initial sales and review potential. In regards to the UI stuff you should look at it as a perfect opportunity to build a key skill for the next game (and the one after that) and its a key thing being displayed in every image and every video.
Im so glad to hear "our next game". A lot of people will stop doing this after a first commercial failure, and you understand that this is so nornal! Real glad to see you keeping passion guys
You need passion for game dev addiction is why most people quit after the first fail
@@mate1_devBest comment
Well sadly people write off devs if they don't deliver 100 percent perfect content every time
@@trashtronics1700 There was this dev named nik you may know who I am talking about he scammed people with his game greed of man. His patreon when the game was released was making 3000$/month. When the game released It was something completely different. I remember a video of him saying he was polishing his game and he was running the matrix city demo
the problem is the brand has been damaged so the next game will have to be twice as good for the original backers to want to try again.
good news is that with so few players on the first game, you can just get away with deleting it and pretending like it never happened and nobody will notice.
you released the game. in this regard you made it further than 90% of indi developers out there. that is a big accomplishment in its own. pretty proud of you guys. keep going.
I found this channel yesterday and I think I've watched 80% of your videos already 😂
Update: just bought the game
Thanks for the support!
-T
You stated exactly why you got the results you did! You said that you didn't know what others would think, if they would like it or not. If you want a game to do well, then you have to make a game that YOU are crazy about wanting to play! If you love playing it, others will too!
Same thing I thought, just didn’t want to say it.
“People don’t play the game for the UI” is half true, they’re playing for the experience, if the UI sucks that UX sucks which more often than not leads to friction/frustration. Which can lead to people stop playing the game.
“Why not play the demo before you bought it”. Maybe people didn’t want spoilers? There’s a million reasons as of why this could’ve happened, not everyone’s customer journey is the same. You can have a single customer journey planned but 90%+ won’t follow step by step.
I got the impression that they think the problem is the players 🫣hope I’m mistaken…
Your transparency is admirable. I like that you never mentioned shuttering the doors. I hope your team has enough runway to release another game & take all you’ve learned into the next title.
Thank you for showing actual numbers and sharing your experience!
Love this transparency and reflection! Keep it up!
Your continued drive for transparency is what I admire the most about your videos, which continue to be enlightening and entertaining - really love the time you spend on them - as you suggested, keep the forge's fire lit, there still might be some conversion in it, best of luck to you all
Thanks so much for sharing so much detail on how your game release went. I'd watched a few of your videos previously where you mentioned it, so I was interested to see how it went. I'm sorry it hasn't gone as well as you'd hoped, but your attitude of wanting to continue to improve it, combined with your plans to continue with game dev are inspiring! I honestly wish you the best of success. Hopefully one day I will reach the point you guys are at, releasing a game. Even if it isn't very successful, I would be pleased to get to that stage, so I hope you guys are proud of your work because it's still very significant to even make it to where you are. So many would just give up long before.
All the best!
Thank you so much for being this honest and upfront!
Hope your next project will fare better on launch!
This has to be one of the best videos on this topic. I feel like many young game developers have very high hopes for their first launch. Showing the raw numbers from your launch and hearing about your expectations and thinking behind it with such honesty is a very valuable resource for devs like me.
Your attitude despite the disappointing launch is inspiring and I'm sure you'll find more success as long as you keep it at it!
I still admire you guys for going at it even though it didn't turn out how you expectd. I've basically binged all your videos and you guys seem like hard working, talented devs. Success will happen for yall.
Love your openness and the insight into releasing your first indie game. Very interesting perspective! I wish you all the best for your future developments! :)
as someone who just quit his fulltime job to make his own indie game I think your videos are really important and helpful. its not always clear that indie game dev is a hard thing. game dev in general is in my opinion the hardest software field. thanks for your honest experience. hope you in the future and we who can see your mistakes and correct choices make better games in the future :)
Good luck
you can have a glimp on how difficult it is just by creating a mod; with a mod you're just focusing in one item/aspect of the game and could take tens of hours to just make it correctly .. now add up that to a complete game.
Thanks for making this video and being so transparent. Also, big congrats on the launch!
