I Published My Roguelike Game - Dealing With The Aftermath
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 4 май 2024
- I released my Roguelike game for the world to play, releasing it on 3 major sites. I talk about how much money I made from the game, how many people played it, how many people stole it, and how many players I was hoping to get. As well as the next step as a game developer, what am I doing with the game now that it's released?
Steam page:
store.steampowered.com/app/26...
_________________________________________________________
The Review Video: • Newgrounds Monthly Gam...
💖Patreon: / helperwesley
Links To Where I Hang Out:
linktr.ee/helperwesley
Links To My Set Up:
linktr.ee/helperwesleysetup
_________________________________________________________
Time Stamps:
00:00 What Happened
04:46 What's Next
_________________________________________________________
Devlog Playlists:
✅Sci-fi Mobile Game Devlog Series:
• Remaking The First Gam...
✅GMTK Game Jam 2022 series:
• Top 10 In Popularity -...
✅Binding Of Issac-like Devlog Series:
• Devlog 1: Making A Bin...
✅Ludum Dare 50 Game Jam Series:
• Making A Game In Under...
✅Vimlark(Ready Set Jam)Game Jam Series:
• Kicking Butt In A Game...
_________________________________________________________
#Devlog #Gamedev #Gdevelop #indiegamedev #games #videogames #indiedev #gamedesign #Pixelart #GameDeveloper #GameDevelopment 
Игры
So, what do you think is an indicator that's large enough to get a developer to make that leap from free to paid? 🤔
Hey Wesley can you help me out? I want to make cooler UI effects like arc movement and more. I don't know how to do this. If you can help? I'll eat a tomato and I never ate a tomato in my whole life!!!
I think your game is good for publishing,....only thing you should make more content/mechanics ,....btw how long did it took you to make game ?
more content, more polish, and most important is different from other games
@@2ndbestgames208 Well, I've been doing it in my spare time, on the weekends and whenever I get time to pick at it... So it's hard to say exactly how long it's taken me.
But it's been several months at this point. 🤔
That's really hard to say, I mean the game that you release on Steam is supposed to be bigger and better than the free prototype right, so the real question is: how much bigger and better does it need to be in order to make people want to buy it? That's more of a qualitative question. I don't think it makes a big difference if 30k or 100k people played the prototype. You already know from the feedback if the base game resonates with people right. Otherwise, do more testing.
One thing you could do is to list the game now on Steam (with a TBA release date) and see how many wishlist you can get. If you can get more than 10k in 6 months then you have a good indication that there is some interest in the game. And when launch day comes those wishlist will be your best chance of getting the game sold anyways. Early access might also fit this game well.
You should definitely put it on Steam, just doing that would be my definition of success.
I would encourage you to NOT equate money with success, it is highly unlikely the game will sell many copies. Treat it as a learning project to learn how Steam works, how the backend works, what it's like to gather wishlists and publish a game, deal with Steam reviews, forums posts, etc. You will learn a ton from your first release.
Then for your next game you will have a better idea of what the Steam audience expects.
Best of luck!
Thanks! That's definitely some solid advice, I'll try to stay in the "this is a learning experience" mentality. 👍
If people are copying it wholesale, even when it's free to play because they see it successful, then that's your indication that you have a hit on your hands
That's a good point, if it's worth stealing for some people, it's probably worth buying for others. 🤔
Isn't it just bots automatically scraping games from competitors ?
@@ilanouk Some are I'm sure.
But others manually changed the description and added my RUclips channel in the description of the page, written in a way that wasn't just a copy/paste of my description on other sites.
So either an AI wrote it and was kind enough to credit me, or a person interacted with those ones at some point. 🤔
That’s your indicator to sue the shit out of them
With making the leap to paid, I think it's more about the amount of content and the level of polish. Taking the easy way out won't cut it if people are giving you money. Someone else suggested Vampire Survivors as a model for quantity for a Steam release, and I agree.
This is complete rubbish!!! Vampire has a MASSIVE amount of content.. you dont need anything close to it to be successful. Also, there isnt an answer to this question in the first place. I have seen a game with 1 screen make more money than a game with an OPEN WORLD!!! I have seen a game with a good sense of humor beat out a game with great graphics.. there really isnt a formula.
