Hey,

As some of you already know, I started a game development marathon working on 4 different projects with 4 different programmer partners, and today it's time for my second project reveal:

I am bringing this game to life together with  cavalie.ro, I worked with him in the past, and we had an awesome collab in 2017 when we released TAURONOS, after that we went on separate ways, and now we are back again to bring you a new creation.

About the game:

Choose your champions and descend into card-based dungeons of the undead.

Search for upgrade cards and treasures, survive, and make difficult choices, all within an exotic card game atmosphere.

Fun Fact:

 I was able to do the testing for core mechanics + first balance draft ahead of having an actual prototype. This was a first-time approach for me and it worked perfectly.I only had to print out the placeholder cards and have some fun.

Then I started doing the early mockups in Windows Paint 98 version because im that freaking old:

And then my partner's magic came in, and this is what an actual screenshot in the game looks like now:

And here is a feature list:

Combat & Looting

- Unique environment exploration mixed with combat, and with a dash of mystery.

- Search the environment cards for gold coins, fuel, and special survivor action cards custom-taylord for each class.

- Fight the undead horde 

- Balance your choices between the greed of exploring for more treasures, defending against the undead, and trying to escape.

- Choose what survivor cards you want to save and which ones you want to sacrifice to the horde in order to buy more time.

- Use your survivor's special abilities to gain an edge

- Aggro mechanics

Management & Shops

- The merchant will provide you with custom upgrade cards for your survivors' stats.

- The couple will provide you with special services for your survivors, such as repairing armor, healing wounds, refilling ammunition, and trading fuel

Travel & Main goal

- Engaging minigame mechanics for traveling

- Multiple endings based on your main quest progress

- Decide your next location to explore based on resource cost and reward

Developed under 16 BIT NIGHTS and cavalie.ro

Since my game is based on the urban legend of "experimento filadelfia" I have decided to add a lot of focus on it. So here is the first direct prop, the USS Eldrige that was used in that experiment

Made in windows paint 98 baby !

OFC it will have many interacteble parts not just for visual.

And here is a small preview on how it looks in the game:

New ship update

We are close to having feature complete, now that all gameplay loop is established, some of the ship elements had to be changed and I think this is the final iteration

of it.

Mockup + concept art vs In-game (inspired by Aliens movie environment)

Additionally, the black smoke from the left and right screen edges is animated + the heartbeat above is also animated. Will post some gifs later

So lets update things around here.

Some art:

And also  Trailer is out:

Good luck! 

Looking good, salutations from Romania

Screenshot time 

Hey,

I started a new challenge, I'm working on 4 different projects with 4 different programmers.

First project and also my main project:

On October 28, 1943, the first Philadelphia Experiment took place.

USS Eldridge, a Navy ship, by using experimental technology, was supposed to become invisible to radars; instead, it teleported into another dimension and returned moments later with no crew and showing severe signs of degradation.

Soon after, the experiment was recreated, but this time a space shuttle was sent into the void. It returned briefly after with all crew missing, signs of combat on the outer hull, and one note in the captain's log: "We were not the first ones here."

A few years passed, and a third attempt was made; this time, it was a custom ship built with space shuttle technology and a large crew. USS Eldridge Mark 2 stepped into the void and never returned.

Present day: a new attempt is now in progress, this time the new ship USS Eldridge Mark 3 is equipped with the latest modern technology, and YOU were selected to lead this expedition into the unknown horizon.

During this stage, you will use your astronaut squad to explore the void.

• Gather exotic resources,
• Drill asteroids for essential resources.
• Encounter new alien lifeforms.
• Uncover the secrets of an ancient civilization.
• Uncover the mystery of previous void missions.
• Salvage lost technology.
• Survive in a hostile environment.

Think of USS Eldridge Mark 3 as your home; its maintenance can prove to be critical for your survival.

• Build and upgrade turrets, searchlights, and the forcefield.
• Use special Crystals you find in the void to upgrade the ship eficiency.
• Maintain the outer hull by repairing the ship's armor plates and removing any alien fungus growth.
• Use external modules to re-arm your astronauts' battery, nitro, and ammunition supplies.
• Manage your Atomics Silos.

Your presence in the void disturbs the natural order of things.

Your ship and astronauts are like juicy beacons for the hostile creatures that lurk in the shadows.

Defends your ship against waves of something that can only be described as Langoliers.

