Pricing

Been thinking about pricing. When I look at all the great indie games on Itch (some that are critically claimed and super popular on Steam etc.) selling for $25-$30; I immediately feel like $2 price tag on this game is ridiculous. "Their games took years and whole teams to make."

I doubt I'll ever make a game as cool as Celeste.

Having said that, I think it's ok to charge for my time + effort; and the more time + effort I put into it, the more the game should cost. I think the most logical way of thinking about is to charge $1 for every week of work I put into releasing the first version.

• Snake Catcher (game #1, not on Itch) took a couple days. I give it away for free, because it was entirely a stepping stone towards Slither Deep. It's not polished. It's just a fin little thing.
• Slither Deep (game #2) took a week, especially when you factor in the effort that went into figuring the mechanics out in Snake Catcher. I put that up for $1 (because that's the least I could charge on Itch) but I think that's a reasonable price, now.
• Sprout could take 5-6 weeks (though I'm aiming to restrict the time to a max of 5 weeks), so it's likely to cost $5

Given all this, I will increase the price of Sprout by $1 for each week I work on v1.0. If you wanna save a couple dollars, get it early.