itch.io

Hey thanks for playng :)

Thanks for playng :)

ok so i'll update my post about the finished game and now..

I'll start by saying that I also released the second game The Voyager  , but I'll talk about it later before I update on Find The Key.

(always without promotion) 

about the visibility on steam after the first month it goes back to the same as when the page is coming, which means 50-100 views per day, but the only sales will happen only when there are discounts, people seem to ignore completely games that don't have a discount and even something like 10% makes a difference, I don't think it's for small money savings especially on low priced games, but rather that they filter games by higher price/discount ignoring those that don't have discount.

for Find the Key, I made an update including many branches of the path, it doesn't change the general experience at all but each chosen path changes the whole game a bit so the replayability is higher, also to unlock the steam achievements it is possible to do it just replaying the game and choosing different paths etc.

for The Voyager, things went more or less the same way as for Find The Key, considering the difference in price and type of game, we can say that the statistics are perfectly identical, in terms of sales or 0 feedback and reviews, visibility, game completion by players etc. pretty much everything the same. i also left the incoming page for 3 months, it made no difference.

for The Voyager I also used keymailer sending keys to a hundred influencers, it was completely useless and had no effect on the game. even those who asked for the key themselves didn't make any content or even leave a review. which means that it was a waste of time and money because at least your game already doesn't attract clicks, influencers big or small will ignore it.

however, The Voyager and Find the Key are two very different games, and the starting stats are nearly identical, so I can assume that things will be exactly the same, too, and that it doesn't depend on the game. this is both a good thing and a bad thing, as it means that, precisely, it doesn't depend on the game but on other things. in the sense the majority of people finish my games, if people finish the game I can assume that they liked it, personally if I don't like a game I leave it after not even 20 minutes.

but only those who didn't like it or abandoned it before the end will bother to leave a review, and we know that reviews are very important to steam. I read somewhere that it needs 10 reviews from people who bought the game (didn't receive the key and not necessarily positive) before steam decides to recommend it to people more.

so to conclude, in the long run the quality of the game is definitely the crucial factor, but in the initial period of the launch it doesn't really matter the type of game as it just depends on how many people know about it. Sure I'm still talking about minimal quality anyway, but if few people know about it other people like influencers or potential players will either ignore it, think no one has played it or talk about it because it sucks rather than because no one has played it . lol

in the case of indies like us, games are successful because they have their community or patreon ready to buy/review the game positively at launch, so in the long run you will see the difference but without a solid foundation the game won't take off anyway. so I think this is the main thing to think about while developing the game :)

Thanks for reading,

 Edd

Hi Richard sorry for some reason I missed the notification when you replied.. generally the winter season is the best season in terms of sales, it's cold outside and people play more, but usually it's a matter of marketing, if people don't know about your game, they won't play it anyway :)

when I tried alice's game the duration seemed ok to me, neither too long nor too short, but yes what you say about the price/duration ratio is true... regarding the alpha testers steam also has a function for that, but I didn't elaborate on how it works..

(I didn't even talk about steam curators actually: you can submit your game to the curators, they are normal players who have built the community around something, so if they recommend a game all their subscribers will see it, but most of them just want the game for free, they don't have a real interest in the game and their reviews mean nothing, I would simply recommend not even considering them curators.. that's why maybe I haven't mentioned them,)

yes I've now looked at the stats and actually about half of those who bought it haven't even run it yet, maybe they just got it because it was cheap so they'll try it one day..

for the demo instead I'm already thinking that it doesn't mean anything, for the sales or visibility of the whole game nothing has changed compared to before, however out of 1900 downloads only 18 have started it for the moment, this makes me think that it's bot or that for many people it's just automatic to download any new demo.. but I'll wait a little longer before deciding if it makes any difference or not.

yes 10 minutes of gameplay can be a lot of work, today it took me 4 hours to do something that maybe 5 minutes were enough if I was already capable of doing it..