At first glance, this may seem like a glorified walking simulator, but don't underestimate the situation; everything you do here will have an impact on all layers of the game. You will decide your travel paths between asteroid fields, hostile creatures, toxic fog, corrosive steam, and parasitic fungi while being chased by a darkness spammed from the end of time.

• Craft better equipment for your astronauts.
• Research new technologies.
• Heal your astronauts.
• Train and level up your astronauts.
• Upgrade your ship's internal systems
• Manage your Strike Team and their equipment.

Developed by  16 BIT NIGHTS

Discord : https://discord.gg/ak5zXQxR7D

Video Devblog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_RpeDszD9A 

Cool game. Salutation from OpenApoc

also having to send workes each time to colect wood and stone manually is 100% fustrating, needs an auto function

good concept but quality of life elements and unclear information make the gameplay very frustrating.

Cool game, cool developer +1

on these groups you can find both devs and players

Congrats on the release

Hey fellow developers and players,


My name is Cristi. I am part of the 16 BIT NIGHTS indie game dev studio, and I come here again with a new case study/marketing blog to help other indie devs. I also do this for free, so any support is appreciated.

I have seen lately an increase in PR agents in the game dev industry, and I see nobody brings any new information to the table, ofc most of what is said is good, but it's the same old information but presented from a different perspective.

So, for those of you who create games but have little to no marketing funds, I created this list with top content creators' friendly Discord communities for indie devs.

FAIR WARNING
Before using this list, please consider this:

1. Do NOT join to spam, aka "hit & run"! If you do this, you will most likely be ignored and probably banned. Try to get involved in the communities in a genuine way.
2. Do NOT send spam private messages with your game to the content creators! You can very fast end up blacklisted, and it's not cool to spam the people who help this industry.
If you want to send them your press kit, use the official ways; most of them have a public email on their channel for this purpose.
3. If you join other content creators' discords beyond this list, be careful; some of their communities are not so friendly towards indie devs and perceive everything as spam. I can give a few examples, but I prefer to keep this post on a positive side.
4. Keep it safe for work. Use common sense.
5. Posting in these communities will NOT guarantee that someone will make a video of your game, but it will surely bring some extra exposure.

Overall, what I try to say is: don't be a spammer; there is a thin line between spam and presenting your game.
This is a good way to get more eyes upon your creation. Just don't abuse it.

Let's begin!

1. Splattercat
This guy is not only one of the best content creators on indie games, but his community is very friendly with game devs as long as you are not a mindless spammer.
The moderators are also cool, and they engage with everyone in a very friendly manner. Just don't abuse their kindness, or you will hear "Hammer Time" song in the background.
Rooms of interest:
#greathall - do not talk about your game here, but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, and make networking
#content-promotion - you can post in this room your links, preferably the milestones, such as youtube trailer debut, coming soon page debut, big update debut, game release steam link and so on
#game-dev - use this room to chat to other fellow developer from this community(players have also acces to it), you can also post about your game here, preferably posts like progress of your game, screenshots etc, you can also post links but preferably keep the links for the #content-promotion room.
#gamekeys-readpin - You can use this room to make small giveaways that will bring extra exposure to your game, + It its a nice way to give something back to the community and reward the players. Also, make sure you follow the guidelines.
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@Splattercatgaming
Discord Link: https://discord.gg/Splattercatgaming
Moderation, aka "how hard the police hits":  cool if you are cool
Activity: Very High

2. Alpha Beta Gamer
I was pleasantly surprised when I joined this community. They have a lot of friendly rooms for devs and some out-of-the-box approach.
The owner, Alpha Beta Gamer, is also very friendly and interacts with the community whenever he gets the chance.
#general - do not talk about your game here, but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, and make networking
#share-your-art - If you are an artist, this is a room for you to post your artwork
#show-your-games - You can post here about your game links and everything, unfortunatley it has a forum format and not many people use it except for devs.
#jobs-collaboration-and-devs-for-hire - cool initiative to have an actual collab room for devs
#game-dev-chat - here you can talk to other devs and make more networking
#roast-my-steam-pahe - This is got to be the most original room in a content creator discord that I have seen. Everyone is reliant to give negative feedback, but here you can do it. Post link about your game here and be roasted, also, have fun and roast other devs
#playtest - you can post here a link to your game for others to check and give feedback
He also got a giveaway room and so on. A lot of rooms here for devs.
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@AlphaBetaGamer
Discord Link: discord.gg/3Gtqp9BDeY
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": Gangsta Paradise
Activity: Very High