Keep going at it guys! I’m so excited to see your next project from start to finish!
Thank you so much for sharing this vital information! Best of luck with your next project :)
thank you for being so transparent about this experience, and for sharing your findings and theories. I found the video very informative!
Haven't played it but based on your experience and the looks of the game, I wouldn't really want to risk or spend $24 (CAD) on buying it. There is a demo though so I'll give that a go and give you guys some feedback! Still though that price seems high for an indie game like this. Also my first glance at a plain green island with repeating path textures looks very very homemade and could maybe do with some iteration (add some more texture variance, different env objects etc.).
It sounds mean but real talk: game ain't worth that. 25 bucks is the sale I wait for on a AAA game. I have never paid more than 10 dollars for any indie game
agree with you. I downloaded the demo, I would not buy the whole game. I think the mentality that UI is not what players play for is the wrong idea. UI is the first layer of interaction between the player and the mechanics and if that layer is not intuitive and fun to use, the game is not going to be very accessible or fun to play. The UI and not understanding mechanics is really what turned me away while playing the demo.
@@_theHUMUNGUS not having paid more than 10 usd for any indie game isnt surprising, but theres many indie games that are *worth* over 20$, let alone 10
Fascinating insight into the realities of game Deving. I really hope the success of this video translated into some more sales for you guys. Please give us a 2-3 month update!!!!
Thanks for being so open about your experience! I think as gamedevs we are all really passionate about we do which often leads to us making business decisions with emotion as well and making mistakes. You learn a lot from mistakes, but I think with videos like these we can learn from eachother and learn faster without having to make some of these mistakes for ourselves. I will remember from this video that, even though you don't need to discount to get an email to all your wishlisters, doing a discount is still nice to give thanks and to get people extra motivated to make a purchase, since those early purchases are so important for the trajectory of your game afterwards.
Great video. I appreciate you candidly sharing your sales and experience!
I'm so impressed with you guys' positive attitude and transparency! Best of luck moving forward
Thank you for sharing you experience launching your first game! It's very insightful for me as I've started working on my first game. I prefer these type of videos as they provide a more realistic view on what to expect.
Subscribed for sure 👍🏽
It takes courage and clear eyes to make a video like this. I think your chance of success in the long run is much higher since you were willing and able to take a hard look at yourselves and make that public.
the guys aren't stupid and even a few months ago, they kinda alluded in one video - maybe the viral one? that they knew kinda more or less that their passion project, while important to them personally, well they knew they weren't gonna hit flappy bird numbers
Hey, I know you're being as transparent and open as possible, and I really appreciate that (as someone who is currently working on their own game). I do however think you're not giving yourselves enough credit. You imagined, planned, created, and launched AN ENTIRE GAME. That's a huge deal! Congratulations on launching your first game, on all the invaluable experience you've gained, and on the continuation of serving your game in effort to increase its profitability! I look forward to your future videos and future games :) Cheers from Spain
Thanks for your video ! Congrats on launching your first game, I hope I'll get there some day :)
Thanks so much for sharing - you're truly giving back to the gamedev community with this and it's much appreciated. Welcome to the crazy indie world and I'm positive your next release will be more successful.
This video randomly pop up on my recommendation and I appreciate the transparency.
The game certainly looks interesting but with so many backlog, maybe I'll get it by the time the next sale comes around.
Keep up the great job!
Amazing journey! Loved your candour. Wishing you a lot of success for future games :)
Thank you for that. I love watching your video and the fact that you share your actual results makes you more of an authority in my eyes 👏👏👏
Interesting, thanks for sharing! I haven't looked at your game, but judging based on your mindset here alone, I think you two are doing so much right that I would be very confident you'll see good success in the future.
I just stumbled on this video. Never seen you guys, or play your games. But I like you guys. Keep making games. I'll definitely check out your games.
Really interesting video guys! Thanks for being so transparent, its been super insightful for someone looking to release their own game as well!
Honestly you guys are really good at retrospectives and are really young, overtime you'll get so much better. Might take a few games to make it though but I'm sure each one will get better
Thank you for your vid. BTW: The small additions as trees, bushes, rocks, grasses, improved a lot on the MAP looking! :) It looks much better than before. :)
As I'm building my first solo dev game, I've been following your videos a lot. Thanks for the content!