I don't know, at the moment a lot of things don't make sense to me... I still have to understand a lot of things  :)

yes, certainly the duration is to be considered when choosing the price.. I don't think that a 100 hour game has more value than a 5 hour one just because it lasts longer,

however the longer it lasts probably the longer it took to develop, if find the key had lasted 10 minutes instead of almost an hour, it would have taken me a lot less time to do.. by no means does that mean that just because it lasts 1 hour it's worth more.

people also consider this:

if I spend x on something that entertains me 100 hours, it's better than if I spend it on something that only entertains me 10 minutes.. so probably for the same price they will choose the game that entertains them more time, but in reality the game that lasts less could be a much better experience.

i am not interested in 100 hour games..just thinking about it that i have to play 100 hours to finish it scares me..it means at least a year to me,for the type of gamer i am a 2-5 hour game is ok for me ,

the only games i finished in one sitting are layers of fear and RE3 remake, or i remember with resident evil 2 on ps1 as a boy, i used to invite my school friends and in one afternoon we would finish it etc

the value of a game is not in its duration, but in the intensity / quality.. but yes, people consider the duration as a purchase parameter :)

the sequel thing makes sense.. also having patreons is something that allows to give the game for free, i'll think about it something will come to mind,

yes I came back to think about it because I made the considerations after a month about the discount thing, so I did the demo and I thought that raising the price was also something to do, but then I saw that they download the demo in a lot, (now it's about 1500) so I put the price back, in a while I'll see if the general visibility or players increase in some way..

so i was thinking about adding the VR mode but it would require some work.. redoing all the interaction mechanics then adding and removing things, if i start doing that the result is that the time invested on that game would double at the very least, given the stats of the first month I don't know if it's worth doing, the time I would spend there should be somehow justified..

I really don't know if it depends on the game, it's true that find the key is not a normal game, even though the mechanics are actually the same as games like layer of fear it's not what people look for in a normal horror, it could be something absolutely normal like something bad or something excellent, the truth is that I have no idea. lol

i think people filter on the price too, however i have looked at pretty much every game under 5 most are really bad to me. I mean with glitch bugs and little care on the technical side, things that really would have been enough a little more attention and to fix easily, this is something unacceptable for me..

But maybe they have fun gameplay and an interesting story and people still buy them, I don't know, it's something I have yet to figure out.

yes I have never bought a full price game either, however the point is that it is a dollar .. if I see a game that interests me that costs so little I take it without even thinking about it, or rather I will look for videos if there are any youtube first and i'll have a look so if it looks a bit interesting i'll take it, if i don't like it then it's not a tragedy, i drink a lot of coffee a day..

I don't know, I've never paid for microtransitions or gadgets and I never will, for me it's kind of a scam.. but it's true some people do so ok, I won't do it.. I want a game that's complete now, not with missing pieces or tricks to win first.. i don't care about gadgets, indeed in cybepunk for example my character was naked from start to finish.. (lol) .. but it's true there are people willing to pay for these things, so that's the way the world is..

I don't even know how to interpret free vs $1 such a huge gap, I'll see in a while, some have already made demo videos on youtube, although I saw that they didn't know how to turn on the flashlight one. lol

if putting this thing free the game gets so much visibility it's worth inventing a way to exploit it, really 1000x of difference is not a small one, but I still don't know, maybe it's just a number that doesn't mean anything in practical terms, I'll see in a while..

for tags yes, there are some more popular than others, but too popular is also not good.. let's say there are 100k horror games, those looking for horror will only see the ones that are best selling or popular, except for a few days in which you are in the newcomers,

so you need to go more specific, for alice's game it might be something like "female lead platformer" or "cartoon style platformer" etc, you need to try to be very specific by using the tags that describe the game as well as using the generic tags, think about the people who are looking for and the elements that your game has, then put them in the tags.. 

however for the tags they are important yes, but I don't think so much as one can expect, there are still a lot of games of the same genre out there.. but it's ok to put a lot of them both specific and generic :)

3d is perceived as something more professional especially when it is photorealistic which requires a lot of work, it is true that on the technical side it is much more difficult to manage, but it is also true that doing 2d on the artistic side is not something easy :)

yes it's really something unexpected, I knew that for free it gets more downloads but not even 1000x, I understood if it was a AAA that cost 60+ but also considering that the price is only 1 for me it's something that doesn't make much sense..

however it's day one here too so it's probably on "recently released demos" or something like that, it will definitely decrease over the next few days, I don't know yet if it actually gives more exposure to the whole game or if it's ultimately just something separate. .