Honestly, i think the fact that it was popular enough on Newgrounds to get ripped by bots/weirdos then put on other platforms feels like it would warrant a steam release. Seems to me that there's already enough support to get it on the leading platform!
Maybe I'm just being overly cautious about it. I've yet to cross that line and put something up on steam, so maybe I just need to go for it. 😅
steam is rough imo. $100 fee.
then they take 40% of your income from it, THEN you gotta file taxes 😂 so he would get 44% or so afterwards. which money is money. just stinks how much work people have to put into a project only to get less than half of your earnings
@@joeman123964 I believe it's 30% for the first 10 million made, still a lot but better than 40%
@@HelperWesley Can’t hurt
@@joeman123964 you don't get less than half of your earnings. what you get are your earnings. you wouldn't sell anywhere near as many copies if it wasn't on steam, so you are paying for that service of publicity but also all the other things steam offers like multiplayer, achievements, trading cards, remote play, etc
Your videos just keep improving and getting better. Really interesting to watch you videos and are also really inspiring too! Just really awesome stuff man :D
Thanks! I put a lot of time in to it, so to hear they are actually getting better is a relief. 😌
2:30 in and just wanted to say: It's a weird catch-22 where in order to 'unlock' those genuine, cut-to-the-bone bits of feedback, you need to commit all-in on something. Anything you commit all-in on you have a lot of pride for since it's your baby, and it hurts to see it's flaws pointed out. All in all, you're moving forward to newer pieces of info, sharper skills, more things to consider, and more to be proud of at the end of all of it.
Also holy hell the amount of second-hand joy I felt just from hearing you get a check from Newgrounds is INSANE. If that happened to me I'd be on cloud 9 for a long while. That's a crazy achievement in and of itself and I totally agree with you in that it feels like you've been blessed by a historic OG
I still can't fully believe the NGs thing, that is WILD.
@@HelperWesley Learned of you like 30 mins ago and I'm still over here fist pumping for ya
i want to see your channel rise and also your games too!
niice man! i would love to make a small fun game, but I'm just so honed in on my dream project its gonna take a few more years.
i played this game today and loved it! i suck at pixel art so i am jealous lol must be such a good feeling to have others enjoy your passion. congrats!!!
Being popular on NEWGROUNDS is definetly a challenge and a good indicator. A lot of games started as small flash game on newground (I remember Hollow knight and thomas was alone were one of those). But they don't just copy/paste their original game to steam, they add a lot of improvements.
Like, A LOT of improvements. So imo, use the current game as a demo (People like good demos) and add stuff (More achievements, more reason to play, etc.)
Also add smth unique, like a "Gimmick" for example: Undertale added the "sparing" mechanic or celeste with a different type of story (not that much games make their game about depression)
Your game is really nice. Keep going!
Congratulations on the release!!!
Wesley here making the big bucks!
Jokes aside, this is awesome. Congrats on the success, and I love the edits regarding the feedback you got haha
Good ol' LOTR. lol.
Should've made a Steam page already and told people to wishlist the game. Just 10k wishlists would be enough that you make a time investment into making it the best possible
Good luck on your project!
Ok, definitely subscribed cuz I'm invested in your progress. I'm an aspiring game/software dev so hearing you go through this is super interesting. Please take what I say below with a grain of salt; I get the feeling I'm projecting. But hey, maybe it'll strike a chord.
So... to answer the final question of your video. It's a non-answer, but I think you'd benefit from not outsourcing the question "what is success?" No one else can define that besides you. At 28 I'm just now realizing how often I used to rely on others for their opinions, and I think this is solidly something you need to define yourself. If you're not sure what that answer is, that's ok right now. It's an amorphous question with an answer that changes over time.
There are a lot of things in life where you need to break up phases of head-down work with popping your head up to assess where you're at and where you want to head next. I think you're excited to poke your head up and see where you're at, but you aren't at a point yet where you can gather useful information by doing so (you're seeing the numbers but don't know what to make of them yet). It sounds like you could benefit from going heads-down for a bit longer before popping up again. Get into the flow of adding to this project or starting a new one and don't get too excited about pinpointing where you're at if you don't know what it means yet.
If you're stuck between those, then consier taking a break and bask in your glory for a bit! This seems like a huge step and you deserve a victory lap. All good things come with time.
Thanks!
And yeah, that sounds a lot like the advice I'd give someone else if asked the same question. "success" means different things to different people, and they really need to define what that means for themselves.
