I'll check out your game later (I'm not much of a gamer, but I try to spend a little time each evening checking out a different itch.io game). I hope you're not discouraged, two years shows good perseverance and a lot of people give up too easily or expect results too quickly. I figure as long as you're learning, it's worthwhile, but my two cents is that it's better to complete and polish one level before implementing all the others, so you have something that looks more finished and playable sooner and then maybe you can make an earlier decision about whether to continue development or move on. On the other hand I did work on a AAA game where they basically implemented all the levels at the same time (which still seems really risky to me).
Viewing post in Should I pull the plug on this project?
Everyones input is appreciated regardless of them being a gamer or not. I just feel deterred for the fact that I haven't been receiving feed back regarding my game. Which in my mind is like someone just played it and dropped it since it didnt interest them at the very least to give me some form of criticism. So I appreciate your time Tech.
Yeah, it's difficult, and I have to admit I don't often bother to provide ratings or reviews, either, for games, books, movies... and there's some much content out there it's hard to command anyone's attention for long!
That said, one thing I suggest if you're not doing already, is make a concerted effort to provide feedback on other people's projects and hopefully they will reciprocate. I like to say that networking is not just about asking for help, it's about giving it. I often receive requests to retweet or follow or blog about someone's project but if I look on their feed and see they only talk about their own project I don't feel any obligation to spend any time on them. On the other hand if they're actively helping others it seems like a good cause.
yea, thats very true. It is a bit selfish of expecting assistance without providing any back. I'm not quite sure of how things would work here on itch. What do you mean by someones feed? I honestly have only ever created this account initially to upload things from gamejams i've participated in in the past and just remembered I had it. So im not too sure of how everything actually is laid out here.
I've only just tried to participate here on itch.io a bit more recently. Not much, just started playing some more games and supplying ratings and posting in the occasional thread. One thing I'd like to see is a share to social media button for games. I'm more active on twitter, so I share things there (and that's what I mean by feed, people's twitter profiles, but on itch.io I do check people's creator and community profiles, too).
I guess the really savvy marketers use a lot of channels but these days I don't want to spend that much time on it. I find twitter useful for interacting with other developers and getting useful dev and research info. I had good results with Facebook pages but I'm anti-facebook now so I got rid of it (same with Instagram). I'm sure others here have good ideas, e.g. I see a lot of people use Discord. Also, I've checked out local gamedev and developer meetups and those look like good places to show your work and hobnob with others (even maybe team up!)
I don't know what's available in your area, but here (in Las Vegas) there's a recently revived IGDA meetup, occasional game jams, a Unity user group, and a monthly Demo Day where developers give a five-minute presentation of their projects. There's probably more stuff, but I don't look around that much.