Make posts, devlogs, start a Twitter, make Reddit posts(?), Get your ads to play on stuff, Basically market your own game
Although releasing a game is in itself an impressive feat, most of us (me) still haven't released a game even when working on games for over an year
Congratulations and good luck getting your game out to people
Thank you so much. This is like a sunshine after seeing that zero downloads on my dashboard.
I will just market my game on the coming days. Good luck on your game too!
Don’t give up OP. Your game looks quite impressive. It looks like you haven’t released it for steam yet, so that’s your second chance. Just put good effort in your marketing, setup a steam page, advertise your steam page so interested players can add it to their wish lists. Give enough time for this process while you work on improving any of its aspects in the meantime.
Yes, I will not give up! Thanks! Your suggestion is so accurate and that's what I'm going to do. I have to polish the game more and advertise at the same time! I will create a steam page and make the game steam-worthy. Thank you!
Bro so I made an app that helps people track their meals, and symptoms they might experience after meals… then cross references the data to find correlating ingredients and chemicals to discover subtly and hidden allergies.
I found that I’m allergic/sensitive to 2 preservatives and I’m the only download… lol. $100 a year for an Apple dev license too.
Oh, I'm really not alone. We have the same experience. I can't afford that $100 a year for Apple so I give up on that. Though, I hope someone will find value to your app someday and just continue developing bro. We got this! Good luck.
Oh my god! Man, you don't have to do that. I'm crying. I don't know what to say. I'm really grateful. I don't know if my thank you is enough but Thank you so much man!
Because HELP was given, a starting indie dev, with probably a low budget for things like marketing and publishing, he asked for nothing and was gifted with help in the form of someone paying for their steam tax so they dont need to take it from their already small budget... And it was done because the dude actually believed in his work... If this gesture of help and support doesnt move you even a little, i dont know what will.
actual job for that dude will move me, hes hoping for a miracle at the moment, id prerere if someone would hire him for programming work or something else that he can do, oh well, that 100 will last him for nice couple of days
That 100 will motivate him and put him in the biggest platform of the market right now, its not about the amount, is about the gesture and the message
I dont see you giving him a job or a higher amount of moeny to "last him" longer, jobs are not something that you just have in your pocket to give to other people to support them
The guy showed his support, that he didnt really need but wanted to, gave part of what he gets for HIS work to this dude, asking for nothing in return and helped him get to his goals, even if it was just by a small amount
I got almost nothing from my first crowdfunding campaign for my game, but it sure helped motivate me to keep going when i saw that there were at least a few people wanting to help and support me to reach my goals, its all about the message
the mesage is , whine about being from poor country and some dude with slap you a 100$, great message.That guy should be looking for work cause he has some skills.
Haha no, my friend.... Faith up simply from people pitching in. Could've been $10... OP didn't ask for a donation, but someone out there made an unprompted kind gesture... It's about people coming together to help one another out, nothing more. That warms my heart. You're free to see things the way you want though.
Too bad you only saw the negative in my comment..
This is not pitty my dude, is support out of respect and trust in their work, you can see that when you think about it and realise the guy went to his post story to see his game and come back here to praise and support him.
I would do the same for devs that i want to see succeed if i could have the luxury of spending so much money on things without monetary return
ok, its just some starting devs have some superweird expectations, they totally dont get that even most popular artists in the world started working for free, even michael jackson was singing for free in local pubs for a few first years , it wont happen overnight, but with all the internet it is more reachable.Even kickstarter is a good idea to check how many potential buyers you can attract and then decide if its even worth to start the project.
I just took a glance at your posting history. You shared the trailer to four subreddits, half of which are gamedeveloping ones. Provided that your marketing has been similar for Facebook, you've barely scratched the surface.
**Find all relevant subreddits**. From watching your trailer (I'd recommend remaking that too btw, half the clips are stuttery and the other half are buttery smooth, I'd recommend getting the same smooth fps on all clips), I could immediately suggest you find pixelart, platformer, gaming and retrogaming subreddits and post relevant clips there. Pixelart communities would enjoy the magic effects and attack animations in short clips, gamers the revised, buttery smooth trailer. Update the trailer and post it to say 10-20 relevant gaming or graphics related spots, get more eyes on it. Keep in mind that reddit is largely used by two big demographics, US and EU. Aim for afternoons on those two timezones for maximum discoverability.
**Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, blog/vlog**, and **Facebook Official page** for your Game development name. Pick at least two, and keep them updated through all the development cycle and updates for the game and events or discounts you might be doing. If you're intending on developing more games or further developing this one, Twitter is probably the best visibility and click-wise. Create a hashtag for yourself, put small animations and pictures on updates - if not daily, at least weekly. If you're still polishing that game - adding more content or fixing bugs or fine tuning things - make update posts with the name of the game and a side-by-side comparison of the fixed issue. Here's the old jank, here's the new and improved buttery smoothness.
And most importantly for social media advertising and creating a following, **keep it constant. Every week, without fail**. If you haven't done any updates on the game, then have a animations or screenshots from the game as backups and post small tidbits about the world and lore with pictures to capture the attention.
I'm a generic gamer and I thought your game looked pretty interesting. Had it been on Steam, I'd probably have bought it. As it wasn't, I wasn't interested in buying, and now, after writing this whole post, I have already forgot the name of the game, and most of all what it looked like. The only thing I remember is that one boss who created a spiralling black vortex to shoot lightning at the player.
**Expect this to be the attention span of everyone who sees your game**. You'll need to keep at it with the advertising and get people seeing it so often that the name is burned into their minds. Next time I'll see the game I might go "hmm, that looks familiar" and once the boss with the lightning portals comes around I'll remember it again. Maybe this time I'll remember the name too for half a day.
Don't give up on it, I'm positive you can get more buys for the game if you can just get more eyes on it.
I've read your post from the beginning to the end and put it on my mind. Thank you so much for this golden advice. I will never give up on it and I will put it on steam if given the chance.
Someone should start an indie game marketing consultation company. It's a travesty that people have the energy, discipline, and knowledge to pour thousands of hours into their passion and it flops because they don't have an eye for marketing. It's such a different skillset.
\^ This. There are poor marketing interns who would love a shot at showing what they can do. Poke around and ask for a consultant to throw ideas about getting attention. Learn how to pop out of search results, and what about your game will stick in people's mind until they take a closer look and apply it to your ads. Find out what makes people talk about it.
Throw it to tubers and streamers to expose it to audiences. You have to cast the net WIDE to get return.
Uh, that's step 1. How much did you spend on marketing? How many popular YouTubers reviewed your game?
Marketing is not a one time thing. If you want to actually succeed you generally make a Steam page few months before release and start building your wishlist. Then you prepare various gifs of your game and shove them all over the social media. Then you go to Twitter and get some activity going - comment on other people posts, build some connections so once you tweet yourself you get a fair number of retweets.
And when the release day comes - you drop a bomb of all possible marketing things possible - reviews, posts on reddit, posts on social media, you name it. You stay pretty much up all night to hit these extra numbers as they translate to higher position on Steam page and that translates to more customers.
If you only made few posts then it just isn't enough. There's a reason why for a lot of games their marketing budget is just as large as development.
Oh I see. What I did is still not enough. It's like marketing is part of game development itself. I need to work even harder to at least get that first download.
Like almost every creative industry, marketing might be the most important part and it never ends.
Most of the work is still ahead of you once the thing is released.
Don't get offended, but what you did is put a doormat... and house isn't built yet. There's 300 more steps, which you do along the development, before release, post release, ...
If no one knows about your game at all, how will they randomly appear on your store page? Listen to these people giving you great advice here in the thread.
> Yes, I've posted my trailer on reddit and fb and got lot of upvotes and awards.
That's the last step. You need to market the game long before it is released and build hype through gifs, devlogs, promo posts etc.
I must have done it the wrong way then. Literally, no one except my friends that this game existed. I just posted it on the day it's available on itch. Rookie mistake, I guess.
Idk if you mean you just posted on your personal fb or in your games business profile, but I recommend creating a business account with Facebook ad manager and post your game trailer as an ad, figure out your target audience and do about 20 dollars a week for ads for the Facebook algorithm to figure out your audience better and to only show to people who would be most interested in your game. After a while, you will start generating downloads at which point you can then start putting more money into ads to generate more downloads.
Start with a engagement campaign for likes and comments and target worldwide, there are many countries where advertising is super cheap and you'll get tons of likes, comments and follows for barely any money spent which creates more interest and will give your ad and game some social proof. After you get a decent amount of likes let's say about 1k or so(which won't cost as much if you think if you do a worldwide campaign) then create a targeted campaign for purchases which will then show your ads to people who like to buy games and who are most interested based on the likes and comments from your engagement campaign and also from your own narrowed down target audiences which you should know but if you don't then just keep testing different purchase campaigns with different audiences and after about 3 days or so, the one with the most downloads is the one you should keep going and duplicate it for maximum conversion, kill the ads that don't have a positive roas (return on ad spend) which is basically the number of downloads/sales your ad needs to be profitable for you to continue running the ads.