As for taking a break... That's not really an option for me. I've sort of become addicted to it all, working on games and seeing ideas brought to life has become my relaxation. I love it. 😅
For steam really listening to the current reviews of similar products is a must
this will give you a base line of what people will expect etc graphics, gameplay, why is it broken dev
their are standards most people on steam expect as people outside of the indie space do not
understand development or why objects might not transform the same every run
player experience is also a huge part of making it so make sure you have a robust menu etc
and dont be afraid to change the ui after release --- if you feel it looks good the only way to tell
will be after release anyways
making sure their are no large bugs like the saving one to prevent mixed or bad reviews
from a skewed player base over a small issue
mostly dont stress you can definitely get a base following and release a second version or
update the game later on
steam users respect honest developers who regularly update their products sometimes
the developer or studio is just as important as the game you want to show off your product
and uniqueness as much as possible
I am so glad to be here from the beginning this game has grown so much 🥲
Love your videos keep it up!
Thanks!
Remember that half of the people criticising it have never made a game before and dont get the effort that goes into it
Hey imma big fan of games like this. Just found your channel!
I would suggest putting the game and update it on steam. If you update it only on steam then it’ll be great and no one can steal it. I’d honestly charge anywhere between 2-5$.
for steam, you usually need the game to be seen before, hype and get people to wishlist. idk im thats from what I've seen for choo charles, karlson, punch a bunch or will you snail in terms of "successfull"
I think either way you should release it on Steam or other platforms. Either release it as is for a really cheap price, and then move on to other projects, or commit to making it a fullscale project and continue forward with it. I think it really depends on what you want, and what kind of return on investment you’re looking for. I’d say 35k plays is pretty impressive, but it’s hard to predict how many people would be willing to buy the game based on free plays. But I think adding a game to platforms is really good practice even if it’s not a full-time project.
I think the best thing you could do is post devlogs about the updates you're making to your game and try to funnel people into wishlisting your game via RUclips, Twitter, and the existing game pages. However, that could be a massive bag of lies as I've never finished a game I've been working on XD
Well that's what I've been working towards, so I certainly hope it's not a massive bag of lies. 🤞😅
Usually steam success would be measured by wishlists, but that takes time to build, and your game is already released. So I'm not sure you could gage success until you see the sales come in. The best measure for sales success is beating your previous game. That's progress and as long as your making progress your doing it right!
People stole the game and published it on their sites
So they must really liked it right?
That's a good indicator that it would be successful btw
I think this game have a lot of potential keep working on it
For the mobile controls, instead of a dash button, make the dash a double tap for the direction you want to go and make the button a hability activation button
It's not just buttons on screen, it's the functionality. Both gun dudette and the demon character were designed with the mouse cursor being the position to place the ability.
So in order to mimick that in the game, there would need to be some kind of secondary thing that would be used for positioning, and doing that in a split second with everything going on would be too much for gameplay, so I'd likely have to add time slow when the ability was used.... and.... it.... was just too much. 😅
A good indicator for steam in my mind would be setting goals for what you want it to look like now that you've gotten feedback, if you think its fine as is how much would you pay to play a similar game considering content and fun
I dont think "play" numbers factor into a paid release without an associated price. I'm no expert and these are estimates, but I would say by the time you think its juiced up enough to be a full-fledged steam game, release it for $1 per 50,000 plays. If you are ready to open the page and you have 200,000 plays by then, make it 4 bucks. If you have 75,000 plays, $1.50. Somethin like that
I define successful like the joker.
If you're good at something, never do it for free.
So if you can live off of it, and you don't have burn out (to whatever is acceptable to you) that's a success.
Jumping from free to paid is a scary change as a developer.
I planned on always keeping mine free to play - but far from pay to win. I was working with Idle/Incremental so it is easier to put in a small 1-time purchase buff or 2 that users can buy to say 'Thanks for Making the Game'. Having a roguelike with a leader board makes it a lot harder to keep fair if you go that route.
I would add 2 purchasable pets that follow you around, one nice, one mean.
Give them their own storekeeper that explains these cost real moneys and wont effect game play But they do help you to keep making games. Nice one would randomly say helpful or motivating things where the mean one would berate you and talk about how their old master was way better - you'll never make the highscore - etc.
How ever you choose I am sure you will do great!
