Yeah, that’s true, marketing is really important. And I can totally understand how tough it is for the indie game community, especially after setbacks like with BlockBlasters: Infected, where Steam downloads contained malware disguised as a patch. That really makes it hard for indie developers to gain the community’s trust.
But I’m optimistic, because I’m not in it to make money; I develop games out of passion. I just want to play games I can’t find in the store. Nowadays, everything is focused on profit and online requirements. I’m an “’89er” and I miss old-school games: buy once, keep forever, no early access, just a finished, polished game.
I also want to engage with my community and try to take their wishes into account as much as possible, so we can create a game together that really has value, not just a source of income, but something that makes history. :D
Your game idea sounds really interesting! I’d love to hear more and test it when something’s available.
I definitely need to check out that sound tool when it’s finished!
Feel free to join my Discord, then we can add each other (if you have a Discord account) and chat if you’re interested.
How long did I spend on the game? For the assets, I spent about 20 hours drawing (using Aseprite). Coding and developing the first prototype took around 10–15 hours. After that, until the current version, I’ve spent about 6 weeks, roughly 100+ hours.