3. Perafilozof
This one is a hidden gem. If you have a real-time strategy or real-time tactics game, this is surely the place to join, his community is formed by both game devs and players of strategy games, and as a content creator, he is very friendly and responsive to all developers in and out of the community.
But please note: this community is strict on strategy games. Do not post about platformers or other genres.
#general-chat - do not talk about your game her,e but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, make networking
#game-updates - post here about your game updates, milestones, links allowed, similar style to a devblog. Perafilozof reads this room, and if he finds important information, he will add it to his "RTS news" videos
#window-into-development - you can chat here with other devs and post stuff about your game
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@perafilozof
Discord Link: discord.gg/g7HkWAKfSz
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": Gangsta Paradise
Activity: Good

4. Nookoroium
Here is another Discord community gem. Nook is one of the coolest content creators and his community reflects it.
He also got a funny Dad Jokes room that is worth checking.
#main-room -  do not talk about your game here but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, make networking
#share-your-stuff - you can post here links on your milestones, game release and so on, just dont abuse and try to give some feedback to other people as well
#giveaways - you can use this room to make small giveways that will bring extra exposure upon your game + its a nice way to give somting back to the comunity and reward the players. Also, make sure you follow the guidelines. For this community, I think you need to contact Nook himself, preferably via email, since he does the giveaways himself.
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@Nookrium
Discord Link: discord.gg/amuj3Ky
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": cool if you are cool
Activity: Good

5. Frazzz
This guy is a weird one, but I'm adding him here because I owe him money.... im joking:))))
Frazzz got a friendly community for indie devs, and sometimes I see extreme humor there, just how I like it.
#general - do not talk about your game here, but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, make networking
#devs-publishers-lounge - here you can talk and post about your game; it is a very permissive room. Have fun
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@FrazzzYT
Discord Link: discord.gg/466CMVGXP9
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": Pssst, boy, wanna buy some skins?
Activity: Decent

6. Henchbots
Yet another indie game content creator with a friendly community for devs.
#nerdtalk - do not talk about your game here, but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, make networking
#arts-crafts-creations - you can post here about your game progress, milestones, releases
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@wanderbots
Discord Link: discord.com/invite/wanderbots
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": Stay still, move slowly
Activity: Decent

7. Christopher Odd
This community is heavily focused on turn-based games, so do not post here about puzzle games or other genres.
Cool fact, he also contributed to the game "Every Day We Fight."
#chat-and-stuff - do not talk about your game here, but use this room to talk to various people from the community, have fun, make networking
#self-promotion - only post links on big milestones, do not abuse the kindness of this community
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristopherOdd
Discord Link: https://discord.gg/christopherodd
Moderation, aka "how hard the police hits": Stay still, move slowly
Activity: Low

8. Bestindiegames
Any type of game genre is welcome here as long as it's indie.
#upcoming-indie-games - post here link to your coming soon pages
#game-dev-promo - post here milestones and progress
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@ClemmyGames
Discord Link: discord.gg/aU9qp9Y
Moderation aka "how hard the police hits": Gangsta Paradise
Activity: Low





Many other Content Creators have Discord communities, but not all are friendly towards indie devs, so make sure you read the rules when joining one so you don't waste other people's time or your time.



Regards,
Cristi P. - 16 BIT NIGHTS

SCP 001 When Day Breaks

Single mission where your strike team operatives are sent into an SCP 001 encounter, when day breaks.

You will have 1 D-class personnel, 1 scientist, and 3 Strike team operatives assigned to your team.

Make the best of what you have and contain the anomaly. Additionally, try to keep the team alive.

Good luck, Commander!

Instructions:

mouse to move 

1,2,3,4,5,6 select unit

Link to game:  https://16bitnights.itch.io/scp

Discord: https://discord.gg/ak5zXQxR7D

For itchio you can download it for free, donations are optional, I don't know how I can refund if you accidentally clicked on it but I did not get any notifications so I assume you fixed it.

I'm glad you are enjoying the game, I think we can push a few more updates, right now we are working on polishing the balance, final adjustments.

Also Thank you for your support! 