Problems with using number of times a free gase is played as a metric to see if a steam release would work, are:
1. Do those numbers include players who are coming back to play again ? How many times those players play ? In the end they would be only one sell.
2. Will they actually be a sell ? Do those players play the game because they don't buy games and only play free to play games ? Are they mostly children with no income to spend on a paid game ?
I think a good way to gage what would be a proper steam release would be to check games that you feel are similar to what you trying to make, check their approximate sales (~40x the number of reviews) and see how it aligns with your objectives. Try to take an objective look (yeah that's a hard one) one your game and the other game that you feel achieve the success you are looking for and see what they have that your game doesn't, to see what it needs to reach that "release on steam" level.
That's entirely fair. People playing the game for free are not necessarily the same people who might buy the game for real money, they could be two completely different groups of people and the number of plays might be entirely irrelevant. 😅
Objectively comparing my game to other similar games might be the toughest part. Beyond just the general "being too close to the game", I also get struck with that good ol' self-doubt.
But of course, the rogueli*e genre is very popular and has some massive successes in it. I would just need to bring the level of quality of the game to match those before launch. ("just" 😅)
@@HelperWesley Yeah it's hard to not over value or under value your own creation 😅
Hey, great to your game taking off like this.
Could you, after you've adapted it to the different platforms, make some tutorials about it? It'd be great since I'm sure many aspiring developers like myself would love to know about file size, resolution, UI and any other requirements from Google Play and other platforms.
You create a steam page and check how many wishlists you get is the common way to check this.
You can also include a small demo or so.
Free plays from newsground or any metric will not give you enough insight about the sales of your game.
It also highly depends on your marketing skills. Even more than on the game itself!
Yo this video actually came in a very good time for me
Im finale getting the realese of my own roguelike to the public and oh boy there aare some things that i can fell that it would be impossibel like the weird screen scale thing
a
Hey ! First good job men, your game is great and tbh I think to know if a game is successfull mathematically, you could divide the number of good comments by the number of people who actually played to it for at least 10 minutes or another good indicator is to divide the number of good comments by the number of total comments and compare it with some other famous games that people like, it's not perfect but I think it could help you !
Yeah, that's totally legit, I wish there was something like the steam review system I could use.
Newgrounds has it's rating system, and it did good there, but the game being free definitely skewed that score. 😅
I don't have experience with steam releases, but my guess is that I don't think that player count before the steam release matters much. I think that what matters is:
- amount of content & replayability (many people WILL refund if they feel they are through with the game within only two-three hours of playing)
- having an affordable price, but not low enough that the game looks cheap, and great promotional art/trailers, for people to feel safe about buying your game over other games
- building a community (≠ getting a lot of players): build places for fans of the game to gather, give them things to talk about and to look forward to (promise interesting game features for the full release, share devlogs, etc), promote community content, start community events, add mysteries and challenges to solve in-game... You want a dedicated following of people looking forward to your game. They will spread the word about your game for you, but most importantly, they will seriously wishlist it, buy it, spend time on it and rate it well, and that'll make the steam algorithm push your game to more players.
- do a lot of playtesting with real players (not gamedevs) to find out what bugs players and needs to be changed/improved
As it stands, I think your game would be a failure on steam, since there is no community backing the game specifically (you have a big channel, but that community is interested primarily in your free videos, it's a whole other thing to commit money, and there are no strong feelings from the audience towards this game specifically), the game lacks content & replayability to steam player standards, the rooms are too empty & the art is not attractive enough for game screenshots to attract players...
The world of paid steam games is much harsher than the world of free online games 😔
Also deltachase is finally acknowledged again by helper man, i am in a state of bliss as a dedicated fan of the franchise 🤩
Deltachase. 😩
But yeah, all of those things are great ideas. I love the idea of trying to keep a rolling schedule of things that'll come out and change for people to get excited about. 👀
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
You made it in the dev world!
when you got the guys saying "this game is dumb, I am a professional reviewer and own 40 companies" you nailed it.
Loved the game, being playing the itch downloaded version for at least once a day.
Since others have already pointed out some good indicators, I'll just say this.
After the game has leveled up a bit, since your video quality has kept going up, make a trailer. Make it look hype, and it'll be hype.