It's true that if something free gets so much more chances that people play it, it explains the microtransition issue perfectly, but I'm not going to do something like that. I would also put it for free so that everyone actually plays it, but if it's not with microtransitions how is it possible to make a profit if the price is 0?..

so i put it back to 1 and i don't think i'll ever discount, lol

no sale at 3 but the reason is that the demo has been downloaded by 1000 in a few hours since it was public, it means that if the game was free I would have gotten 1000 times in terms of downloads/visibility, of course i know free is different than paid but i really didn't think the price of just 1 made all that difference.. it's 1 dollar lol 

1000x is really a huge gap, that makes me think 3 is too much, as i thought sales have dropped to 0 sales since I set it to 3, so if the demo gives that extra visibility I can put it back to 1 and I don't have to think about discounts..

the thing that free = 1000 per day and $1 = 1 makes me think that 3 is too high also considering the type of game and I really hate this whole thing about the price and discounts, so I put it back to 1 and I stop thinking about it, going back to 1 i can actually see if the demo makes any difference or not.. 

I'll probably delegate this task to someone else for the next games, it's not something for me,  I hate marketing stuff too much lol

yes, the results are undoubtedly better on steam.. actually here it is practically 0 organic, but itch himself states that he doesn't want to be a competitor of steam but to be more like bandcamp, and in fact it is exactly like this, on bandcamp things go exactly the same way if you don't do marketing it's like a folder on your pc.. yes it's a bit sad but it's right that people know it in my opinion, I was expecting something different when I put the game here..

yes for my part I'm still in the experimentation phase.. I raised the price but I expect not to make any more sales until the discounts, even seeing only one sale a day can be motivating so zero can be demotivating.. in fact it bothers me a little too having had to do it because if it were up to me I would also put it for free so that everyone can play it, but free means no profit and the low price means not being able to make discounts for greater visibility.. I really hate it these things,

I think steam certainly knows better than me the behavior of buyers and the right price for a product, so how and when to make sales, perhaps for those who want to let him manage it, I honestly don't know why he doesn't have an automatic option for this.

the idea of indie fairs is good, i think it's more or less the idea behind game jams.. but i'm not very knowledgeable about this, anyway yes, i agree :)

so the only thing to do is try to do different things until you find the one that works best..

my main problem is that usually the things people like i don't like and the things i do they don't like (lol) , however if I like it for sure someone else will like it so it's just a matter of letting them know..

honestly I would love a button that says "give me the game and I'll take care of everything else" ,so without having to think about the right price or discounts or anything else.. but I don't think there is anywhere.

you need to try different things then delve into the one that works best for you :)

so I did the demo and raised the price more or less following the advice on this page, so setting it to 5 seemed too much and setting it to 2 too little considering that I will then systematically make discounts, so I chose 3.. however I didn't still the faintest idea of how I should choose the right price,if I did right or wrong or whatever.. some advice? actually now i expect sales to drop straight to 0 forever, however we will see what happens.. lol

about the demo i put it together with the whole game, so people can download it for free, however i saw that others here directly created another page for the demo putting it for free, i guess it's for indexing issues, should i do this? advice on this?

thanks

Hi Majid,

yes i think it is helpful for others to see the data someone got, before releasing the game i spent many hours researching similar topics..

however the truth is that I still have no idea if another type of game or with another price I would have obtained the same results or better or worse, I would need a comparison with something to know if they are good stats or not.. definitely if it would take me a year or 2 or thousands of hours to do it was not good. lol

(so if anyone has experiences to share, please share them.)

yes I thought about doing the demo, it wouldn't require much effort it would be enough to start the game from another point and then stop it in another before the end, then maybe tweak the pause menu a bit, maybe a couple of hours working if you already have the whole game done.

for find the key I think the images and the description say exactly what game it is, that's why I didn't do it considering the price of only 1.. but if I raise it to 5 maybe it's the case, it would be definitely useful for people who want to try on less than recommended hardware..