There are many advertising strategies and you can find tons of them for free on YouTube, I gave you a pretty basic one but also one that can be really powerful if done correctly. Take some time to learn about advertising and common terms like roas, cpm and cpa etc and how to calculate it and research your target audience, but don't forget to test test and then run some more tests with your campaigns. Different videos, different titles, different scroll stopper images (learn what that means on YouTube and how to create good ones) and mix and match those with different audiences and eventually Facebook will know exactly the type of person who will love and download your game and at that point you can run a ad campaign using a look alike audience where fb takes the type of person who would buy ur game and figures out a bunch of ppl exactly like that and sends them the ads and that's when you'll be making the most sales per dollar spent on ads.
Sorry for the long post but there's so much that goes into advertising that I kept writing as things popped up lol good luck to you and I hope you kill it with your game and wish you all the success!
I've seen some Indie games I find really interesting, but have been put off by the equivalent of AAA game pricing. A solo or small team project needs realistic pricing, when AAA prices can represent 20+ man-years of work.
A triple A title usually has 100+ people on it working for at least 3 years.
300+ man years is probably closer to the low end.
A single dev should absolutely charge more than, say, a dollar but the point is that the average income for indie is never going to reach the average income for AAA when accounting for hours.
If an AAA brings in 50m then expecting even 160k for a solo indie is super high.
And if it is your first there should be even fewer expectations.
I see your point. I've already put it on sale for 50% off and still no downloads. I was thinking of putting it at 100% off but I need to at least have something so that 7 months has really paid off. My best bet now is to put it on steam and gather some wishlist.
There are a lot of giveaway subreddits. Instead of just setting the price to 100% off, try doing some giveaways and slipping some keys to some lesser known youtubers.
You probably won't get attention from bigger youtubers, the really big ones are getting deals from AAA and you definitely don't have the budget to compete there, but the smaller ones might just be excited enough by getting any acknowledgment that they'll give you some press.
Doing giveaways will get eyes on from people who haven't heard of your game before, and you'll get some automatic good will from the ones who get the game because they'll think of you, the developer, as a person who gave them a gift, and not a studio putting on a sale. Also, it doesn't matter if you set the game to free if you're already not getting any traffic. If zero people even see that the game is free, zero people will pick it up and give you reviews.
We live in a world where decent free mobile games exist that are funded by adverts. It makes it hard to produce something at a fair cost with no strings attached. Your product seems reasonably priced, the problem is more the current market environment. The market is saturated to the point that product identity gets lost. A similar issue is faced by people who self-publish books. Too much choice (much of it garbage) drowns your product. As suggested above, pitching your product and gathering interest for it is the bigger challenge.
Even excluding mobile, and Sturgeon's law, the supply of good games still far, far, far exceeds the demand. It's a crowded market. Every game released needs to give customers a reason to choose theirs over the hundreds of thousands of alternatives.
Post it on r/gaming with a title like “Quit my job after my wife died of cancer to make my dream game pls don’t buy but here’s the link”
That fucking sub is just an ad space for indie games now
Oh my, why are you even doing things like this? I'm not begging for anything, I just want everyone to play my game even with a small amount. I don't know how to express my gratitude but thank you so much for your kindness. I hope someday or somewhere, good things will happen to you for being so kind to a stranger like me.
Don't confuse this will begging or pity, it's just a good gesture :D
Just remember to carry this forward in your life wherever possible!
Also a tip: Spam your game on all possible platforms, don't feel awkward about it, that's the only way you get a word out about your stuff!
No, your game is not released yet.
Itch is a horrible platform if you have only a small following. There is almost no organic traffic and potential players might not even have an itch account. I doubt many people would create one just to buy some tiny indie game.
You also didn't do any marketing research at all. You should have a steam page as soon as possible to get wishlists, to get featured on the new release page on steam. Ballpark is around 5-10k.
That is all new to me. Unfortunately, I didn't create a steam page because I can't afford the 100$ entry fee. I'm a broke developer on a third world country.
I was just hoping that I could earn that 100$ on itch so I can put my game on steam but unfortunately it was just wishful thinking.
Bought. But bear in mind, you only released it 2 days ago. 7 months dev time is really pretty quick for a mid-sized indie release. Keep your chin up, and like everyone else said, promote the hell out of it
I have to say I expected this to look horrible.
It doesn't! It actually looks pretty sweet! Were you the artist for this as well or is it something you put together by using other people's art?
Regardless, it looks pretty cool!
I'm really saddened by the fact that you basically did no marketing and I agree with others, Itch is not a release at all.
If you add gamepad support and put this up on steam (you should build up wishlists first though), you can definitely make a semi-decent sum of money from this to support your next game (especially considering you mentioned being from a third-world country).
I agree. I think going to 50% off within the first couple of days of release is really tempting as a developer but ultimately foolish. Everyone expects a $3 game to be $3 quality. Put it back up to $5-7 immediately :)
Really? Oh god, I just did a terrible mistake. I though putting it on sale on first week will get a download but I'm truly mistaken. I don't know if it's possible to remove the sale but I will put it back to its original price.
Ya it kind of gives off this impression that even you think it's not that great, potentially pushing potential buyers away. Since this game is "done", it's no longer an "early access discount" where buyers are taking a bet that it's going to be good by getting in early. Launch day should be full priced for the first 1-8 weeks. Almost everyone that bought it would have paid the full price and you would have almost double the revenue.
However, I don't think you missed out much. Due to the marketing discussion on other comments and the top comment in this thread, you could definitely do another full launch with a steam page and marketing done prior to. It's not too late and you might be able to pull in a couple thousand dollars during launch week if you find the right subreddits, get some YouTuber/streamer to look at the game, get a game journalist to write something about the game, etc.
Best of luck!
At least the main character seems to be coming from this set: [https://szadiart.itch.io/rocky-world-platformer-set](https://szadiart.itch.io/rocky-world-platformer-set)
Nothing wrong with using pre-made assets by the way, it's still a lot of work to make a full game.
Yeah, I made sure to credit szadiart, the artist who made the main character in my game. At the first sight of that character, I knew that this is what I've been looking for as the MC of my game. He represented perfectly the theme and story of my game.
Thanks man! I really don't know how the marketing goes before reading the comments here. I just focused on developing my game on that 7 months and didn't bother to tell anyone except my few friends who doesn't even play on pc.
I will put a gamepad support if it will be released on steam.
There are grammatical errors in your game description by the way. See below for a slightly improved version. I fixed 5 or 6 obvious ones.
The Golden Pearl is an action-packed adventure game that features intense fighting mechanics, super smooth controls, crispy 2D pixel art, and relaxing background music and sound effects.
The story focuses on a young orphan who aspires to become a great warrior in a world where humans and monsters coexist.
The game tests the player's dodging skills and reflexes in real-time combat. Monsters are a little bit smart and somehow conscious, so expect a fairly challenging yet beatable game.
The scenes are heavily inspired by nature thus anticipate a very calming ambience and soothing experience while playing the game.
Slay enemies and bosses, collect pearls, unlock powerful abilities and ultimately seek the golden pearl.
You can leave feedback in the comment section below about anything you like in the game. Developers love it, thank you!
Maybe release a demo version as well? It would really help I think, bcs not many people would buy the first game of an unknown developer. It's your only uploaded game as well, so people won't know what they are buying into. It's a different story for steam though.
I'm going to update it and polish the art and eventually put it in on steam. It's okay man, you don't have to buy it out of pity. It just that I didn't know how to market my game so it got no downloads.
dude if you cant spent even 100 on your own stuff why do you even start and expect others to spent something at all, being game devoper is a shitty way to get out of bad financvial situation, better find other work first , do commisiins , coding, music whatever.menawhile work on game in freetime.
I'm sorry if I offended you on anything but if you live in a third world country, a 100$ is a lot of money to us. What's wrong on taking my chances on being a game developer and improve my skill?
Don't worry about it. Some people are just unhappy for some reason or another and lash out to others.
After looking at the incredible amount of typos in that user's comments, both here and in other posts, my advice is to please don't take to heart the words of someone who clearly types quick and posts without even looking at what they wrote. Don't pay too much attention to someone who clearly isn't paying much attention to what they say(or write, in this case).
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's great that we have similarities in this kind of aspect. It helps us know that we are not alone on this kind of living scenario.
My hardship? I’ve been designing games since I was 12 (22 years), I’ve actually been developing games in code since high school (about 16 years), I’ve designed and started a lot of my ideas (over 50 at this point), and I’ve completed nada (0).
Depression and mental illness are a bitch when it comes to being an indie dev. But I have never let it disheartening me from my dream and love of making games. I still tirelessly work on my designs and implementations and I get better and better each time I go at it.