(I just remembered something that bugged me. The robot's skill that negates damage, there's no satisfying bullet nullification effect or anything, or an indication of it's duration. Maybe you updated that since launch, but idk)
(I haven't updated it since launch, I'll make sure it's on my to-do list for the game. 👀)
Hey Wesley, loved to watch your game progress. Since your early development isn't recorded, can you give some insight on what you did or followed to get the level generation working? Thanks!
I made a "how to make a roguelike" video on the GDevelop RUclips channel, it's pretty short, but I go over a few of the things I did there. I think at this point it's too late to go back and start from the very beginning, because not enough people would watch it. 😅
@@HelperWesley I'll check it out, thanks!
to add back abiliteis you should make so that you can tap the screen where you want to use the power and use a button to activate the active, or something like that idk
I think your work is great and I just got into game development and yeah it's pretty hard but super fun! If I was going to give any criticism ( only because you asked ) and this is just the way I feel about games. Is visual interest. I like it when games feel like you are constantly exploring new things, new worlds visually, and also for a game like this. Level ups need to feel awesome! "Or just straight up wild like enter the gundioun had accomplished.
Nothing like we power fantasy and new visuals to keep someone feeling like they can't stop playing! While core mechanics is an obvious important there is a reason why companies have poured literally billions and billions into hardware and software to be able to create games that are very visually interesting. With that being said. It doesn't take the best graphics in the world to make a game look good and definitely not to make the game good. It just has to be interesting. However just like game development... Art is also very hard!
Art is very hard. 😅
Thankfully an artist has joined up with me for our latest videos and the game looks a lot better. 😌
tbh I'm always surprised that there are so many successful twin stick shooters. You'd expect the competition to be too strong, but it seems people just want more of them. No idea what a successful number would be, but maybe the steamdb stats of some existing smaller twin stick shooters could help predict what to expect. could even look up some that started at newgrounds and how they did.
Honestly (only in my opinion, not meant to be rude) i dont think as the game is right now, it would do that great on steam. or it will be another game like where you download it and delete it afterwards. i dont have much knowledge about this but what i would do is probably take a month or two off and solely focus on upgrading the game in every way possible. and more sounds more variety, maybe even different themed stages and npcs maybe at some point. imo the game was decent but your videos were a lot more entertaining. keep workin hard!
Game to be competitive in top down roguelike niche need more content, more variants of weapons, abilities, items, enemies, player can't see everything after 2h of playing. Also need some wishlist before start so you should crate page, trailer and gifs as soon as possible
And price is something between 5-10$ imo
1: i think the buffs are bad cuz of the % stuff i think it be cooler to have like 2x bullets and if the buffs where more harder to get
2:the dashing looks bad and unresponsive it need more animation and screenshake
3:the ghost looks confusing and its hard to tell what they do i think a game should have clear indications so the player can know what to do
4:the map looks depressing and it needs more colour and details
5:pls add permanent buffs
6:co-op makes game waay more fun
7:make it that some rooms have more things then a trap like a hole or explosions or it moves
8:make effects screeshake particles
9:bigger rooms all of the rooms look exactly the same some needs different shapes and cariety
10:in the game gungeon where you point your cursor the camera moves along with it and this one simple thing makes the game so much more immersive pls add it
and hey thanks for the vid it entertained me ❤🥰
If you want the truth to being "successful"
It's having connections. This applies to more than just game-dev.
The game looks great. I feel that the juiciness is not there yet. It is there but it's not enough. You could try exaggerating the feedbacks eg. More exaggerated particles when something gets destroyed, or a slight camera shake when the enemy gets hit by a bullet. The feedbacks could be exaggerated way more than what it is at the moment. I feel that it is only lacking some juiciness currently. Wish you all the best. Good Luck!
So wish lists on Steam would be your biggest indicator if it would be successful. Typically on launch day you can expect a 10-20% conversion ratio from wish lists to sales. Let's say you got 35,000 wish lists of the game. On sale day you could expect to potentially sell 3,500 to 7,000 copies. How much you make from that depends on the price you set which can also affect sales if it is priced to high or low.
Looks like the game did great! Well done.
Would that translate into steam? It's hard to tell. This was a free brower game whereas you may want to charge on steam and players have to choose to download it. That being said 35k is amazing and even if you got 10% of that it would be pretty successful for a first steam game. If you take on all the feedback from this run then I suspect you'd get some significantly better numbers on steam.