Thanks for sharing! As a game dev hoping to get to a publish point some day its hard to find info or even better peoples experiences with it, the launch sounds like a success to me just based on how much you guys are learning.
Thank you for this video, and respect for your complete honesty. Subscribed!
Thank you for the transparency
Loved this! Thank you for being able to talk about this with a bit of humor and positivity but not filling it with over positivity either. Great work I'm a follower now!
Listening to you guys talk about your experiences and learnings, I have little doubt you guys will succeed in the future. Keep on keeping on!
The issue I had with the game is a lacking tutorial.
I was very confused.(I did not connect the workers house to the road system)
Also the game is not balanced well or there is nothing forcing me to do anything more than the basic setup.
I only set market and sawmill and 5-6 wide road in a straight line to the market and hired all people to just sell planks.
Nothing really made me want to place forge or other things.(there doesn't seem to be a goal, maybe a lot of the gameplay is hidden behind tutorial, I am not sure)
Also instead of a market I would rather have a resource harvesting buildings(Mine, woodcutting) etc.
Another thing was the collapsed building(the one that unlocks research if you give it resources) it feels weird having made a connection to it and instantly losing that connect when its finished.
Perhaps a global warehouse where you store items could be used to repair those instead.
Connections between places should not be something you change/remove often.(Maybe add/remove workers)
I would probably remove "gold/money" and make it into resource management game, otherwise I can just sell planks forever(if I figure out how to auto buy wood) and I can go afk for 10 hours and make millions.(people dont eat food, so there is no reason to do anything else)
seems like a good learning process, good luck with your 2nd!
Thanks for the game launch post-mortem, very interesting and helpful to hear how it went. Hitting that 10 steam review threshold is hard! I have a game that is still in EA, and has been torpid at 8/10 reviews for months. Best of luck with the next steps of your game dev journey!
Thanks a lot for making a realistic video, not only successes need to be shared, it's important to know what to expect from a videogame project and this is a really valuable feedback material !
Thanks for being very open about your experiences, this is useful information. I hope a future sale will gain you some more players to get that coveted 10 review mark
Very enlightening. Thank you for the video.
thanks for sharing and best of luck. keep working on it and learning from the experience 🙂
Thanks for your insides!
First time here. Thanks for sharing such valuable data and keep making more games!
Just want to say thank you and I wish you guys great success.
This was exactly what I was looking for the last few years! It's nice to finally see some transparency with the numbers instead of clickbaits. Hopefully we get to see more people doing this, so we can learn more by comparing data and experiences. Good luck with the journey!
"you don't play a game for the UI you play the game for the mechanics in it" is an interesting quote. If you have friction, especially noticeable friction, within your UI/UX you will always start to lose players as they become weary of having to actively parse your user interface. UI/UX is so hard to get right, but it's really the lens in which the player experiences your mechanics whether they are good or bad. It's like having foggy glasses; no matter how gorgeous the morning clouds are rolling off the hilltops into a beautiful valley below, if the player can't see or experience that without fog or scratches they are going to give up.
Thanks for great input here! Very informative. Bought your game to support you guys.
I wanted to start developing my own game, but I have 0 support on this and an ADHD, so chances are pretty low, but I'll continue to fight.
I love how this shows off the real journey in this industry! Thank you :)
Thank you so much for the honesty! It helps us feel like we're not alone...
Had no idea that early keys make those players ineligible for Steam reviews and you need 10 to exist!! You just saved us so much with that piece of advice. I have shared with the team as I have never come across something this authentic and transparent. Liked and subscribed!!
Sad to hear your game didn't go well. Subscribed to stay updated to your progress in the future.
I'm super glad I subscribed to this channel. Can't wait to see what becomes of BiteMe games. Thank you for the transparency. This is actually a really great way to get the UA-cam audience on your side, you know? Everybody loves an underdog. Good luck on your future projects, and yes, do keep updating Forge Industry. I think I might roll on over to Steam and check out the demo.