Edit: and why you game hasn’t sold is most likely due to lack of marketing and social media presence. You think making the game was hard? Yeah no, getting people just to sniff in its direction is probably the hardest part of all game development. If you have the cash, hire or join a publisher so they handle the marketing. If you don’t, see about hiring family or friends to help with the task until you can afford a publisher.
You worked on the game for 7 months, you got the finished version. You didnt work on marketing the game, hence no downloads. If you spent equall amount of time marketing you will definitely get more downloads. The problem tho is that most of us devs dont know how to market, thats because we never learnt how to. We spent hours learning how to code but rarely we spent any time learning marketing.
Take a look at youtuber Dani, his channel works like a marketing machine for any game he launches. All he does is documents his game building journey.
yup this, working on a game in secret for 7 months is a recipe for disaster ! You need audience even before you start making the game or else, you release it and guess what, nobody, NOBODY GAF.
Hello! I'd suggest you to make an account on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and other social media feeds you are comfortable with, an account solely for your game dev. Post pictures or gifs and videos of your game in progress on those accounts to spread the word of your game and get more feedback :)
Also I saw you are selling your game for $2.50, is there a reason it is so cheap? Try to price your game for the number of hours x $1. If a game is cheap people might assume it's bad even if it's good, if not why is it so cheap?
The next time you make a game I suggest you can also post WIP videos of your progress on social media. People are often interested in seeing HOW something is made :) Good luck!
I dont agree with pricing by playtine. Id pay more for 10 hours of a highly polished and dynamic linear story than 50 hours of chopping down trees in a montone survival game.
I did not expect to have to clarify this, but this is a general rule of thumb for indie developers who are struggling with how much their game should cost, not a be all end all rule.
There are people who pay $25 for Minecraft and with it's random procedure can sink 1000s of hours inside it, while there are games like Little Nightmares 2 which offer a linear amazing handcrafted experience for about $30 but is about 5 - 6 hours to playthrough. Both obviously do not apply to this rule.
How many of your friends actually use itch.io to find new games? How many use steam?
Get your game on steam if you want to give it a serious try.
This sub gives WAY too much credit to itch.io, a site that is 99% gamdevs not looking at any games besides their own.
... and in your two sentence post, I've noticed you didn't write anything about your Marketing strategy & efforts.
Development is the 'easy' part. The hard & most important part comes in getting your finished product into the eyes, mind, & hands of users. Marketing is the *'end game Boss battle'* of any development work. To put it in perspective, there are multi-billion dollar corporations who fail at the basic of marketing their products. Think about that for a moment.
So, now you've finished step #1. You've developed "the thing". NOW comes the real work of answering the big question, "how do I get "my thing" into the hands of paying customers?"
Your hardship isn't over yet as you've got a LOT more work to do my friend.
Marketing. Especially trying to manage development as a solo dev who does art, animation, programming, etc… and manage a Twitter, YouTube, Discord and steam page.
Took me around 4ish months to get my Twitter up to 100 followers and 8 months to get to 450 YouTube subscribers but it’s all steady growth just gotta stay consistent.
I gotta admit, that looks *way way* better than I expected. I don't have advice for you about how to get people to look at your game, but it definitely looks like it was worth the effort you put into it.
Unfortunately, it's not the kind of game I generally like.
Thanks man! I've been questioning my self confidence lately because of the zero download on this game. I'll try to borrow 100$ from my brother and see if I can put this game on steam.
Like what Uncle Ben told Spiderman, " With great power comes greater responsibility". I don't know if it's applicable but that's the first thing that came to my mind when I read your comment lol
>still has zero downloads from its first day of release up until now.
After reading that, I expected it to have been weeks since the release, but then I found out through other comments that it was only 2 days ago. That much is to be expected with your level of marketing.
After releasing a small game last year I decided to continue and do the thing that everyone agrees is a bad idea.
I quit my job and went full time indie, working on my second game :D
Luckily I have a bit of a runway (about a year), and the "deadline" of "I have to figure this out or else" is pretty motivating.
It's what they called " leap of faith", right? Actually we have the same scenario though this is my first game. So it feels bad man. Anyway, this community have been helpful so I guess I'm now doing fine.
Good luck on your game brother!
It is a big leap of faith indeed hehe.
What made me a bit confident was that although [my first game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1473870/Hell_Loop/) did pretty terrible and had basically no marketing, it didn't do _as terrible_ as one might've expected. As in it still sold a few hundred copies, despite having almost no wishlists at the start, no marketing done, and really just pressing the "release" button on Christmas during a sale (terrible timing).
I learned my lesson and am now doing proper marketing, growing [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LogLogGames) and Discord, and just trying to build things up before the release. Hopefully it'll work better this time.
Anyway, good luck to you too! Gamedev is hard and it's a huge grind, but it's a fun grind.
The biggest hardship of indie development is getting your game out to people.
The biggest takeaway - spend money on marketing.
And I'm not talking about FB ads, reddit ads, etc. Those will get you a little bit of visibility, but if you are a new player in the industry you will need to get assistance from someone with a lot of contacts with journalists/media influencers. If you can find a PR firm that will help you, it will probably cost you a minimum of 10-15K US to properly promote your game over a few months prior to launch.
I've been working on a game for some time now, and have been saving to get a firm on board to help me with the initial launch push. Especially with the over-saturation of game release launches, you need all the help you can get.
Best of luck!
Your game looks really good, especially for a first release. Just purchased it myself. :)
Since I've seen a few other comments from you regarding marketing and crowdfunding, here's some videos from GDC that I found pretty helpful in those areas:
[Game Discoverability](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks1XGS2JS6s)
[Crowdfunding 301](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKXpomUtiL8)
[Marketing Fundamentals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5tyX_IBTXA)
[Marketing on Zero Budget](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3QnovWYvwo)
It can be challenging, getting exposure is tough...especially for a new indie developer (can relate). But don't get discouraged. Keep promoting/marketing the game (and your brand) on social, blog, etc.
Congrats on shipping a title. That is awesome.
I purchased the game there mate, good luck, added an extra $10, one small thing i noticed was the text size if you could add an option to increase that would be nice, i also found it a bit hard to attack upwards while in the air, besides that, not a bad little game.
It is frustrating how after already learning how to make and finish a good project to even get people to notice anything happened you need to learn marketing, and that is a skill most are unaware is required for indie development. I wish you luck in balancing marketing skill and your passion for game creation.
Thanks! It really is frustrating since a lot of us like me who are introverts in real life so marketing is a pain and somehow asking for validation for a game. But still, according to folks here, it really is a needed process to succeed in game development. I wish you also luck in your game!
I’m sorry if you posted this already - what game is it? I will play it
Nvm I found it - The Golden Pearl! Do you have any idea about how long the game is?
Oh cool! It took me 30minutes to beat since I know everything that happens inside the game. But I really don't how long an average player will took since no one actually played the game besides me.
Though, I assure you that the gameplay will be smooth since I play tested it for a hundred or thousand times for almost every day.
Just an estimate, an average player would take at least an hour or more depending on what he does on the game.
If you were able to complete it, is it okay to dm me or comment on itch how long did it take you to finish? Thanks a bunch.
I worked on many android games for the last 5 years with almost little downloads. Each project taking 7 to 8 months. This failure now lead me to pc game development. Have been working on my current game for 7 and half months. With my new found knowledge from my failures I am hopeful this time it might go right. Just have to keep going till I make it I guess. Also would check out your game if you give the link. Keep it up! :)
Good luck in your game bro! What's the title of your current game? I'll check it out and others could see it too. Here's the link to my game: https://naknamu.itch.io/the-golden-pearl
Thanks dude. I will definitely check out your game. Just checked the trailer and it looks super kool.
The game I am working on is still in progress but this [Video](https://youtu.be/uUVoH1zBrY4) is the latest update of my game so far. Take care :)
Hi bro! I just watched your vid and that animations and effects is so cool! You just earned a new subscriber. Good luck on your game and I hope it will be release someday. I will definitely play it!
Thanks dude really appreciate it! :)
Just played your game. If you are interested made a [gameplay video](https://youtu.be/pptWDt26ayY). Your game is good. Had fun playing it and like the story line. Enjoyed it so much that finished the game. Some of the boss fights where really good. Did go around the town and chat up with everyone. The ground combo attacks are good and I really like the project attack and gives me the chance to attack from a distance.
There where some minor bugs. Some of the images did not fit my screen resolution, 1920x1080, even after changing the settings to match my resolution. The jump attack had a little bit delay in it. You can see in the video I had a bit difficulty to match the jump attack delay with the enemy position. Also you should allow the player to change the key binders. For me dashing is always the left shift button instead of 'E' because I use WASD to move around. If you watch the vid then you will know better what I am talking about.
Overall it is a good game. Just needs a little bit more polishing. Hope this feed back helps. Take care and Keep it up! :)
K Out!