Thanks! I definitely hope so.
I got a bunch of great feedback from the free run of the game and I'll be excited to jump back in to this to make the game "steam quality". 🥳
I think if you put your game up for free and change it later it can create a little bit of confusion. Usually ftp games stay ftp and have add ons via dlc or cosmetics for players. The enticement of the game is that its free so it will get more downloads but once people see its actually a good game they are more willing to spend money on extra stuff inside the game. I rarely see Roguelikes that are ftp because it seems a bit harder to monetize with cosmetics (unless its a big game). Roguelikes tend to fall within a certain price point and offer a free demo
My dude it’s already more than good enough to be on steam as is IMO
To be fair I this game can sell better on mobile than on Steam, the simplicity (in a good way) of the game makes it good to spend some time doing a run when you are waiting for a bus or something like that.
For the pc market I'm sure you would be able to sell too, but I really don't know about the price point because of the competition. You have to have a selling point that makes someone buy your game rather than play a game like hades or enter the gungeon.
Sorry if anything sounds rude, I really like what you accomplished and wanted to be honest about what I think
I believe with 30000 plus plays your game is already successful.
Congratulations
Success in Steam is connected to visiblity and you have plenty of that compared to most other small indie devs.
If the price is right you’ll easily make 5000-10000 dollars in few months. With some marketing push and visiblity with popular youtubers you get more.
Im making my first game using gdevelop and it will be free, obviously, but it is very similar to yours but rather its not random rooms. It will be a horror type 2d game with a story similar to silent hill 2. Hopefully het to a point where i can make a successful 2d side stroller horror series.
you could change how to unlock charekters.
so that you need to make some quests.
I hope this game continues grow
Me too! 🤞
You could compress your sprites - this may help with your file size "File compression" i was able to reduce the file size of my sprites by 60% or so
I'm already doing this with most of the files and it's just not quite enough. I'll have to go through and make sure all of the files are compressed before I can ship it. 🤔
I think the bulk of the filesize is coming from the music and sound, but I've already got those changed to lighter weight file types too. 😅
How about free to play Steam early access and a road map to explain how you'll make this a game worth x amount of dollars by time of release? Just a thought, not advice lol. Best of luck with your game!
To release on steam, you must implement screenshake.
Chris zukowski would probably call this a demo and the way to tell if your demo has real potential is average play time. So like 45 minutes plus average play time would be a good indication. Or something like that
Definitely not 45 minutes. 😅
In the video there is a clip of the game's analytics shown at one point, and I think only ~33% of players play for over 15 minutes.(Though the analytics cut off at 15 minutes, so they could be playing for hours and I wouldn't know honestly)
But that is interesting to think about. 🤔
@@HelperWesley Based on what you're looking for, median playtime is probably not a bad metric. Are people really enjoying the game and do they likely want to see more of it. "WHAT IS A GOOD MEDIAN PLAY TIME FOR A DEMO? [BENCHMARK]" is the title of the article. It sounds like you're not doing too bad though.
I wouldn't trust the "count of plays" numbers. What you want to know before pouring your time into the game is whether or not it's appealing enough; number of plays measures both reach/buzz and initial appeal (that "this looks fun, I'll bite" factor).
Ideally you want several stats:
- number of people that have seen the game's page
- number of people that have actually launched the game
- number of people that spent a significant amount of time (pick a threshold) in the game
The ratios of these will give you way more information than just one number. If it's possible to extract this information (never worked with Newgrounds API) - go after that to decide
You should put it on steam as i defo would play it there. Also if you could put it on ios i’d love to try it on my phone also.
I don't know if somebody's filled you in on this in the weeks that this video's been up for already, but the Steam algorithm works through wishlists. If you want the game to get pushed by Steam to generate organic growth, you need to set up a Steam page for it and start gathering wishlists. You need around 7000 for Steam to recommend your game to users once you release it.
A few people have mentioned it, and Code Monkey reached out and basically told me to get the game on there ASAP.