Hello, thanks guys for sharing all this learning and experience you got on your first release. Also congratulations, we all know the grind that is to actually complete a project and send out to the world (even though most of us never even released a game on steam). I believe you guys are in the right path and I really hope in the next game you guys get closer to the expected result you want.
Now a bit of my understanding of those statistics:
- Regarding the bump of wishlists on the release day: We can think on the players perspective, when whishlisting a game, we as players subscribe to receive notifications when that game get into a sale, so I think what people felt is that the game was a bit pricy when they got into the game's page, and then they added it to the wishlist in order to get it in another time, maybe during a sale. That is the reason I see for them adding to wishlist during launch day instead of buying it.
Wish you all the best and really, congratulations for your first release!
For someone who is taking first steps this is invaluable and honest feedback. Thx for sharing your insights.
After visiting the seam page for the game I will say that the first thing I reacted to was that the gameplay screenshots doesn't match the quality of the Promo/Titel image. I know graphics isn't everything but in this case I think the difference was too big. Best of luck with your future projects and thanks for a great and honest video!
I know it's your new baby and it just release and you want to make it a success but don't over do it. Sometimes it's better to let it die and just start something new. I hope you guys are working on a new project and it going great. You have to choose your fights. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Hey! Love your content. I'm a part of a small club of people who have released some games as indies on steam, and when you told me it's been weeks and you still only have two reviews, my jaw hit the floor. Have you no friends or family you can ask to buy it and buy them a case of beer or an amazon giftcard in exchange? No one who wants to see your success?! Hitting that 10 review threshold seems so important, i'd do ANYTHING to make it happen.
All the best, hope it works out for you guys!
Nice tips im really hoping to publish a game first time on steam and your sharing are really informative. Really appreciate your video. Thanks
When you mentioned 10% off on launch, I think this is how Above Snakes went about it. I've played the demo and added the game to my wishlist. When the game released, it was around $14 or so and offered a 10% discount. I got pop-ups everywhere including my smartphone. Not that I actually bought it, but the biggest stopper for me was that I had other games on my wishlist that are cheaper or are more familiar to me. So, I'd probably buy Above Snakes, but it wouldn't be the first game I buy.
Great video guys. Quite scary actually as im struggling to even gather the wishlists so can't imagine what my sales will look like lol
Hey guys! I'm also on the journey of creating my first game, so I totally get the hard work that goes into it. I noticed you've gone for a unique visual style with sharp lines - it's interesting! Have you considered looking into the popular visual trends right now? The UI plays such a huge role. A bit of tweaking in the color balance and animations could make a huge difference. That said, I'm really into the game mechanics you've developed - it's pretty cool! Keep going and learning. Every project is a step forward, and I'm excited to see where your next one takes you. Cheers
You guys are doing a great job. Keep up what you are doing. I am working on my first game. You really bring a sense of reality. Your wish list numbers are much better than mine. I have no idea really how to do this. YOu guys did amazing on wish list numbers. But I hope i can be as brave and as positive and as good looking as you guys. :)
It's great to see transparent videos like these about the realities of indie game dev.
I'm one of those people with the game sitting on my wish list. The current hurdle for me buying is price. I can't speak to the international market, but the local Australian pricing has the game at $26. That puts you in direct competition with other base builders like Dyson Sphere Program ($29) and Autonaunts ($30). Other games around this price point include Valheim ($29) and V Rising ($29). Based on art and UI alone, that's a hard sell for your game.
You might be better placed to compete with Factory Town (currently on sale for $12) and Space Haven (also currently on sale at $18). Although these games also have a full price of $29 and $35 respectively, I notice they have very frequent discounts over 50% and I'm pretty conditioned by steam to wait for those discounts.
All the games mentioned I own on steam, and I'll likely buy Forge Industry if it drops below $15 as I really enjoy this genre of game. Good luck.
I was just thinking their numbers looked extremely low even for what it was and I think had made an assumption about the price and that I must have misheard them in the video but I think THIS along with the lack of launch discount was a major contributor. I agree the current race to the bottom for Indie titles is bad and having a higher base price which allows you to do large discounts (which they didn't) is a good idea but you still have to price for the market somewhat.