I was also thinking of adding a vr version for find the key, using the same maps but adding/removing stuff so that it becomes good for vr, however from what the review feed has been like it makes me think it's not worth doing. (lol)

for the next game yes, I haven't started anything concrete yet but it will probably be horror with a simple narrative, but first I was thinking of something in vr, a horror-themed shooting with skeletons and monsters, sculpting a monster in blender is easier and fun than making a real human.. (lol)

however the motion sickness thing blocks me a bit, even though I don't suffer much from it I don't want people to get sick playing my game, and with teleportation even if it takes away the sickness altogether it still ruins the immersiveness quite a bit, so I thought I'd do something where the player does things with his hands on the spot but I haven't started anything yet, for sure it's not the lack of ideas, on the contrary ..

actually I have some projects already a little advanced, survival horror one like re8 and the other like silent hill but in first person,

i left them aside for now, they will take a lot of time to make and i dont want to work years on something only to find out that i would have to do things differently.. the idea was to start with some simple games like find the key, then analyze how things are going on the shops and see how to do things in the best way (or if it's worth doing it)..

about the 3 months, the fact is that on the release day you have the most visibility, and I think it depends on the game but about 10-20% of the wishlists you have accumulated buy it on the release day, so if you accumulate a lot of lists (by marketing ) maybe you can end up on the first page and then get the same visibility as in a month maybe in an hour.. it's just a matter of steam's argorithm, but if the game isn't good there's nothing that will make it good. lol

actually many successful games are made together with the community by putting it in early access and then listening to the feed of players, some never came out of early access or abandoned, but the others were very successful :)

ok so it's been a month since my game has been on steam, i'm doing an update as promised. I remember that I did 0 marketing, which means that I made the game and put it there, as an unknown developer without saying anything to anyone.

Find The Key su Steam

so here is the total data after one month which is released after 2 weeks "coming soon":

(the price is 0.99)

161 sales

22 refunds

12304 total shop visits

281 wish lists

3 reviews (all negative lol)

after the first few days of visibility as i thought it's back to around 150-200 visits per day organic but i think it will decrease even more as time goes on. the truth is that i don't have a clue if this data is good or not lol

to be 0 marketing 150 visits a day are good for me, it's not about random people but they are people who are interested in what you offer, therefore targeted visits that come from those who are looking for a game to buy.

the reviews are all negative, but they are only 3 out of 160 and they are from very dissatisfied people, this makes me think that all the others beyond the reviews were either satisfied or indifferent .. or that they simply didn't want to write.

the refounds are mostly performance issues, someone who wanted to try with lower than recommended hardware, but someone said it's not fun or that they bought it by accident, the game lasts less than an hour so it can also be any reason..

however from the stats, I see that over 50% of the players played it through, some even more than double the time it took to finish it, which makes me think they liked it enough to play it through to the end. so the things i think i should have done differently..

don't release the game just before the steam discounts:

before the discounts i was getting about 10 sales a day, from the day the discounts started it went down to 0, then it went back to 1-2 as soon as the discounts ended. it seems that when the discounts are on people just don't even look at the non-discounted ones, and having just released the game not even a month earlier i couldn't participate,

price too low:

so also keep in mind the discount strategy, i had put the price at 1, but maybe i should have put it at maybe 4 or 5, then do some discounts periodically to stimulate people who have the game in their wish list, maybe once a month. so I'm thinking of raising the price to at least 4, however I don't know how to evaluate the price issue properly..