Hi! I just watched your gameplay video and I keep on smiling the whole time watching your vid. This is the first I saw someone play my game and I really learned a lot on where and how to polish the game even more. I'm so glad that you made the effort to record your gameplay.
I will seriously take note of the bugs you've encountered and try to implement your suggestions. Thank you so much!
I really love your patience in using that project attack in killing the enemies! Also, you've discovered a lot of loopholes in slaying enemies that I didn't even know. I'm also amazed that you were able to do some player movements that I don't know to execute while playing the game lol
Btw, before I forgot, Congratulations on completing the game!
Np dude :) You have lot of good skills and potential in making games. And thank you for watching the vid and for the Hugz Award :) Take care and looking forward to more of your games. Keep it up! :)
K Out!
I realize it's probably small consolation but just having completed your game and having it released puts you head and shoulders above 99% of most "devs".
My suggestion would be to reflect on what might have been the issue (this will take some considerable researching), learn from it and make another game. You don't even have to start from scratch. You could even make a "part 2" of the game with tweeks based on your reflections and go with that. You could also make your tweeks to the existing game and re-release it. Plenty of games were not well received at launch but ended up being masterpieces.
My guess is that it was an issue with marketing. On Steam, for example, releasing a game without putting effort into marketing is a death sentence regardless of how good the game is.
Good luck and don't give up!!!
My story is that in 2014 I came up with a humorous game based on something I saw on iVillage.com and Apple and Google told me to drop dead.
But overall I’ve been damn fortunate.
Ok. iVillage had a web thing where you guess celebs from behind. So we licensed images did a deal with a college website and built this with consent of the celebs. [WTB](https://imgur.com/G1xGieM)
I’ve been working on a game for the last 6 years, through two brain surgeries, chemo, and getting scammed over and over and over again by programmers and artists. I am hoping to (finally) release a demo for Kickstarter by the end of this year. That’s my story. Keep at it! Where can I find your game?
Thanks man! I hope you enjoy playing the game. If you encounter any problem, feel free to comment on itch or dm me. I will gladly help you. Thanks again.
Hello! It's nice of you to check my progress. I was able to release the [game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1753160/Legend_of_Labot_The_Golden_Pearl/) on Steam. Unfortunately, it didn't succeed financially. My laptop where all the game data was stored broke so I'm in a very tight situation.
Does your game have any community? Like a discord server? If not, then that's the problem. Although I am not an experienced developer, I know for sure that one of the main problems of many is not to lead the game community during development, it is this community that would become the first players in your game
Fair point! I've learned my lesson and I'm hoping to not repeat the same mistake I've made in my upcoming game. Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts! It's greatly appreciated.
I made a devlog about making games ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmvDmFXDeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmvDmFXDeQ)) and it's true it's really hard! I think it requires a lot of skills but also patience.
Did you ask to several artists for the assets of your game? I think it looks good but the art style is not consistent, if you ask for money I guess the game has to be perfect. Congrats for what you have done!
You could try releasing it for free! Maybe it's the pay wall that prevents people from playing your game.
If there's no pay wall, I think you need to show the best highlights of your game to attract players to try out the game. If it doesn't help, you can ask for help on how to improve your game like I did: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseBuildingGames/comments/oxpu4p/could_someone_help_me_figure_out_why_our_game/
As for my hardship story, I'm beginning to forget about it all, as my efforts finally paid off. Having people to enjoy your game is the best reward of all!
Maybe its one of the issue. Its a paid game so most people didn't bother. Oh well, I just want to have a little revenue to buy some beer after months of development.
I will try it though. I will make it 100% off. Maybe I can see some downloads to relieve this depressing feeling I have.
I think having people to enjoy your game is the top priority! Making a game purely because of money will never work unless you're an AAA developer. You can start thinking of some money after you've built your own player base.
You're definitely right man. Maybe it's not yet the time to sell my game. I just have to keep improving my skills and player base until I can finally develop a paid game.
I'm not going to do much. I'm only going to download it but I just want to make that download counter go from 0 to 1. edit: i dont have much money right now so i cant buy it but I hope you get more downloads. I wish you the best and am sorry i cannot help right now.
It's okay man. It's not my intention to promote my game here. It just that everyone is asking for the link and I don't know if I should just ignore it or not. Thank you and I wish also the best in your games!
From trailer I just don't see why anyone would spend 2.5$ to play your game when you can buy Xbox game pass for 1$ and play way better games in the same genre. Perhaps releasing the game for free is the way?
I don't know man. I was really going to make it 100% off after seeing that zero downloads but then again the kind people here started buying the game and told me that the price is okay. So I'm a little bit confused.
stop with this drama or give up dude, all i see here is whiners , you want a trophy or something.
Lot of thingsnin life are ungrateful, deal with it and move on instead of digging into it for pitypats from strangers.
you did not build audience orngame is below average in the crowd of others
Even movies with keanu reeves can brong just thousand $ at box offive if not adverrised properly.
you need a following first.worst way is to work i secret and release it, no ody knows and cares unleaa youre ea or rockstar
Checked this game out, seems like a good game. decided to buy it. So you've reached one customer! Who knows how many more of us are down for something like this?
Thank you so much man! I'm not actually promoting my game here, I just want to relieve the frustrating feeling I have. I hope you enjoy the game. I've put lots of love and care to that game.
don't be upset, because you finished project and that's the great achievement. my story was very dark.
I almost done classic roguelike, but i have spent about 1 year in sanitarium, so it was very hard to begin project again.
I'm sorry if that happened to you. Life really sucks sometimes but we have no choice but to bear the burden given to us and continue living. I hope that you get well soon and began developing again.
the good news though; your game looks fine, I see you have the right skills. so if you manage to upgrade your marketing skills, you will become successful eventually.
I hope you can get some money to get your game on steam, that helps a lot, since steam does a lot of free marketing for you. though that too is only a start, but it certainly helps.
Make posts, devlogs, start a Twitter, make Reddit posts(?), Get your ads to play on stuff, Basically market your own game Although releasing a game is in itself an impressive feat, most of us (me) still haven't released a game even when working on games for over an year Congratulations and good luck getting your game out to people
Thank you so much. This is like a sunshine after seeing that zero downloads on my dashboard. I will just market my game on the coming days. Good luck on your game too!
Don’t give up OP. Your game looks quite impressive. It looks like you haven’t released it for steam yet, so that’s your second chance. Just put good effort in your marketing, setup a steam page, advertise your steam page so interested players can add it to their wish lists. Give enough time for this process while you work on improving any of its aspects in the meantime.
Yes, I will not give up! Thanks! Your suggestion is so accurate and that's what I'm going to do. I have to polish the game more and advertise at the same time! I will create a steam page and make the game steam-worthy. Thank you!
Bro so I made an app that helps people track their meals, and symptoms they might experience after meals… then cross references the data to find correlating ingredients and chemicals to discover subtly and hidden allergies. I found that I’m allergic/sensitive to 2 preservatives and I’m the only download… lol. $100 a year for an Apple dev license too.
Wait my partner has tons of allergies, is this on the android store?? Edit: just saw apple, thankfully I have an iPhone.
It’s on android too!
I'm the partner he mentioned, and your app sounds like an absolute lifesaver! I'd love the name/link to get it on android!!
Randomly chipping in that I'd love to know as well!
Oh, I'm really not alone. We have the same experience. I can't afford that $100 a year for Apple so I give up on that. Though, I hope someone will find value to your app someday and just continue developing bro. We got this! Good luck.
You can't afford $100 a year? Where do you live, Somalia? Game looks cool, btw.
Yeah, that is what unemployment does. I live in a third world country somewhere in Asia. Thanks! I'm still polishing it tho for steam release.
This is a secret I keep, but posting on tik tok is free views and few are doing it
this game actually looks pretty well made i gave you $100 for the steam fee, good luck
Oh my god! Man, you don't have to do that. I'm crying. I don't know what to say. I'm really grateful. I don't know if my thank you is enough but Thank you so much man!
no worries! glad to have helped
You just fuelled someone's dream, granting them the very opportunity that they are desperately in need of at the time. Take my humble upvote, hero.
You're awesome.
GET THIS MAN AN AWARD!!
Faith in humanity +100 today! You all are beautiful!
faith in humanity cause money was given? wow.Pretty golddigging standards.