One big thing I've learned post launch is the horrors called pricing for different regions. Steam's suggested prices are horrible on their own. Since everything is also based on USD, and USD goes up and down like a rollercoaster, we've had some problems there with the value changing by 10% in just a week.
The Steamworks UI is also a mess, so only once the prices were live on SteamDB, did I really see how horrible it is. But Steam also hates it if you actually change the price of your game soon after release.
So for now it's just waiting for a discount, as we said in the video as well, we have a lot of wishlists, the launch price just most likely wasn't right for a lot of people. -M
Thank You very much ... im workin on my own game and this videos really help me ;) and will more ... so thank u ;)
To be honest, I completely expected this. Like you said, it seems to be the norm for most indies. I know that when I put out my first commercial game, I'm definitely going to be setting my expectations low. And probably still be disappointed lol
That said, your transparency is commendable. Thank you for sharing all this as I think it does a lot for the game dev community.
Also, a thought I had on wishlists, but another reason why some of those wishlists didn't convert to sales may have been because of UA-cam. I think many devs wishlist other devs games as a way to support them and maybe give them that little bump in the Steam algorithm. But, ultimately, have no intention of buying the game in the end. Or at least not right away.
Anyway, congratulations all the same! Not many can say they finished a game and put it out there on Steam. Looking forward to see what you guys come up with next!
Same happened to me with my first android app but i applied what i learned in my second app and it was a totally success
I love you guys. Thank you for guidance
You guys are awesome, please keep going.
As someone trying to get into game development I really appreciate this and the insights. We all improve together with this type of transparency.
Respect to you and the team for bringing your game to launch and then being both brave and insightful in sharing your learnings in this video. From what I heard you are giving yourselves every opportunity to find success.
One cautionary suggestion, be thoughtful about the continued resources put against the game. Even with some marketing effort, the numbers fall below the level needed to support a comeback. Of course, getting it to a place that feels right for the team is a whole other thing and that too is to be applauded.
Oh don't worry, we dropped it after 3 months of QoL support. We are now fully working on our next game. Pretty much all bugs the game had have been solved at this point, so we are happy with the end result. -M
Sorry to hear the launch didn't go quite as you guys hoped! This was a great video though! Very informative!
Love the insights and honesty of your analysis of how your first game release went.
The journey is more important than crossing the finish line. Sure you can celebrate the achievement and enjoy the moment. But how you got there is what you should remember.
As for debugging the game crashes. That’s kind of related to your experience as a developer. You have to invest into writing the tools for debugging field issues. But I get it if you have limited resources it’s sometimes hard to set your priorities
Me and my friend are also getting into some game development. Always good to learn from those who are already a bit ahead of oneself.
thanks for sharing, and here's some blunt thoughts;
1. 200% need an artist. It's just too much of a hurdle to sell a game that doesn't visually appear polished, and especially not at that price point.
2. The price is steep. It's likely that many more wishlists would have converted at a lower price, and net revenue would have been greater overall.
3. Honestly, it's not worth further supporting this game. Without a major visual overhaul it's too tough of a sell and the return on that time investment will not remotely be worth it
4. The genre is not the issue, anyone who sees the store page and decides to buy it is already interested in the genre.
5. UI being clunky absolutely does matter. Arguably it's the most important thing to get right, especially in that menu-heavy genre. If the UI is a pain in the ass that's an extremely fast turn off.
Congrats on the first launch and thank you for the transparency and interesting video. One thing that you can't measure in dollars is the reputation for releasing. You're more likely to get sales on the next game, even if it isn't as fun as the current one, just for the fact that you have built some credibility. Keep at it.
I hadn't heard of your channel or game - just happened across this video. For me, I've wish listed some very interesting games on steam and when it finally launched I thought to myself "well I'm not paying that much for that game". So perhaps carefully researching price point is important and what you said about a sale at launch would get more sales. Best of luck to you.
Many games have less than stellar release day results. If you want this to survive over time, you will put whatever it takes into the mix to make it work. The only miracles are those you craft.