I chose 1 because I wanted it to be accessible to anyone and at least to recover the money spent .. and maybe earn something, it took me about 150 hours to do it, which then became 200 with the additional work to be done for steam (localization and full controller support, shop page etc) halfway through the game I practically redid it to better structure the code so in reality perhaps half the time would have been enough, for this reason the price of 1 seemed ok to me, but if I also have to discount it to have visibility. lol

more time "coming soon" before releasing it: as I said, at least 3 months to have a greater impact on release.

and nothing I think is everything, if you have any questions, ask them.

meanwhile I'm tinkering to do something with VR, I tried to do some mechanics and some maps, but I don't know.. with teleportation the motion sickness is at 0, but it spoils the experience. I don't suffer much from motion sickness even without teleportation, but it's not pleasant. so maybe i'll do something where it's stopped in place.. but i don't know yet.

I think VR will boom when they come up with something for leg movement too, but it's a lot better than normal games so I think I'll shoot some skeletons until I can think of something to do. lol

if you have any questions ask them, and I hope my experience is helpful :)

Edd

no need to apologize, any intervention is welcome, indeed thanks for the links :)

yes also here are the free sounds I guess that for the most part they are the same as the other site: https://pixabay.com/

some time ago I also downloaded from a site a library of about 50gb of sound effects, this site gave the torrent and you could use them, I don't remember now what site it was, it wasn't a pirate site but it made professional sounds for big companies so every year he gave some to everyone, does anyone remember it? when I remember I edit this post and insert the link ..

however I ended up deleting them to free up some space because I wasn't using them .. for me it is better to only look for those on sites like the linked ones rather than a giant library where you will use a couple ..

yes I agree, it costs nothing to try, then let us know the experience :)

yes doing photorealistic things takes a lot of time, it's not just about textures and materials or a lot of polygons, the whole scene has to respect the things of reality, it means you have to put a lot of details .. small objects, everything has to look real otherwise it ruins the whole scene etc.

really a lot of time and very difficult, if you work alone you really risk going crazy .. I don't aim for photorealism, let's say that a graphic like ps3 suits me just fine..

here are some photorealistic models I made, it took at least an hour to make them and they are very simple, by the way I am also selling them at the same price as the game. lol

https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/eddysss

yes, to me it's more or less the same thing.

It is true that more people make the job easier, even at the level of motivating each other.

however, it is no longer a question of realizing your specific idea, at least that you are not paying people, but of realizing a group idea. which too can be nice .. but it is already difficult to agree on a single head, let alone that of a group.

alone the level of satisfaction in the end is much higher for me because I realize exactly what I had in mind at the beginning .. maybe the result satisfies only me, but that's the important, lol

as usual it depends on people's goals and what they want to achieve from the things they do ..

Hi Majid,

from what I have read for having succeeded with kickstarter you will have to give yourself a lot to do on a social level, it works if you have a community .. you will have to convince people, find them, do marketing for kickstarter too, I have never tried but I think it is the same as anything else that involves other people .. i'm skeptical here too, lol

however try and then let us know, good luck with the action RPG!

yes people appreciate more the best that today's technology can offer .. it means photorealistic 3D images, 2D makes you think something like 20 years ago for most people and it's a niche thing ..

personally in video games the thing I like most is the immersion in a 3D world and I think it is the same for most of the people, in fact I am thinking of developing something with VR ..

for music I create it myself, I have been making music for almost 20 years and the music / sound part is the easiest for me :)

si, è proprio quello che ho detto qualche post fa: patreon, kickstarter, youtube, social in generale.. non c'entrano nulla con lo sviluppo del gioco, nel senso che servono competenze diverse ed è un lavoro secondario che per la maggior parte di noi non è qualcosa che vogliamo fare.