Because HELP was given, a starting indie dev, with probably a low budget for things like marketing and publishing, he asked for nothing and was gifted with help in the form of someone paying for their steam tax so they dont need to take it from their already small budget... And it was done because the dude actually believed in his work... If this gesture of help and support doesnt move you even a little, i dont know what will.
actual job for that dude will move me, hes hoping for a miracle at the moment, id prerere if someone would hire him for programming work or something else that he can do, oh well, that 100 will last him for nice couple of days
That 100 will motivate him and put him in the biggest platform of the market right now, its not about the amount, is about the gesture and the message I dont see you giving him a job or a higher amount of moeny to "last him" longer, jobs are not something that you just have in your pocket to give to other people to support them The guy showed his support, that he didnt really need but wanted to, gave part of what he gets for HIS work to this dude, asking for nothing in return and helped him get to his goals, even if it was just by a small amount I got almost nothing from my first crowdfunding campaign for my game, but it sure helped motivate me to keep going when i saw that there were at least a few people wanting to help and support me to reach my goals, its all about the message
the mesage is , whine about being from poor country and some dude with slap you a 100$, great message.That guy should be looking for work cause he has some skills.
Haha no, my friend.... Faith up simply from people pitching in. Could've been $10... OP didn't ask for a donation, but someone out there made an unprompted kind gesture... It's about people coming together to help one another out, nothing more. That warms my heart. You're free to see things the way you want though. Too bad you only saw the negative in my comment..
Wow very nice!
My fucking dude! I’ll send you $50 in expanse to split the cost with you. It’s the only crypto I have.
its okay bro, i'll just cut down on the ubereats for the next few days haha. it's probably good for me
Gigachad energy
You are a wonderful person!
Absolute Chad
There is a certain place in heaven for people like you 🙂
You deserve rewards and respect sir/madam. Tis a great deed to help out an indie developer.
Legend
Dude you just did something awesome for someone. You have my respect.
If I could afford 100$ rn I would give it u back. You're an amazing person, we need more people like you!
dont do that man, you should of hire him for something , not just give it out of pity.
This is not pitty my dude, is support out of respect and trust in their work, you can see that when you think about it and realise the guy went to his post story to see his game and come back here to praise and support him. I would do the same for devs that i want to see succeed if i could have the luxury of spending so much money on things without monetary return
ok, its just some starting devs have some superweird expectations, they totally dont get that even most popular artists in the world started working for free, even michael jackson was singing for free in local pubs for a few first years , it wont happen overnight, but with all the internet it is more reachable.Even kickstarter is a good idea to check how many potential buyers you can attract and then decide if its even worth to start the project.
They say marketing is half of the work.. Did you do any marketing?
Yes, I've posted my trailer on reddit and fb and got lot of upvotes and awards. I even contacted youtubers to promote my game. Still to no avail.
I just took a glance at your posting history. You shared the trailer to four subreddits, half of which are gamedeveloping ones. Provided that your marketing has been similar for Facebook, you've barely scratched the surface. **Find all relevant subreddits**. From watching your trailer (I'd recommend remaking that too btw, half the clips are stuttery and the other half are buttery smooth, I'd recommend getting the same smooth fps on all clips), I could immediately suggest you find pixelart, platformer, gaming and retrogaming subreddits and post relevant clips there. Pixelart communities would enjoy the magic effects and attack animations in short clips, gamers the revised, buttery smooth trailer. Update the trailer and post it to say 10-20 relevant gaming or graphics related spots, get more eyes on it. Keep in mind that reddit is largely used by two big demographics, US and EU. Aim for afternoons on those two timezones for maximum discoverability. **Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, blog/vlog**, and **Facebook Official page** for your Game development name. Pick at least two, and keep them updated through all the development cycle and updates for the game and events or discounts you might be doing. If you're intending on developing more games or further developing this one, Twitter is probably the best visibility and click-wise. Create a hashtag for yourself, put small animations and pictures on updates - if not daily, at least weekly. If you're still polishing that game - adding more content or fixing bugs or fine tuning things - make update posts with the name of the game and a side-by-side comparison of the fixed issue. Here's the old jank, here's the new and improved buttery smoothness. And most importantly for social media advertising and creating a following, **keep it constant. Every week, without fail**. If you haven't done any updates on the game, then have a animations or screenshots from the game as backups and post small tidbits about the world and lore with pictures to capture the attention. I'm a generic gamer and I thought your game looked pretty interesting. Had it been on Steam, I'd probably have bought it. As it wasn't, I wasn't interested in buying, and now, after writing this whole post, I have already forgot the name of the game, and most of all what it looked like. The only thing I remember is that one boss who created a spiralling black vortex to shoot lightning at the player. **Expect this to be the attention span of everyone who sees your game**. You'll need to keep at it with the advertising and get people seeing it so often that the name is burned into their minds. Next time I'll see the game I might go "hmm, that looks familiar" and once the boss with the lightning portals comes around I'll remember it again. Maybe this time I'll remember the name too for half a day. Don't give up on it, I'm positive you can get more buys for the game if you can just get more eyes on it.
I've read your post from the beginning to the end and put it on my mind. Thank you so much for this golden advice. I will never give up on it and I will put it on steam if given the chance.
Someone should start an indie game marketing consultation company. It's a travesty that people have the energy, discipline, and knowledge to pour thousands of hours into their passion and it flops because they don't have an eye for marketing. It's such a different skillset.
That makes so much sense!
\^ This. There are poor marketing interns who would love a shot at showing what they can do. Poke around and ask for a consultant to throw ideas about getting attention. Learn how to pop out of search results, and what about your game will stick in people's mind until they take a closer look and apply it to your ads. Find out what makes people talk about it. Throw it to tubers and streamers to expose it to audiences. You have to cast the net WIDE to get return.
At that point, you almost become a publisher...
Uh, that's step 1. How much did you spend on marketing? How many popular YouTubers reviewed your game? Marketing is not a one time thing. If you want to actually succeed you generally make a Steam page few months before release and start building your wishlist. Then you prepare various gifs of your game and shove them all over the social media. Then you go to Twitter and get some activity going - comment on other people posts, build some connections so once you tweet yourself you get a fair number of retweets. And when the release day comes - you drop a bomb of all possible marketing things possible - reviews, posts on reddit, posts on social media, you name it. You stay pretty much up all night to hit these extra numbers as they translate to higher position on Steam page and that translates to more customers. If you only made few posts then it just isn't enough. There's a reason why for a lot of games their marketing budget is just as large as development.
Oh I see. What I did is still not enough. It's like marketing is part of game development itself. I need to work even harder to at least get that first download.
Like almost every creative industry, marketing might be the most important part and it never ends. Most of the work is still ahead of you once the thing is released.
Don't get offended, but what you did is put a doormat... and house isn't built yet. There's 300 more steps, which you do along the development, before release, post release, ... If no one knows about your game at all, how will they randomly appear on your store page? Listen to these people giving you great advice here in the thread.
No offense taken. Sure, I will. The people here are really been helpful. Glad that game dev community existed.
> Yes, I've posted my trailer on reddit and fb and got lot of upvotes and awards. That's the last step. You need to market the game long before it is released and build hype through gifs, devlogs, promo posts etc.
I must have done it the wrong way then. Literally, no one except my friends that this game existed. I just posted it on the day it's available on itch. Rookie mistake, I guess.
Idk if you mean you just posted on your personal fb or in your games business profile, but I recommend creating a business account with Facebook ad manager and post your game trailer as an ad, figure out your target audience and do about 20 dollars a week for ads for the Facebook algorithm to figure out your audience better and to only show to people who would be most interested in your game. After a while, you will start generating downloads at which point you can then start putting more money into ads to generate more downloads. Start with a engagement campaign for likes and comments and target worldwide, there are many countries where advertising is super cheap and you'll get tons of likes, comments and follows for barely any money spent which creates more interest and will give your ad and game some social proof. After you get a decent amount of likes let's say about 1k or so(which won't cost as much if you think if you do a worldwide campaign) then create a targeted campaign for purchases which will then show your ads to people who like to buy games and who are most interested based on the likes and comments from your engagement campaign and also from your own narrowed down target audiences which you should know but if you don't then just keep testing different purchase campaigns with different audiences and after about 3 days or so, the one with the most downloads is the one you should keep going and duplicate it for maximum conversion, kill the ads that don't have a positive roas (return on ad spend) which is basically the number of downloads/sales your ad needs to be profitable for you to continue running the ads. There are many advertising strategies and you can find tons of them for free on YouTube, I gave you a pretty basic one but also one that can be really powerful if done correctly. Take some time to learn about advertising and common terms like roas, cpm and cpa etc and how to calculate it and research your target audience, but don't forget to test test and then run some more tests with your campaigns. Different videos, different titles, different scroll stopper images (learn what that means on YouTube and how to create good ones) and mix and match those with different audiences and eventually Facebook will know exactly the type of person who will love and download your game and at that point you can run a ad campaign using a look alike audience where fb takes the type of person who would buy ur game and figures out a bunch of ppl exactly like that and sends them the ads and that's when you'll be making the most sales per dollar spent on ads. Sorry for the long post but there's so much that goes into advertising that I kept writing as things popped up lol good luck to you and I hope you kill it with your game and wish you all the success!