It is the free short version

We are preparing a roadmap for after after-release

CONTENT CREATORS 🙋‍♀️ 

Our 5th self-published game: "Welcome Back, Commander" Launches next week, 6 Feb 2025. 

If you are interested in a Steam Key for the full game drop a message with your Youtube channel and I will send the Press Kit. 

TESTERS 🙋‍♀️ 

If you want to help out with testing drop me a private message.🙏

Regarding tests, we split them into 2 categories:

Test mark 1:

We appreciate feedback on balance and if you encounter bugs on the full version. To gain access you can join our Discord for the private beta on the full game.

Test mark 2:

We appreciate feedback on the core game design. For this type of test, you can use the vertical slice from Itch.io:

https://16bitnights.itch.io/welcome-back-commander

Trailer:

Regards,

Cristi P. - 16 BIT NIGHTS

B2B Marketing Collab

INTRO

Hello,

For the ones that don’t know me, my name is Cristi P. and I represent 16 BIT NIGHTS.
Recently I made a marketing collab with some awesome developers and I had so much fun that I decided to make this case study about it.

HOW IT HAPPENED

So, I am part of several game developer communities and mostly I only see spam and small talk but not long ago I joined a Discord: The RTS Dev Saloon and I saw they had a nice topic about the upcoming Steam Strategy Fest.

Everyone wanted to do something like organize some multiplayer games with content creators and so on.
I also noticed everyone was too busy with their own games to take initiative but at the same time I saw potential in this community, maybe the fact that it’s a bit of a private community also attracted me, so I decided to take a little initiative.

And no, I am not a godlike PR to organize MP game matches with content creators but I wanted to do something so I asked if they wanted to make a trailer collab for the RTS fest regarding this particular community.

Four things impressed me in particular:

First: The developers were 100% cooperative and professional (except for the one who kept sending me pictures of barrels, dunno what is wrong with him but even so I think he is ok to), no s**t talk, and they sent footage as instructed within the timeline (TBH 50% of me believed that they would just forget about it, this was one of the times I was happy to be proven wrong).

Second: The second thing that impressed me was when I saw the footage and did a bit of background research on the devs who submitted entries, I mean WOW, some of them have stellar projects.

Third: The third thing that impressed me was that this made me feel like I am actually part of a community, this was an awesome feeling to experience in this industry.

Fourth: I will keep the fourth thing that impressed me for a bit later in the case study, don’t go just yet.

HOW IT WORKED

OK, now to the substance stuff.
I had the full support of my partner, Sadoff who did all the video editing while I made the trailer design, text, intro cutscene, and outro cutscene, selecting music, SFX, and posting it.

The main goal of this collab was to do a cross-promo. The YouTube algorithm trigger was not critical.

Almost all of us involved in the video have our own communities and social media pages with fans and followers, so after the video got uploaded it got shared by the participants in their own respective communities.

This is as simple as it gets, cross-promo at its origin form.

Now please, understand that cross-promo only works if it’s a similar target audience, in our case we all had real-time strategy games so it was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Competition is not always your enemy!

Games who participated in this B2B Marketing collaboration:

From Glory To Goo https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607060/From_Glory_To_Goo/
Beyond Astra https://store.steampowered.com/app/2669060/Beyond_Astra/
Cataclismo https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422440/Cataclismo/
Global Conflagration https://store.steampowered.com/app/908770/Global_Conflagration/
Battlefall State of Conflict https://store.steampowered.com/app/1031730/Battlefall_State_of_Conflict/
Welcome Back, Commander (our game) https://store.steampowered.com/app/3015620/Welcome_Back_Commander/
Atre Dominance Wars https://store.steampowered.com/app/2805850/Atre_Dominance_Wars/
Toy Tactics https://store.steampowered.com/app/1772530/Toy_Tactics/
IMMORTAL Gates of Pyre https://store.steampowered.com/app/2921580/IMMORTAL_Gates_of_Pyre/
Powerplay https://store.steampowered.com/app/3010280/Powerplay/
Project 37 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2894750/Project_37/
Godsworn https://store.steampowered.com/app/1328990/Godsworn/
Stardust Exile https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858900/Stardust_Exile/
ZeroSpace https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/

RESULTS

I had in the first half of the day +35 wishlist additions, the second day went to +131 but for the second day some of us also got featured in the Perafilozof video so I cannot estimate correctly exactly how many WL came from the cross-promo video second and third day but it was on plus.