I definitely intend to, but I'm a bit swamped with other work atm. But as soon as I can, it's going up there. 👍
@@HelperWesley Good luck! 🙂
It needs a lot of work for steam. I don't know if plays by their self can justify a steam release.
maybe you should make abilitys be activated by double tapping on a point in the screen (on mobile)
This game would benefit from cool interesting power ups, you see normal shooty shooty gets boring after a while
Critique is Important
Can we get a list of the similar requirements for these platforms?
hmmmm, for steam..... I thinks still mostly stick to basics, the community, the supporters, those people will play your game, buy your game, share your game, help your game grown popular no matter what platform you upload in, they will help you.
maybe for steam the wistlist thing is kinda important, the higher those number are the better.
Yeah, the people watching/playing/commenting on the game have been a HUGE help with the development of the game. So I'll definitely try to keep the focus on/listen to those people as the game keeps getting developed. 👍
And yeah, wishlists seem to be a big important thing on Steam. There are some thresholds and numbers I need to look up in order to be successful over there. I know Steam has some "quirks" that you need to figure out when launching.
Pleade, try to make the energy bar on mobile :p.
I guess theres no problem in releasing into steam a game that made lots of plays.
Just, dont be insecure and go for it
Yannick - let me roast your video game
Guy at 1:57 - hold my beer!
🤣Yannick was actually throwing us softballs.
At first I thought all these requirements sound kinda low effort, until I looked up GDevelop and saw it's mostly without coding😅 Altrough I guess since it's event based there'll be some kind of scripts possible.
Hard to say man because metrics are not accurate at predicting that kind of stuff. Do a kickstarter and you will find out if people are interested. Thats what I will do for my new game.
I've looked at kickstarter, and the amount of work involved is more than a little daunting. 😅
I think my plan is to just create a steam page and leave it up as I continue to work on the game, make videos, and accrue wishlists. As a solo dev, I keep being reminded of just how little time I have, and how I just can't do it all.
I didn't know you were working on something new since Dwerve launched. Best of luck though with your future Kickstarter, hope it goes well. 👍
@@HelperWesley Thank you! I'm pretty defeated after Dwerve... but got to keep moving forward. Good luck to you as well!
@@PeterMilko Can't go back, so we might as well go forward. I get that. 👍
i think you should try for steam!!
When putting it on websites, make sure you protect your IP
hey is ok if i've been making a game like yours without the leaderboards and shop, but i used your template on gdevelop is that ok. Also its free, just saying.
Of course you can, that's why it's there. 👍
Feel free to share it with me on social media, I love seeing what people do with it.🙏
@@HelperWesley thank you!
You should add human skeletons in rooms hat you can destroy
Positive points
1. Being ripped soon after release shownit has a degree of popularity.
2. The fact other sites are interested in paying you to distribute your game means these site owners saw potential in your game.
Negative Points
1.Steam has so many games that just putting in the store doesn't mean a thing.
2. You will need to adjust your game to the Steam audience, and audience that's so demanding that you need to be careful. Think of it as walking a castle made of eggs.
Now for the tip, first you need to find the something that people found when they played the game, after they liked it enough to even complain about a massive failure like the points not being saved, meaning they liked it enough that they hoped you would fix so they could play.
I don't count the fact your game was pirated a problem, do you know why? Because you can use that as tool.
You see a crisis, I see an opportunity, use those pirate sites forum to talk about your game, let these pirates tell you why your game is great, to tell you the flaws, of course, don't they tell you're the dev, pretend to be a user and use the pirates as critics, free critics to know everything you don't know about your fan base, because pirates are fans who simply have yet to pay you.
After fixing and improving everything, you will need to build a hype, normally people do that with streamers, but if you search for streamers they might ignore due arrogance, to avoid that the first people you need to convince are the streamers themselves, build a hype to draw their attention, once they do use them to make the hype reach their followers.
After the hype, the Steam store page need to be written in market language, use a copyrighter if necessary, the cover art need to be center of the hype, a good cover art is often the difference that will give the click to know about the game.
Question why dont you have a button that lets you activate your ability then you tap where you activate it?
Because that would require freezing the game when the button is pressed, changing how 2 of the 4 abilities work entirely, and the logic to go along with it. It's definitely possible, but I decided it wasn't worth the time commitment and the subsequent playtesting that would follow. 🤔
I'll add having made mobile and browser games,
Mobile by default is like 14mb. Unless you're willing to go a million miles for it. and use other programming methods, it's not likely that you'll get mobile down that far.
For WebGL..Not sure how low a default project goes. It's still not 4mb :P
Rule 1 of gamedev: Double the amount of time you think something will take :D
Broo,,, a big request,,, please make a cricket game, in gdevelop.