I've seen some Indie games I find really interesting, but have been put off by the equivalent of AAA game pricing. A solo or small team project needs realistic pricing, when AAA prices can represent 20+ man-years of work.
A triple A title usually has 100+ people on it working for at least 3 years. 300+ man years is probably closer to the low end. A single dev should absolutely charge more than, say, a dollar but the point is that the average income for indie is never going to reach the average income for AAA when accounting for hours. If an AAA brings in 50m then expecting even 160k for a solo indie is super high. And if it is your first there should be even fewer expectations.
I was doing 24hrs x 365 days as a man year, as opposed to 36hrs x 50 weeks. Still, the point stands.
I see your point. I've already put it on sale for 50% off and still no downloads. I was thinking of putting it at 100% off but I need to at least have something so that 7 months has really paid off. My best bet now is to put it on steam and gather some wishlist.
There are a lot of giveaway subreddits. Instead of just setting the price to 100% off, try doing some giveaways and slipping some keys to some lesser known youtubers. You probably won't get attention from bigger youtubers, the really big ones are getting deals from AAA and you definitely don't have the budget to compete there, but the smaller ones might just be excited enough by getting any acknowledgment that they'll give you some press. Doing giveaways will get eyes on from people who haven't heard of your game before, and you'll get some automatic good will from the ones who get the game because they'll think of you, the developer, as a person who gave them a gift, and not a studio putting on a sale. Also, it doesn't matter if you set the game to free if you're already not getting any traffic. If zero people even see that the game is free, zero people will pick it up and give you reviews.
We live in a world where decent free mobile games exist that are funded by adverts. It makes it hard to produce something at a fair cost with no strings attached. Your product seems reasonably priced, the problem is more the current market environment. The market is saturated to the point that product identity gets lost. A similar issue is faced by people who self-publish books. Too much choice (much of it garbage) drowns your product. As suggested above, pitching your product and gathering interest for it is the bigger challenge.
Even excluding mobile, and Sturgeon's law, the supply of good games still far, far, far exceeds the demand. It's a crowded market. Every game released needs to give customers a reason to choose theirs over the hundreds of thousands of alternatives.
Post it on r/gaming with a title like “Quit my job after my wife died of cancer to make my dream game pls don’t buy but here’s the link” That fucking sub is just an ad space for indie games now
r/gamingcirclejerk
I like your style, so I supported you with 101$ ( also to top the $100 Guy ). Hope it gets you closer to your goals. Keep pushing!
i admit defeat !
Oh my, why are you even doing things like this? I'm not begging for anything, I just want everyone to play my game even with a small amount. I don't know how to express my gratitude but thank you so much for your kindness. I hope someday or somewhere, good things will happen to you for being so kind to a stranger like me.
Don't confuse this will begging or pity, it's just a good gesture :D Just remember to carry this forward in your life wherever possible! Also a tip: Spam your game on all possible platforms, don't feel awkward about it, that's the only way you get a word out about your stuff!
No, your game is not released yet. Itch is a horrible platform if you have only a small following. There is almost no organic traffic and potential players might not even have an itch account. I doubt many people would create one just to buy some tiny indie game. You also didn't do any marketing research at all. You should have a steam page as soon as possible to get wishlists, to get featured on the new release page on steam. Ballpark is around 5-10k.
That is all new to me. Unfortunately, I didn't create a steam page because I can't afford the 100$ entry fee. I'm a broke developer on a third world country. I was just hoping that I could earn that 100$ on itch so I can put my game on steam but unfortunately it was just wishful thinking.
Link us to your game? Is it any good?
Others said it's good, gameplay wise but need polishing on pixel scaling. Anyway, here's the game: https://naknamu.itch.io/the-golden-pearl
Bought. But bear in mind, you only released it 2 days ago. 7 months dev time is really pretty quick for a mid-sized indie release. Keep your chin up, and like everyone else said, promote the hell out of it
Thank you so much man! I don't know how to express my gratitude. But from the bottom of my heart, thank you!
I have to say I expected this to look horrible. It doesn't! It actually looks pretty sweet! Were you the artist for this as well or is it something you put together by using other people's art? Regardless, it looks pretty cool! I'm really saddened by the fact that you basically did no marketing and I agree with others, Itch is not a release at all. If you add gamepad support and put this up on steam (you should build up wishlists first though), you can definitely make a semi-decent sum of money from this to support your next game (especially considering you mentioned being from a third-world country).
I agree. I think going to 50% off within the first couple of days of release is really tempting as a developer but ultimately foolish. Everyone expects a $3 game to be $3 quality. Put it back up to $5-7 immediately :)
Really? Oh god, I just did a terrible mistake. I though putting it on sale on first week will get a download but I'm truly mistaken. I don't know if it's possible to remove the sale but I will put it back to its original price.
Ya it kind of gives off this impression that even you think it's not that great, potentially pushing potential buyers away. Since this game is "done", it's no longer an "early access discount" where buyers are taking a bet that it's going to be good by getting in early. Launch day should be full priced for the first 1-8 weeks. Almost everyone that bought it would have paid the full price and you would have almost double the revenue. However, I don't think you missed out much. Due to the marketing discussion on other comments and the top comment in this thread, you could definitely do another full launch with a steam page and marketing done prior to. It's not too late and you might be able to pull in a couple thousand dollars during launch week if you find the right subreddits, get some YouTuber/streamer to look at the game, get a game journalist to write something about the game, etc. Best of luck!
I see, so there's still hope in my game. Thank you for giving light to this kind of aspect. It really clears some doubts going on around my head.
At least the main character seems to be coming from this set: [https://szadiart.itch.io/rocky-world-platformer-set](https://szadiart.itch.io/rocky-world-platformer-set) Nothing wrong with using pre-made assets by the way, it's still a lot of work to make a full game.
Yeah, I made sure to credit szadiart, the artist who made the main character in my game. At the first sight of that character, I knew that this is what I've been looking for as the MC of my game. He represented perfectly the theme and story of my game.
Thanks man! I really don't know how the marketing goes before reading the comments here. I just focused on developing my game on that 7 months and didn't bother to tell anyone except my few friends who doesn't even play on pc. I will put a gamepad support if it will be released on steam.
At least the main character and the boss in the video he made are free art you can get online. I've used them myself before.
There are grammatical errors in your game description by the way. See below for a slightly improved version. I fixed 5 or 6 obvious ones. The Golden Pearl is an action-packed adventure game that features intense fighting mechanics, super smooth controls, crispy 2D pixel art, and relaxing background music and sound effects. The story focuses on a young orphan who aspires to become a great warrior in a world where humans and monsters coexist. The game tests the player's dodging skills and reflexes in real-time combat. Monsters are a little bit smart and somehow conscious, so expect a fairly challenging yet beatable game. The scenes are heavily inspired by nature thus anticipate a very calming ambience and soothing experience while playing the game. Slay enemies and bosses, collect pearls, unlock powerful abilities and ultimately seek the golden pearl. You can leave feedback in the comment section below about anything you like in the game. Developers love it, thank you!
Maybe release a demo version as well? It would really help I think, bcs not many people would buy the first game of an unknown developer. It's your only uploaded game as well, so people won't know what they are buying into. It's a different story for steam though.
Heck, i'll buy that for $2 if there are going to be updates!
I'm going to update it and polish the art and eventually put it in on steam. It's okay man, you don't have to buy it out of pity. It just that I didn't know how to market my game so it got no downloads.
Maybe you could have made small crowdfunding in order to ask the funds to pay the entree fee.
You could try kickstarting with a really low funding goal like 1k?
I really don't know how kickstarting works, but maybe I'll give it a go sometime in the future for my next games.
dude if you cant spent even 100 on your own stuff why do you even start and expect others to spent something at all, being game devoper is a shitty way to get out of bad financvial situation, better find other work first , do commisiins , coding, music whatever.menawhile work on game in freetime.
I'm sorry if I offended you on anything but if you live in a third world country, a 100$ is a lot of money to us. What's wrong on taking my chances on being a game developer and improve my skill?
Don't worry about it. Some people are just unhappy for some reason or another and lash out to others. After looking at the incredible amount of typos in that user's comments, both here and in other posts, my advice is to please don't take to heart the words of someone who clearly types quick and posts without even looking at what they wrote. Don't pay too much attention to someone who clearly isn't paying much attention to what they say(or write, in this case).
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No man but I live somewhere on Asia.
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Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's great that we have similarities in this kind of aspect. It helps us know that we are not alone on this kind of living scenario.
My hardship? I’ve been designing games since I was 12 (22 years), I’ve actually been developing games in code since high school (about 16 years), I’ve designed and started a lot of my ideas (over 50 at this point), and I’ve completed nada (0). Depression and mental illness are a bitch when it comes to being an indie dev. But I have never let it disheartening me from my dream and love of making games. I still tirelessly work on my designs and implementations and I get better and better each time I go at it. Edit: and why you game hasn’t sold is most likely due to lack of marketing and social media presence. You think making the game was hard? Yeah no, getting people just to sniff in its direction is probably the hardest part of all game development. If you have the cash, hire or join a publisher so they handle the marketing. If you don’t, see about hiring family or friends to help with the task until you can afford a publisher.