Now I'll head over to Steam and check out your demo just because you've raised my curiosity. :D
I am very glad to see find your channel. I am learning programming and drawing and learning to solo developing a game. I feel like I am so influenced by information all over the place on the internet, I get anxiety about the game before it is even ready.
I’m really glad this channel keeps me grounded and sets my expectations.
One thing I’d like to ask is that would you recommend a solo dev to create youtube videos like you guys do? How much time did it take away from development to make and edit these videos?
Okay, that was interesting and informative.
My first impression of the things I saw of your game in the video is that it looks like an Early Access title or maybe like an prototype. I do like these kinds of games, like factory/production/city-sim, so it is up my ally of something I could possibly buy. I am now going to try your demo and see if it is wroth a buy or not. Maybe you will hear from me on the community forum. Cheers.
Great video! You have my sub. Even tho the game is not selling as good as you had hoped, your ahead of many indy devs by having a published game.
I don't play automation games, but I'm always interested in these type of videos; priceless for aspiring game devs. Keep up the good work!
Hey guys! Nice video! Keep going! We developed apps and the first where small or no success as well. After a while we had a live changing release! KEEP GOING!!
Keep up your good works, hope this encourage cheers
As a solo indie dev myself, this was really interesting to hear!
Went and bought the game to see what was up. I left a thread on the community discussions, hopefully something said there is of use. Hope to see what you'll do with the game going forward.
The algorithm gods decided I should see this video 😂 this game isnt a genre i would normally play, but i'll definitely check out the demo and see. Congrats on launch, so many indie devs never make it this far or crash and burn when it doesnt make what they had built up in their heads. You guys seem to be mentally together, that will help with long term stickage. From o e programmer to another, making a game(or any software really) is hard. Having a finished product puts you way ahead od the curve.
2 years in my solo project Lorne. Really close to a demo finally. I'm at a point where the world is just waiting to be built, because the systems are mostly finished at this point. I will probably spend an additional 2 years on this game and that is 100% fine to me. I'm not doing this for a massive commercial success, I'm doing this for learning.
I bet you learned so much from this. :)
You learn the most by taking something from start to finish. You could have made 2 games for 2 years each in the time you want to spend on that one game. Also, it's much easier to give up on a 4 year project and start over than a 2 year one. Huge commitments are sometimes just excuses not to try at all, because you bury yourself in too much work. Also it won't be just 2 years to complete, if you're saying that now it means it's 3 minimum. Projects always go that way.
@@BusinessWolf1 nah :) it will be on time. All systems are done. Its just 2 years of content creation. I will have some time to spare even.
What you miss when doing shorter and easier projects is that you dont have to learn to improve on your workflows and processes because you can work inefficiently due to "underscoping" your game. This will come back to bite you once you start scaling up, as it is very different to work on extremely large games with for the manhours you have.
Work on what you want to work on in the end, but dont listen to generic advice just to "succeed", if you dont have fun you wont make it anyway. 😁✌️
Thanks for making this and sharing this information. It’s very helpful to see what it looks like on the other side of a first game’s release when it’s not one of the rare runaway successes that usually get talked about so much.
I’m curious to check out your game now to get the full picture, so I’ve just remote installed it to play when I get home tonight, and once I get a good sense of it, I’ll write up a detailed, honest review.
Edit: I played it for a couple hours tonight, and I want to play it more before writing a review, but in case I end up getting too busy and forgetting to come back to this, I wanted to at least share some initial feedback (not particularly edited, so bare with any rambline/disorganization):
First of all, I should clarify that I am now enjoying the game once I got into it, but for the sake of giving useful feedback, I'm going to focus on the negatives here. So keep in mind that while it sounds like I hate the game from what I'm about to say, I actually do like it overall now that I'm a couple hours in. Also some of this will be general and some will be specific to mechanics in this game, so depending on how similar your future projects are, they may or may not be actionable.
It felt to me like a lot of people might be losing interest in the first few minutes, because playing through the tutorial is kind of rough. There's a lot that it doesn't explain and leaves you to figure out, which I like because it forces the player to learn, but I think some more clear steps for some of the earliest stuff, like making it clear what a Route is and where you would define that, for example, would help get people to understand how to play the game before quitting.