Valentin from Beyond Astra also had a spike in WL and he did not appear in the Perafilozof video.

CTLN7, the developer from Global Conflagration also had a spike.

In addition to this The RTS Dev Saloon got some nice branding, 48 hours after releasing the video I got at least 5 messages from people asking me for an invite to that server.
Just to clear things out, I am not the owner of that Server, tatsu(dev from ZeroSpace) and Pourya are the owners.

The video itself also got some nice results, 7 days after release it managed to get 4k views and 145 likes.

Link to the video itself: https://youtu.be/CyIZfiEC38I?si=E11HLGxHO3vQVhGj

Now, remember that I was also impressed a fourth time? This was because of Perafilozof

He is one of the best, if not the actual best source of news in regards to Strategy Games.
Also, he is very cooperative and responds to everyone, this is a rare thing among content creators.

But this is not what impressed me this time.
What impressed me this time is that when he saw our trailer video collab he actually shared it himself in his discord community, he genuinely wants to help out RTS games and developers.

You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@perafilozof
And if you are developing an RTS game I definitely recommend dropping him a press kit.

CONCLUSION

This B2B marketing approach did not make miracles but it had some results and it was fun to make.
More developers should experiment with this based on genre and audience.
Other things that can work in this regard can be Steam bundles of 4-5 AA RTS games and another bundle with 4-5 pixel art RTS games.
Hell, maybe even some sort of giveaway regarding the system between developer fans.
Right now I am very tired especially since I have a release coming soon but if the opportunity arises I will surely do it again.

Regards,
Cristi P. – 16 BIT NIGHTS

Thank you!

Steam Strategy Fest started!

Me and the devs of the private "RTS Dev Saloon" Discord community made a collaboration and created a Trailer combo:

B2B marketing experiment at its finest, il write a case study about it soon.

[b]Il write a case study about it soon because it was to cool.

[/b]

Then, Perafilozof also made a list of RTS games and we also god included

[b]and to tap it all, steam released the Strategy Fest trailer and the first featured game from the festival is Chromosome Evil 2 [/b]

We just got into the second position on a popular upcoming in Steam Strategy Fest with "Welcome Back, Commander" YAY !

Steam is having a Strategy Game festival and we were accepted to participate!

This is it, we have an official steam release date.

We also updated demo and did a lot of stuff, unfortunately, I don't know if il have time to update the devblog with all the new things since we are a bit behind deadlines already.

working on a new Boss

Experimental news everyone,

So, a couple of weeks ago we met the solo dev from "Real Heroes Studio", he had a game called "Desolated District" in which we saw potential, and after some ideas exchange, we decided to help him out in his endeavors.

This will be an experimental collaboration for "16BitNights". 

We will contribute to "Real Heroes Studio" with Marketing consultancy, environmental storytelling design, and some other minor investments.

If the experiment will turn out to have a positive outcome then we will consider investing in other small indie developers in the future.

You can find this magical open-world-survival-crafting game on steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2454070/Desolated_District/ and we hope to have it released in Q2 of 2025.

The game vertical slice was also uploaded here on Itch.io and can be found here :  https://real-heroes-studio.itch.io/desolated-district

A few words about the game:

Desolated District is an Open-World Survival Crafting game set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Scavenge for resources, craft essential tools, build your base and battle deadly threats as you explore a sprawling, decaying city inspired by the Kowloon Walled City.

And here is an example of environment storytelling. 

Step by step you are going to learn what happened to the happy folks of the desolated city while you try to escape its grasp.

I never did this type of collab so if any of you got any tips for me let me know

Just hit a serious Milestone on Steam

Hello  Commanders,

More news, we hit new milestones.

We managed to finish all maps for Defcon 4 and now we started implementing them. The first one was added yesterday and here is the reveal:

Yeap, it is a library.. Because the game content will be short we are focusing on delivering high-quality in our environments and player experience. What does this mean? Well, it means that each scenario will have a special mechanic/gimmick. For example, this Librabry map has storm weather effects that will prevent the player from doing hit & run so on this map you must first survive until the storm ends.

Oh, we also added some hot interactive cutscenes within the scenario itself and many easter eggs.

Talking about the storm,  here are the new storm visual effects rain + thunder.

And today we added the Subway map.

The Subway unique twist is that you can use the alternative way out with some penalties but if you wait for the train to arrive a new exit path will be unlocked and you can leave without penalties but others a catch. When the train arrives it will have unwanted passengers.