Or a game like alien Shooter 2 with missions and many guns, mobs, boss NPC etc.
i would say its ready to go to steam when you could play for at least 10-15 hours without going for a high score etc.
I don't know about that, there are a few 5-8$ games you can beat in 2 hours that I have bought and still play here and there
@@anthonyschwartz1084thats fair, but imo there is a lot of potential for this to be something people can sink hours into and it would be a waste not to push it
The Issue is, it is now for free and it is uncertain if people would buy it or not... It is in general not a type of game which I would play, so I don't know...
I'm not paying for something I can get for free unless there's been a big rework of content. See: Baba is You game jam vs full release.
Well yeah, I wouldn't release it in it's current state after having released it for free. I'd spent several months adding content and working on it before flipping the switch to paid. 😅
ugh sorry in order to publish it on steam it will ask for more work in order to be successful
i dont know expend it a bit more
more bosses more random levels and variations in the rooms maybe more FX
I think a Steam release would be great! But, after A LOT of updates. When I first played the game on release day, I went in with a Steam-game mindset. And, I was pretty underwhelmed. I think it has A LOT of potential but, to release it on Steam, you'll need to add more to it. I'm the process of putting a hardcore, story generator, survival game on Steam and I've been working on it for a while now. I think one reason my game could get some players is because the "survival" game genre is VERY popular on Steam. And, while rouge-likes are popular, compared to other genres, its quite niche.
more love, more cash
A Steam success to me would just be making the $100 fee back and maybe a bit more over that
nah fam dont be shy, just slap a 1$ pricetag for Steam without hesitation :D
on the second thought, game feels kinda empty, at least the version from itchio, i think current version will be perfect for free demo (or "prologue") and paid version initially should have x5 amount of content of current version, so players could get lost in game juice for several hours
To think people are copying and steeling the game even when its free is already an indication that this game can make a name for its self, can't wait to see it on steam for $2-$5 😊😊
I think Vampire Surivior is a good indicator on what a "sucessful" indie game would be. I think you might need to add more content, and then it should be good to go :)
Yeah, the game as it is right now needs a lot more before I make that leap. I'll probably make the steam page and then spend several months improving the game before actually launching it there. 🤔
VS is a very bad example, an indie hit like that only happens once every 5 or so years. Comparing the success of your game with VS is the most unrealistic thing you could do.
@@sleeper_000
Edit: My comparison was that it was an idie title that had more content.
I don't think it is a bad example, it just got extra publicity because it showed gamplay > graphics. Plus, it pulled in a some of the WoW community because Torghast was shit but the same mode existed in a indie game that pulled it off way better.
I still think it is a good example, it doesn't mean they will sell as many as VS, it is still a lucky draw for VS to make as much as it did.
you can launch praticly any game on steam and get like 200 to 1000 bucks. Is not much, but is sucess if you think about the fact that steam charges you one hundread. To say "success" in other aspect you should have a baseline of how much you expected for the game. Every game is different, every category of price is diferent, a 2D game is in a level very diferent to be called a success than a 3D one, and also it matters how much time and money you put it to.
Number of plays isn't a good indicator of potential success -- Retention is.
Around 10k wishlists would be a good indication that Steam won’t bury your game on launch.
That sounds like a lot. 👀
But I'd probably spend several months improving the game between now and launch, so a little over a thousand wishlists per month sounds manageable. 🤔
Add some more stuff if you are going to put it on steam, 60,000 plays
While i do like the game
I dont think it should be moved to steam. Theres alot of games just like this already on there and i dont think it has a unique enough gimick to stand out
Just release it on steam, you gotta earn back that 100$. With 10k subs and a pretty good game ( which can be improved still ) you will probably make couple of thousands if you price it reasonably OR if you want to know how i would do it, i would put on 1 skin for all characters and put that on a micro transaction and keep the game free. If you release it on mobile you want to keep it free with micro anyways.
I mean just release the game. I assume the worst that can happen is that you pay a $100 publishing fee, but even at super low price and stupidly low sales, you'd break even.
I'm not concerned about breaking even on the 100$ fee, I'm concerned about it's initial launch.
Games usually make the bulk of their sales on launch week. So when I do put the game on steam, I'll want to do everything I can do make sure it lands well. 👍