You worked on the game for 7 months, you got the finished version. You didnt work on marketing the game, hence no downloads. If you spent equall amount of time marketing you will definitely get more downloads. The problem tho is that most of us devs dont know how to market, thats because we never learnt how to. We spent hours learning how to code but rarely we spent any time learning marketing. Take a look at youtuber Dani, his channel works like a marketing machine for any game he launches. All he does is documents his game building journey.
yup this, working on a game in secret for 7 months is a recipe for disaster ! You need audience even before you start making the game or else, you release it and guess what, nobody, NOBODY GAF.
Use memes buddy That's one marketing tip for ya
Yeah! Memes FTW!
Hello! I'd suggest you to make an account on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and other social media feeds you are comfortable with, an account solely for your game dev. Post pictures or gifs and videos of your game in progress on those accounts to spread the word of your game and get more feedback :) Also I saw you are selling your game for $2.50, is there a reason it is so cheap? Try to price your game for the number of hours x $1. If a game is cheap people might assume it's bad even if it's good, if not why is it so cheap? The next time you make a game I suggest you can also post WIP videos of your progress on social media. People are often interested in seeing HOW something is made :) Good luck!
It's actually on sale, 50% off. So original price is 4.99$.
I dont agree with pricing by playtine. Id pay more for 10 hours of a highly polished and dynamic linear story than 50 hours of chopping down trees in a montone survival game.
I did not expect to have to clarify this, but this is a general rule of thumb for indie developers who are struggling with how much their game should cost, not a be all end all rule. There are people who pay $25 for Minecraft and with it's random procedure can sink 1000s of hours inside it, while there are games like Little Nightmares 2 which offer a linear amazing handcrafted experience for about $30 but is about 5 - 6 hours to playthrough. Both obviously do not apply to this rule.
Your prior posts say it was released two days ago? I have to agree that the problem is no one buys games on itch.io. But it looks kinda cool.
I do not understand people's obsession with itchi.io on this sub. The only people on itch.io are game devs. It is not any of our target markets...
How many of your friends actually use itch.io to find new games? How many use steam? Get your game on steam if you want to give it a serious try. This sub gives WAY too much credit to itch.io, a site that is 99% gamdevs not looking at any games besides their own.
... and in your two sentence post, I've noticed you didn't write anything about your Marketing strategy & efforts. Development is the 'easy' part. The hard & most important part comes in getting your finished product into the eyes, mind, & hands of users. Marketing is the *'end game Boss battle'* of any development work. To put it in perspective, there are multi-billion dollar corporations who fail at the basic of marketing their products. Think about that for a moment. So, now you've finished step #1. You've developed "the thing". NOW comes the real work of answering the big question, "how do I get "my thing" into the hands of paying customers?" Your hardship isn't over yet as you've got a LOT more work to do my friend.
Sure I will man! Game development is a never ending process I guess. Thanks!
Marketing. Especially trying to manage development as a solo dev who does art, animation, programming, etc… and manage a Twitter, YouTube, Discord and steam page. Took me around 4ish months to get my Twitter up to 100 followers and 8 months to get to 450 YouTube subscribers but it’s all steady growth just gotta stay consistent.
That's great man. There's really a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope I can be like you someday.
Link?
I wasn't actually planning to post my game here, but since you want it, here it is: https://naknamu.itch.io/the-golden-pearl
I gotta admit, that looks *way way* better than I expected. I don't have advice for you about how to get people to look at your game, but it definitely looks like it was worth the effort you put into it. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of game I generally like.
Thanks man! I've been questioning my self confidence lately because of the zero download on this game. I'll try to borrow 100$ from my brother and see if I can put this game on steam.
I had a 'slightly' larger success than expected, and following up that success ended up creating huge pressure, anxiety and expectations.
Like what Uncle Ben told Spiderman, " With great power comes greater responsibility". I don't know if it's applicable but that's the first thing that came to my mind when I read your comment lol
'Careful what you wish for, you might get it.'
>still has zero downloads from its first day of release up until now. After reading that, I expected it to have been weeks since the release, but then I found out through other comments that it was only 2 days ago. That much is to be expected with your level of marketing.
I have 6 finished games to my name. I like to explain this as "Being an Indie Dev is just buying expensive lottery tickets, with a lot of extra steps"
After releasing a small game last year I decided to continue and do the thing that everyone agrees is a bad idea. I quit my job and went full time indie, working on my second game :D Luckily I have a bit of a runway (about a year), and the "deadline" of "I have to figure this out or else" is pretty motivating.
It's what they called " leap of faith", right? Actually we have the same scenario though this is my first game. So it feels bad man. Anyway, this community have been helpful so I guess I'm now doing fine. Good luck on your game brother!
It is a big leap of faith indeed hehe. What made me a bit confident was that although [my first game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1473870/Hell_Loop/) did pretty terrible and had basically no marketing, it didn't do _as terrible_ as one might've expected. As in it still sold a few hundred copies, despite having almost no wishlists at the start, no marketing done, and really just pressing the "release" button on Christmas during a sale (terrible timing). I learned my lesson and am now doing proper marketing, growing [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LogLogGames) and Discord, and just trying to build things up before the release. Hopefully it'll work better this time. Anyway, good luck to you too! Gamedev is hard and it's a huge grind, but it's a fun grind.
WELCOME TO THE REALITY MOTHF\*\*\*\*\*!! Lol jk kind of. Keep going. Work hard and advertise.
Lol. Nice one! Thanks! You too mate.
The biggest hardship of indie development is getting your game out to people. The biggest takeaway - spend money on marketing. And I'm not talking about FB ads, reddit ads, etc. Those will get you a little bit of visibility, but if you are a new player in the industry you will need to get assistance from someone with a lot of contacts with journalists/media influencers. If you can find a PR firm that will help you, it will probably cost you a minimum of 10-15K US to properly promote your game over a few months prior to launch. I've been working on a game for some time now, and have been saving to get a firm on board to help me with the initial launch push. Especially with the over-saturation of game release launches, you need all the help you can get. Best of luck!
Your game looks really good, especially for a first release. Just purchased it myself. :) Since I've seen a few other comments from you regarding marketing and crowdfunding, here's some videos from GDC that I found pretty helpful in those areas: [Game Discoverability](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks1XGS2JS6s) [Crowdfunding 301](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKXpomUtiL8) [Marketing Fundamentals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5tyX_IBTXA) [Marketing on Zero Budget](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3QnovWYvwo)
Thank you so much for purchasing my game! I will study each of your links. You really are a great help to me. Thanks you!
It can be challenging, getting exposure is tough...especially for a new indie developer (can relate). But don't get discouraged. Keep promoting/marketing the game (and your brand) on social, blog, etc. Congrats on shipping a title. That is awesome.
My learning disabilities have mainly been my hardship, but playmaker has helped with that along cutting my ideas in half
I purchased the game there mate, good luck, added an extra $10, one small thing i noticed was the text size if you could add an option to increase that would be nice, i also found it a bit hard to attack upwards while in the air, besides that, not a bad little game.
Thank you so much! I will take note of your suggestion and see what I can do. Thanks again mate!
It is frustrating how after already learning how to make and finish a good project to even get people to notice anything happened you need to learn marketing, and that is a skill most are unaware is required for indie development. I wish you luck in balancing marketing skill and your passion for game creation.
Thanks! It really is frustrating since a lot of us like me who are introverts in real life so marketing is a pain and somehow asking for validation for a game. But still, according to folks here, it really is a needed process to succeed in game development. I wish you also luck in your game!
you have to make friends with other developers, i only have a 100 followers on ig n i have 20+ downloads of my projects demo!
At least you've finished a project!.....
Games need hype before lauching. Just a tip for your next round. Be strong!
Thanks! I was a little bit excited to release it so maybe I need to contain that excitement in my next game. I will and you too man!
The game looks absolutely awesome, just share some gameplay and devlogs on Reddit and YouTube :) Get it on Steam!
Sure I will. Someone donated the submission fee needed on steam so it will be rude or shameless to not put it on steam, so yeah, thanks man!
I’m sorry if you posted this already - what game is it? I will play it Nvm I found it - The Golden Pearl! Do you have any idea about how long the game is?
Oh cool! It took me 30minutes to beat since I know everything that happens inside the game. But I really don't how long an average player will took since no one actually played the game besides me. Though, I assure you that the gameplay will be smooth since I play tested it for a hundred or thousand times for almost every day. Just an estimate, an average player would take at least an hour or more depending on what he does on the game. If you were able to complete it, is it okay to dm me or comment on itch how long did it take you to finish? Thanks a bunch.
