You might want to include a demo version of your game. You are new and unknown and the game is at v01. Paying upfront is a big step in faith here.
And since you host external and are v01, your game is probably too big because you are using .png files for your images. If you do, switch to lossy webp, because that will make your game about 10% the size it currently has without visible quality loss. If not, why do you host external or where does the game size come from?
I am planning to release a demo alongside the next update. I can see the value for people to try it before they buy, but it was not my priority as it requires additional development time and I wanted to have something out first to establish an online presence.
You are right. When I did some testing at the start of the development the lossless .webp was not a huge save on space for each image and I did not want to do lossy because it makes some of the colors looks worse. Especially dark places and shadows. It's always been a balance and I thought at the start that it would be ok and the size would not matter but I am starting to reconsider. Right now the Game has 1000 images with many more to come, so I might have to bite the bullet and redo the image handling in order to keep the size manageable.
There are some options to play with for lossy webp. Depending on your choice of compression, you might be better with jpeg. There is some overlap and discussion in the range of maybe 75 or some other constellation I do not quite remember. Maybe the colors look better in jpg. But I would try using the different presets for lossy webp first. My image app has picture, text, drawing and photo to chose, instead of default.
The second screenshot, the dark one in the bathing area with the walls. It is 2515kB. As a placebo jpg with 100 it is 1249kB. A placebo webp with 100 is 612kB. An 85 webp is 172kB.
You probably can go even lower. Just do a "blind" test. Put the compressed images along with the original in a folder and scroll through them in a way, so that you do not know wich is which and see, if or at what comprssion you can tell.
I did not notice any changes with the backgrounds. But curiously enough with the shade of purple of the text. But I have a very good display for colors and darkness. The text is not part of the image, only of the screenshot you used. Those image compressions are very good at compressing photorealistic things. Though I do not know which preset would be best for that. Photo or picture. Maybe it is photo. I am sure there are guides for this for specific cases, like dark images and shadows.
Point is, even at placebo setting you can go down to 25% ;-)