In conclusion, each environment is tailored to provide a certain experience. 

OK time to go back to work, we need to finish Defcon 4 this month. If this week we manage to implement all scenarios then next week we will start adding custom random encounters for this Defcon as well + a special scenario and full-screen cutscenes.

If you want to support us you can join our Discord and share some gifs with 90thies action heroes, "GET TO THE CHOOOOOOPAAAA!"

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/ak5zXQxR7D

best regards,
Cristi P. - 16 BIT NIGHTS

Just released "Welcome Back, Commander" on itch!

https://16bitnights.itch.io/welcome-back-commander

Thank you!

Thank you for the constructive criticism!

Its not the main menu, its the main gameplay screen, player has 3 choices per day to make, it also has parallax and other features.

And yes I can see now what you mean by very cluttered - il try to do something about it.

We released the demo on steam and now we work for the itch io version

I try to make a Diegetic UI design somewhere between Xcom and Papers please for my upcoming game "Welcome Back, Commander"

Tips and suggestions are appreciated

Gameplay Reveal Trailer is now LIVE

Hello wonderful developers,

My name is Cristi and I am part of the 16 BIT NIGHTS dev team.
Ready for another post-mortem from the industry of indie games?
I’ll start by saying that among other mistakes my most critical mistake for this title was: “I wanted to make a good game” – I will explain later what I mean by this.

The game I will be talking about in my post-mortem today is TAURONOS, as a pitch line “the game is sort of pac-man mixed with horror elements” and it was released back on 4 August 2017, I think it got through on final days of Steam Greenlit and I am writing this 7 years after its release.



Game Link on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/676240/TAURONOS/

Development
I made 20 flash games, 5 games released on Steam with a Publisher, 1 game released on consoles, and 4 games self-published on Steam and I will say that on TAURONOS I had the BEST development experience ever, and this was because of my partner at that time: Cavalie.ro, I am now referring to both the work pipeline and the social environment.
Development took us 6 months. I had a day job back then so I worked on the game part-time as soon as I got home up to obsession, and Cavalie.ro was full-time.
We decided together the game concept, My partner was focused on programming + the story(he placed a lot of focus on having the story as accurate as possible to the Greek myth) and I was focused on game design, art, and marketing.
At that point in my career, I was still learning marketing but as far as game development was concerned I wanted to make A good game, A very polished game with a solid gameplay loop because at that point I already had a couple of games released but I always kept skipping the polish step.



Considering that this was my first time working with Cavalie.ro I aimed for a simpler game design scope in order not to risk unrealistic objectives but as far as polish goes I did not want to make any compromises.
The only downside to the development part was that at some times we had different visions on game design considering that Cavalie.ro vision was more story-based and my vision was more gameplay-based.
Good-times.
Ah, also we made and released the game with basically 0 funding except for the voice acting and music. BTW I try to be as biased as possible but the Voice Actor we had is Godlike. Alexey Ryan did an amazing job.

Release & Results

On Itch.io the game had 0 sales. :(  https://16bitnights.itch.io/tauronos

At the time of release, we had around 800 WIshlists.
Not many content creators played our game and the ones that played it were very small, this may be because my email marketing back then was just with cold emails, and no networking whatsoever, not to mention my email template and email lists were very beginner level, instead of making my own custom lists and research I was just downloading random YouTuber lists and sending emails.
We released with 20% discount and the first month of release we sold around 200 units.
After the first year since release, we sold a total of 1500 units.
I had no regret but I was disappointed, this “failure” was also the cherry on top of losing the relationship I had back then with one of my exes.
And overall it was ok, I quit the day job I had and went back to my country(Romania) and the money was enough to make some renovations and find a new day job.

Now, in 2020, I met an indie publisher that managed to port TAURONOS on Xbox and Nintendo Switch. The sales were decent, a good source of passive income, double as much as I made on Steam the first year.
A couple more years passed, I think it was 2021 and our console indie publisher “Restless Corp” had some personal problems so we decided that all sales the game generated on the console market would be from this point donated to him so we renounced console royalties, he is a cool guy he deserves it.

Now, one more year has passed, 2022 and I just released a new game with my Default programmer SadOff, the new game was called “Chromosome Evil” and had such good results that I was finally able to go full-time dev.
In 2022 I also made an agreement with Cavalie.ro and I paid an upfront sum for TAURONOS and he renounced his royalties so now 100% of TAURONOS goes to 16 BIT NIGHTS.