è una cosa che ti deve piacere fare altrimenti è troppo stancante, toglie tempo alle cose che vorresti fare, ma la cosa peggiore è che ti distrae, pensare a quelle cose mi toglie ogni entusiasmo, è solo mi distrae..

e mi rattrista anche un po' perché se sei famoso puoi letteralmente fare qualsiasi cosa, se sei sconosciuto puoi fare il gioco più bello del mondo (non è il mio caso) che nessuno saprà mai..

tuttavia il fatto del "marketing fatto in casa" è necessario per farlo bene. con costanza o non otterrai risultati che ti motiveranno a continuare, ma per farlo bene devi essere motivato a farlo, e se non ti piace farlo non lo farai bene.. sicuramente sceglierei di paga qualcuno che lo faccia per me, ma anche quello non è fattibile i costi sono insostenibili..

quindi per me la cosa più sensata da fare è lavorare per fare un buon gioco e poi ottimizzare le cose da fare dopo, e basta. se non guadagno i milioni, significa che farò comunque un gioco migliore lol

Agree about everything, itch is no different than bandcamp, without marketing / community it's like putting the game in a folder on your pc ..

here you meet other people who have the same interests, exchange ideas or experiences, perhaps collaborate with jams etc ..

yes, it depends a lot on the genre of the game, however regardless of the type of game in theory it is enough to see what the popular people have done and then do something similar, possibly better to get the same results ..

but it always depends on what your goal is, if you do not intend to be very active on a social level on itch you will remain hidden after the first days of visibility,

the collections is just something like browser bookmarks, or the youtube look after, I suppose that means someone has shown interest, not much more than that ..

personally I don't even care what will happen after I create the game, it's something I do a few hours every day, instead of playing video games or watching TV series or being on social media .. a full blown hobby.

but for me the only logical thing to do once complete is to put it where players can find it, then optimize the minimum things that can be done,

which means steam, any player is there and seems to have organic traffic… even if it's only 200 visuals a day it's worth the initial spend and percentage of sales, it means if it's a good game it can be successful.

here unfortunately maybe it will be 300 views in a year and for those like me who don't care about anything outside of development it's not really an option to consider .. as usual it depends on the goals people have.

however if the intention is to make a ton of money, the best thing to do would be to see what games people want, then make a game that people want, then let people know they want that game that you created a game they want. lol

hello El-Jo66,

yes the lack of feed seems very common here. for my part the data are more or less the same as when I wrote the first post, 325 views and 54 downloads, 0 money except for the donation that Majid made as written above .. on steam i'm getting the average of about 10 sales a day, but it's still too early to consider it's only a week, probably in a while it will change,

for collections it is similar to browser favorites, but your data doesn't look bad anyway, 500 downloads means people want to try it, and what they paid is because they liked it and they want to support you so you make other games .. so it looks good to me.

but I can't really say either, someone else who wants to tell their own experience? :)

my answer is because making a game takes hundreds / thousands of hours, adding lol

hi Majid thanks,

yes the things you see on youtube or in other posts seem to be quite true, for the moment it seems to be stable at around 20 sales a day, which for being without any marketing seems good to me, however the price is 1, with prices more high I don't know but I think that even if I had put 2-4 the result would have been more or less the same ..

there are a lot of variables, but I think that after the first week of visibility the traffic will be back similar to when it was in arrival before the release, maybe 200 views which means maybe one sale per day and decreases over time .. lol

I will do an update in a few weeks, but yes, it seems that if the game is good it can be successful even without any marketing, with even a bit of luck it gains popularity thanks to word of mouth from people who play it the first few weeks or youtubers and streamers,

 there are also some tricks, like a multiplayer game with a lot of duration has more possibilities than another type of game because of things like "your friend is playing this"etc. .