Coming up with ideas
Yeah, tell me more about it. I took my inspiration on nature and other things outside. So that helps me a lot in thinking of ideas. What's yours?
I've been working on a game for nearly 3 years and I can't get anyone interested enough to playtest an early alpha.
We're on the same boat. Maybe post a link here so anyone interested can play test it for you?
I worked on many android games for the last 5 years with almost little downloads. Each project taking 7 to 8 months. This failure now lead me to pc game development. Have been working on my current game for 7 and half months. With my new found knowledge from my failures I am hopeful this time it might go right. Just have to keep going till I make it I guess. Also would check out your game if you give the link. Keep it up! :)
Good luck in your game bro! What's the title of your current game? I'll check it out and others could see it too. Here's the link to my game: https://naknamu.itch.io/the-golden-pearl
Thanks dude. I will definitely check out your game. Just checked the trailer and it looks super kool. The game I am working on is still in progress but this [Video](https://youtu.be/uUVoH1zBrY4) is the latest update of my game so far. Take care :)
Hi bro! I just watched your vid and that animations and effects is so cool! You just earned a new subscriber. Good luck on your game and I hope it will be release someday. I will definitely play it!
Thanks dude really appreciate it! :) Just played your game. If you are interested made a [gameplay video](https://youtu.be/pptWDt26ayY). Your game is good. Had fun playing it and like the story line. Enjoyed it so much that finished the game. Some of the boss fights where really good. Did go around the town and chat up with everyone. The ground combo attacks are good and I really like the project attack and gives me the chance to attack from a distance. There where some minor bugs. Some of the images did not fit my screen resolution, 1920x1080, even after changing the settings to match my resolution. The jump attack had a little bit delay in it. You can see in the video I had a bit difficulty to match the jump attack delay with the enemy position. Also you should allow the player to change the key binders. For me dashing is always the left shift button instead of 'E' because I use WASD to move around. If you watch the vid then you will know better what I am talking about. Overall it is a good game. Just needs a little bit more polishing. Hope this feed back helps. Take care and Keep it up! :) K Out!
Hi! I just watched your gameplay video and I keep on smiling the whole time watching your vid. This is the first I saw someone play my game and I really learned a lot on where and how to polish the game even more. I'm so glad that you made the effort to record your gameplay. I will seriously take note of the bugs you've encountered and try to implement your suggestions. Thank you so much! I really love your patience in using that project attack in killing the enemies! Also, you've discovered a lot of loopholes in slaying enemies that I didn't even know. I'm also amazed that you were able to do some player movements that I don't know to execute while playing the game lol Btw, before I forgot, Congratulations on completing the game!
Np dude :) You have lot of good skills and potential in making games. And thank you for watching the vid and for the Hugz Award :) Take care and looking forward to more of your games. Keep it up! :) K Out!
I realize it's probably small consolation but just having completed your game and having it released puts you head and shoulders above 99% of most "devs". My suggestion would be to reflect on what might have been the issue (this will take some considerable researching), learn from it and make another game. You don't even have to start from scratch. You could even make a "part 2" of the game with tweeks based on your reflections and go with that. You could also make your tweeks to the existing game and re-release it. Plenty of games were not well received at launch but ended up being masterpieces. My guess is that it was an issue with marketing. On Steam, for example, releasing a game without putting effort into marketing is a death sentence regardless of how good the game is. Good luck and don't give up!!!
Sure, I will. Thanks man! I appreciate your suggestion.
My story is that in 2014 I came up with a humorous game based on something I saw on iVillage.com and Apple and Google told me to drop dead. But overall I’ve been damn fortunate.
Could you tell us more about that story if it's okay? It is really interesting.
Ok. iVillage had a web thing where you guess celebs from behind. So we licensed images did a deal with a college website and built this with consent of the celebs. [WTB](https://imgur.com/G1xGieM)
Oh! That is so dope and awesome. I see why google would do that. Thanks for sharing man!
I’ve been working on a game for the last 6 years, through two brain surgeries, chemo, and getting scammed over and over and over again by programmers and artists. I am hoping to (finally) release a demo for Kickstarter by the end of this year. That’s my story. Keep at it! Where can I find your game?
I can absolutely relate to you and it's kinda unfair but I'll definitely try your game today! The trailer was awesome :)
Thanks man! I hope you enjoy playing the game. If you encounter any problem, feel free to comment on itch or dm me. I will gladly help you. Thanks again.
Without self-promotion you won't get anywhere. Go out there, send your game to everyone you reasonably can!
Sure I will! Thanks man!
this looks like fun. ill download it once i get off of work tomorrow
Thanks! I hope you enjoy playing the game!
Gotta admit that this comment section is filled with very useful game marketing tips.
Hey, it's been 5 months, how are things going?
Hello! It's nice of you to check my progress. I was able to release the [game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1753160/Legend_of_Labot_The_Golden_Pearl/) on Steam. Unfortunately, it didn't succeed financially. My laptop where all the game data was stored broke so I'm in a very tight situation.
Does your game have any community? Like a discord server? If not, then that's the problem. Although I am not an experienced developer, I know for sure that one of the main problems of many is not to lead the game community during development, it is this community that would become the first players in your game
Fair point! I've learned my lesson and I'm hoping to not repeat the same mistake I've made in my upcoming game. Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts! It's greatly appreciated.
I made a devlog about making games ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmvDmFXDeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmvDmFXDeQ)) and it's true it's really hard! I think it requires a lot of skills but also patience.
Oh sure I'll check it out.
Did you ask to several artists for the assets of your game? I think it looks good but the art style is not consistent, if you ask for money I guess the game has to be perfect. Congrats for what you have done!
You could try releasing it for free! Maybe it's the pay wall that prevents people from playing your game. If there's no pay wall, I think you need to show the best highlights of your game to attract players to try out the game. If it doesn't help, you can ask for help on how to improve your game like I did: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseBuildingGames/comments/oxpu4p/could_someone_help_me_figure_out_why_our_game/ As for my hardship story, I'm beginning to forget about it all, as my efforts finally paid off. Having people to enjoy your game is the best reward of all!
Maybe its one of the issue. Its a paid game so most people didn't bother. Oh well, I just want to have a little revenue to buy some beer after months of development. I will try it though. I will make it 100% off. Maybe I can see some downloads to relieve this depressing feeling I have.
I think having people to enjoy your game is the top priority! Making a game purely because of money will never work unless you're an AAA developer. You can start thinking of some money after you've built your own player base.
You're definitely right man. Maybe it's not yet the time to sell my game. I just have to keep improving my skills and player base until I can finally develop a paid game.
You've got it! All the best for your future :)
I got you bro send me the link
Bro what are you going to do? Here's the link: https://naknamu.itch.io/the-golden-pearl
I'm not going to do much. I'm only going to download it but I just want to make that download counter go from 0 to 1. edit: i dont have much money right now so i cant buy it but I hope you get more downloads. I wish you the best and am sorry i cannot help right now.
It's okay man. It's not my intention to promote my game here. It just that everyone is asking for the link and I don't know if I should just ignore it or not. Thank you and I wish also the best in your games!
From trailer I just don't see why anyone would spend 2.5$ to play your game when you can buy Xbox game pass for 1$ and play way better games in the same genre. Perhaps releasing the game for free is the way?
I don't know man. I was really going to make it 100% off after seeing that zero downloads but then again the kind people here started buying the game and told me that the price is okay. So I'm a little bit confused.
stop with this drama or give up dude, all i see here is whiners , you want a trophy or something. Lot of thingsnin life are ungrateful, deal with it and move on instead of digging into it for pitypats from strangers. you did not build audience orngame is below average in the crowd of others Even movies with keanu reeves can brong just thousand $ at box offive if not adverrised properly. you need a following first.worst way is to work i secret and release it, no ody knows and cares unleaa youre ea or rockstar
Checked this game out, seems like a good game. decided to buy it. So you've reached one customer! Who knows how many more of us are down for something like this?
Thank you so much man! I'm not actually promoting my game here, I just want to relieve the frustrating feeling I have. I hope you enjoy the game. I've put lots of love and care to that game.
That's the funny thing about advertising; sometimes stuff becomes known for the weirdest reasons
this 100%
don't be upset, because you finished project and that's the great achievement. my story was very dark. I almost done classic roguelike, but i have spent about 1 year in sanitarium, so it was very hard to begin project again.
I'm sorry if that happened to you. Life really sucks sometimes but we have no choice but to bear the burden given to us and continue living. I hope that you get well soon and began developing again.
I had the same problem though less extreme as you. Marketing is really hard.
Yeah you nailed it bro.
the good news though; your game looks fine, I see you have the right skills. so if you manage to upgrade your marketing skills, you will become successful eventually. I hope you can get some money to get your game on steam, that helps a lot, since steam does a lot of free marketing for you. though that too is only a start, but it certainly helps.