Present day
The game still sells a constant of 10-20 units per month + some small spike in sales each time I release a new game.
Having the game in the company bundle on Steam also helped a lot.
Currently, in 2024, TAURONOS sold a total of around 6000 units on Steam.

2017 First month of Steam release – 200 units
2018 First year of Steam release – 1500 units
2020 Released on Xbox and Nintendo Switch – around 2000 units from consoles until 2021 when I donated all future royalties to “Restless Corp”
2022 16 BIT NIGHTS bought the full royalties rights for TAURONOS from Cavalie.ro
2024 present day(7 years after Steam release) – 6000 units

Graph with sale(image)


Graph with wishlist(image)


Wishlist conversion (image)


Conclusion
The Game Design was not the type of game that I liked playing as a player but I wanted to make a Good game and I thought I knew what the audience wanted, I was naive, or maybe I was just bad at marketing at that time.
Since then I really focused on learning marketing and I now only decide to make games that have the “Yes” answer to the question “Would I actually pay money for this?” after checking my own Steam library because surely I cannot be so narcissist to think I am unique, so surely there are more people like me and best way to designate the target audience is on my own person.
In the end, TAURONOS was not amazing but proved to be a nice source of passive income in the long term and an awesome journey to create it.






Thank you for the read!




Cristi P. – 16 BIT NIGHTS

This will be a fast update since we are really low on time, lots of things do fix, and lots of things to adjust for the upcoming Demo.


So, firstly we are going to say that this game will also have rough-like elements through the achievement-reward system but because of the deadline I am not sure we will be able to implement them in the demo.

We also made serious polish to the command room visuals with some extra shadings and added new mechanics.
We will probably update the screenshots from the store page a bit later because you know TIMEEEE





"Welcome Back, Commander" logo has also been updated.
For this new key art, we got a lot of help from the Strain Tactics developer.





We are also working on a new trailer that is heavily focused on showing the gameplay.





OK time to go back to work

Hello Commanders,


I am dropping some news from behind the curtain and as the title says: we are preparing a Demo for Steam and Itch.io (and maybe Gamejolt too but I am not sure considering the low visibility).

The first part of the demo will include the intro cinematics, the tutorial, the interactive start of new game choices + the main gameplay of both the management command room and Defcon 5 RTS scenarios.

The start new game screen.

We combined the start of new game choices with interactivity and story elements in a unique mix that we hope will be enjoyable for you.
The main goal here is the MAXIMUM atmospheric value.

So each new game you will have a variety of choices in order to better customize your playthrough and make it as unique as possible each time.
- Enter your name(will affect some dialogues)
- Choose the game difficulty (we currently have 5 stages of difficulty planned but for the purpose of the demo we will only have 2). This difficulty setting affects the number of days you have and some enemy stats.
- Choose Commando strike team units, your starting units. This pool will also become larger as you unlock more units based on achievement(we invest very much this time on the re-pliability factor)
- Starting resources
- Choose Start bonus items (these will affect some special stats and special game mechanics)
For example, if you pick a scanner you will have this scanner mechanic during boss fights:






We also plan to have one boss fight included in the demo.

Here is a hint: it will happen in the new sewers environment that we just created:

Timeline: This coming week we will make the demo available for everyone with lvl 3 and above on our Discord community for a private beta test session and next month the demo will be publicly available during the Steam Next Fest.





OK time to go back to work.

Want to support us? Join our Discord.

We managed to implement the first 5 scenarios for the Defcon 5 stage.


Some new additions:

We added a Blood sample mechanic inspired by the movie "The Thing"



How it works?
One of the civilians that you must rescue is infected and if you try to save him with a soldier or engineer he will transform into a monster and attack you but if you try to save him with a medic you will immediately identify the infected and you will not trigger him.

Another new mechanic is the infected stash devouring flesh.
They will ignore the player units while eating but if you attack any of them they will all rush toward your strike team.



Also, we added tons of easter eggs and fan service.
For example one of the early possible scenarios will be an easter egg from Resident Evil aka Kendo Gun Shop.

And much more, we added custom scenes during exploration such as helicopters passing by, civilians running and trying to escape, car crashes, and much, much more.



OK time to go back to work.