 I don't know, we'll see.. marketing remains very important before launch anyway :)

lack of inspiration is something that does not exist .. you are just thinking about things that are too difficult for your skill level.

simplify ..

ok quindi oggi ho rilasciato il gioco su Steam,

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195200/Find_The_Key/

Aggiorno qui perché sono sicuro che altri siano interessati, quindi tra qualche settimana forse farò un altro aggiornamento.

innanzitutto quello che si legge su internet è vero, steam ha traffico organico, non ho fatto nessuna promozione e ho avuto circa 200 visite al giorno nel periodo in cui il gioco stava "arrivando" e ho ricevuto 4-5 liste dei desideri al giorno, 

quindi dopo poche ore dall'uscita ho fatto 20 saldi al prezzo di 1, questo è il primo giorno quindi di sicuro è una cosa che cambierà nei giorni successivi, comunque conferma anche il fatto che circa il 20% delle liste dei desideri diventano vendite lo stesso giorno del rilascio,

Troppo presto per fare altre considerazioni sul traffico o sulle vendite dopo il rilascio, ma per ora mi sembra molto buono.

sta andando tutto più o meno come mi aspettavo e questa è una gran bella cosa, se riesci a prevedere come andranno le cose vuol dire che hai capito e quindi puoi migliorare, per trovare la chiave nella realtà non mi aspettavo nemmeno di recuperare in 100 che ho speso per la quota iniziale a causa di 0 marketing, ma sembra che li recupererò in circa una settimana quindi bene,

quindi su come funziona steam penso di aver capito la maggior parte delle cose e quindi come sfruttarlo al meglio, (su youtube ci sono anche molti video)

ecco quindi alcuni consigli se state pensando di mettere il gioco su steam, che sono gli stessi che avete già sentito sui video di youtube.

1. Crea la pagina del negozio il prima possibile e ottieni la lista dei desideri, non appena hai una build e un trailer.

2. crea un gioco che le persone desiderano (vedi i Mi piace popolari per genere e prezzo)

3. Mantieni il gioco "in arrivo" per 3 o 4 mesi prima di rilasciarlo.

quindi se hai molte liste dei desideri riceverai molti giocatori e vendite il giorno del rilascio, per i giorni successivi non lo so ancora, aspetterò qualche settimana e poi scriverò un aggiornamento qui.

comunque dipende sempre da qual è il tuo obiettivo, ad esempio io preferisco creare 100 giochi che fanno 1 piuttosto che 1 che fa 100, proprio perché il punto è creare giochi per me. ovviamente anche fare 100 che fa 100 va bene. lol

non ho ancora iniziato a lavorare al prossimo gioco, le idee sono tante, comunque penso che non lo metterò nemmeno sul prurito, per me è stata una cosa completamente inutile..

so che non è bello dirlo sul forum itch, ma ho avuto 300 visualizzazioni i primi giorni, e poi 0 (letteralmente) i giorni successivi, questo non è qualcosa per me .. è solo la mia esperienza, ovviamente potrei sbagliarmi e poi cambio idea.

spero che la mia esperienza sia utile, aggiornerò in futuro,

Edd

visual novel is not really my kind of game.. however yours seems well done and captures the thriller / noir vibe very well, i like it , keep it up :)

I also think that the best thing is to do the full game for a fee, and a separate free demo.

I think we all make games here because we like to do it, and we would like to make a lot of money too, but we get 0 exposure.

the key point is to be active in the places where there are players of your specific game, for example for the tower game, go to the specific enthusiast forums and be active there.

itch is not a good place to promote, the reason is that we are not gamers here, but developers. (with exceptions of course) but it's like i want to sell shoes to other shoe manufacturers, it just can't work at best they'll tell you "nice shoes colleague ".

here is fine if you already have a community that you have built in other ways,

I got 300 views in all the first week and then 0 from there, but I didn't do anything but play the game and answer some interesting topic like I'm doing now, which is a good way to get some attention, but as I said simply here there is no public, there are colleagues.

about reddit and social is something I don't like, firstly because after a few hours your post has already disappeared and it seems to play some lottery try again and you will be luckier ..

about streamers and youtubers is what they seem to be hoping for, of course it would be nice to see someone famous playing your game with thousands of people, it's okay to contact them but they will probably get a lot of games every day and choose the ones that suit their audience while ignoring the others, maybe they won't even look beyond description etc,

but even if they do it is not said that your game will sell to their audience, I wouldn't count on it much it's a bit like playing the lottery here too.