In general, my advice for the tutorial text would be twice as much text, half as many highlighted words, because I felt like a lot of was left unsaid and the color highlights and capitalization of every other word in some of the tutorial screens were better at making it difficult to visually parse the text than they were at conveying which words were important. The difficult to read font probably didn't do any favors. Generally, I try to avoid highly stylized fonts for any text that is more than a word or two (e.g. stylized for titles/headers, static HUD labels, etc is fine, but for anything that needs to be read fast or for longer text like tutorials, use something simpler and more legible.
The other big filter for players getting past the beginning is that the tutorial doesn't (at least not as far as I followed it) explain anything about hiring workers, so even at 8x speed, my first 10 minutes or so of gameplay was sitting there waiting for 20 of something to be made so I could advance to the next part of the tutorial until I got bored of waiting and eventually tested out what the button did myself.
I appreciated the detailed info in the Wiki screens, but I still found a lot of things confusing, mostly from not knowing where to look in the wiki since I didn't know what it was. I'm still not 100% sure what the actual values I'm selling things for is. I _think_ that's what the tooltips are saying, but then it says iron ingots are worth 70 but the most expensive thing I can forge from them is worth 40, so I feel like that can't be true. I think having a tutorial that walks through more of the high level things like hiring workers and understanding the prices of things would be more useful then immediately going into upgrading buildings. I eventually figured it out and ended up having fun, but there were a couple points where I nearly walked away out of boredom or confusion in the first 30-60 minutes.
I've also found it a little confusing keeping track of where people are assigned, even after realizing I could look at the Recreation Area to see all routes. I'm assuming 1 is assigned to each building, but even if that's true, I'm missing some of my workers sometimes, although they seem to eventually reappear. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature I don't yet understand. Also, I think it would be easier if you could take workers off of other routes without closing the screen for creating/editing a route. I've had to exit without saving a few new routes already because I realized I had no workers available and had to leave to take someone off something else, then come back and recreate what I'd input from scratch, which is a little tedious with the crowded dropdowns in that menu (although I'm not sure how to make that UI better other than letting the dropdown hang further to fit more options on screen).
One final note is that I was caught by surprise with a game over a couple times when I thought I was still making more money than I was spending, and then suddenly production got halted from something (like forgetting to put in a buy order for coal or having a road get clogged up since I didn't initially realize that people couldn't walk through each other). I think having some clear indicator of whether money is increasing overall or decreasing would have helped, so I could see that it flipped to red before I'm seconds from game over.
I am happy for you guys. You produced a game and published it. That's great ...however I think this genre you choose is not fun without the multiplayer having friends playing each other is GOLD guys
First of all, congratulations. Publishing a game on Steam is no easy feat.
I haven't played the game (I'm simply not your game's audience), but I've watched all your videos and looked at your Steam page, and I wanted to give my two cents:
- The game genre you chose is _really_ hard for a first game. I believe you even said so in a video. Developing this kind of game is hard, and on top of that strategy/automation players are quite... "sophisticated", let's say. I feel it is a demographic hard to please.
- Don't underestimate the UI. A bad UI can kill a game. With attention spans being shorter each day, if your player feels lost or the UI is unintuitive they will just quit. A lot of players judge games by the UI, I believe I heard Chris Zukowski say that having UI screenshots is key to gathering wishlists, because it matters to the players.
- Steam players are the definition of 'judging a book by its cover'. Sadly the game being fun is not the thing they care about the most. As a dev, I don't get it either. Your game's graphics are okay and coherent, but not spectacular or eye-catching. Games with less content/worse gameplay but more polished graphics tend to sell better.
- The price tag is a bit high imo, and literally *no one buys a game if it's not on sale*. Once again, I think I heard that from Zukowski. Probably 15€ with a 20% off would have sold better.
- I'm not so sure about how good having a demo is, I understand that it may generate wishlists but I've heard from other devs that it also can be detrimental to the sales (some players may play the demo and think they had enough).
Of course, take all this with a grain of salt. Just sharing some thoughts. Keep it up and seriously, be proud of yourself regardless of sales. You made it further than most people already. Just keep it up.