so i think the best thing is to go to the specific places of fans of your specific genre (forums, blogs, youtubes etc), and get yourself known there, not just put the links, but become an active member of the community etc,

personally I don't like to do any of these things .. I just want to develop my ideas and make them available to the public, but the most important point is that it is it must be a good product anyway,

the numbers never lie, if it doesn't work with a few numbers it won't work with the big ones either, so I do what is necessary to get some statistics that I can consider sufficient to make my considerations, and then I do better next time.

for me it's a hobby, I enjoy creating a game much more than playing it, so it's a game to do it, except that the goal is not in a virtual world but in the real world, if it makes sense. lol

if you mean money for marketing it is 0, for the time it is a little more but not much. I am not and I do not want to be a blogger or a youtuber, not even a spammer (in the good sense) or a social manager, so I do just the minimum even if I know it is a mistake ..

but speaking of money I read somewhere that converting a person from visitor to player costs about 1 $ of marketing, but we are talking about marketing done well, for us independent / soloists I don't know if it is a viable path because we compete against millions of dollars..

in my ideal world as "artists" I think our job is just to create things, and the rest should be done by the "fans" ..

I don't know, honestly the marketing thing just makes me sad. lol

hi Majid, no updates are planned ..

or rather, I fixed a thing on the controller that did not work well in the menu when you changed language and I am just adding the translation in other languages besides English and Italian,

I'm just packing now so after the test I will update, but after this i dont think i will do anything else to find the key, maybe i could add more languages in the future but now i am already 15 and i dont think it can be considered an update ..

I read that steam gives priority to games that have the user's language over those that don't have them in regards to recommendations, so I'm only doing this for a marketing reason, but I still don't know if I will also receive 300 visuals on steam the first few days and then stop .. lol

actually i thought i'd add some bonus unlocked if you get to the end of the game, I keep open the possibility of making some additions in the future, maybe a demo of another game or a secret level or something like that, but no update is planned for the moment :)

ok no problem, play a little with the settings and it should go better, max quality and only the lower resolution scale should improve the performance in full screen, but if that's not enough, do window mode with a lower resolution, or decrease quality etc

unfortunately I have no way to test on hardware other than mine .. but with the right combination it should work well even on non-gaming PCs  :)

however it seems strange to me, if it worked well in the first part it should work fine till the end so if I understand correctly you are talking about where you need to jump the first time, I think you just forgot to run before you jump .. if not run the jump will be too short and you cannot continue,

if I guessed it means that I have to make the message that says to run more visible, the checkpoint is right there if you do continue instead of a new game you should start from there, let me know :)

hello thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it! :)

ok then i will increase the distance to interact with the objects thanks of the feed i really appreciate,

however what exactly is the problem with the frame rate that prevented it from continuing? what hardware do you have and settings do you use?

if you can tell the exact point and specific information etc, this is quite a serious accessibility issue, maybe i can do something about it if you tell me exactly what it is ..

but i dont think, unreal engine is quite heavy even with empty scenes and needs recent hardware .. thanks anyway :)

ok thanks :)

in my experience outside of games, there is always an audience for the things you do as long as it is done right.

I did things that were perfect for me that nobody liked, and things that were bad for me that went well ... so my approach is to do all the ideas I have, as long as they are done well ..

i wouldn't worry too much about what people want, often they don't even know until they find it.. I don't even worry much about failure, as long as I'm doing something I like to do at worst I learn how not to fail next time .. so the first person you have to satisfy is yourself then other people who appreciate there are for sure, the problem is always the same .. lol

 i watched the jams there was a pretty interesting one about horror, but i don't even try to participate .. i can't stop working on something until i'm satisfied and those few days are not really enough,

a high level of skill is needed so that you can work smoothly and get the desired result right away, then yes it would make sense for me to participate .. lol