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Best way to market my game?

A topic by Master Sak created 24 days ago Views: 156 Replies: 3
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I am currently developing a survival game called Beastbound, a game where you are a monster being hunted down by humans. The story is that you used to be human, and you were cursed by an evil king. The aim of the game is to find the randomly spawning palace, defeat the king and reverse the curse. During night you are safe, but during the day you are hunted by the various human classes.

I am currently struggling with the best method to market my game. I've posted on youtube and reddit, yet the impact has been very low. Is there any consistently useful method to market your game?

(+1)

Okay, so I'm gonna say up front, this is a hard problem. I have not marketed a successful game! I'm making snap shallow judgments here, and while they could be a useful insight into the reddit/youtube audience you're trying to reach, I don't claim to actually have the answers.

That said: what you've got is not very far along and clearly isn't a fun game yet. Nothing is really happening except some jumping and daintily taking out a pickaxe. The art and animations are very amateur. (There's a stronger correlation between good animation and good gameplay than people are consciously aware of--a good dash or jump or attack feels good.) The story premise is interesting, but only if you can write dialog well and actually tell a good story. Just describing it isn't enough.

Making a game by yourself is hard! It sucks to have to be good at everything. Being a solo dev gives you creative freedom, simplifies money concerns and means you don't have to navigate as many social interactions, but you won't get any marketing boost for being solo if the game can't stand on its own. There's over a million games on itch and more being made every day, and people want to play the best. They'll all have different preferences and different ideas of "best," but they aren't throwing darts at a board either. What is Beastbound doing so well in this video that people should give it a second glance?

Anyway, I don't think you should worry about marketing just yet. A lot of it is luck, but you have to get yourself into the right position first or luck won't matter.

(And just to be clear, I'm saying all of this through a marketing angle, because you asked. It's totally valid for that not to be your goal at all. There's nothing wrong with just making the game you want to make!)

Thanks for all the constructive criticism, this is really helpful and exactly what I needed to hear. I have a question though, can good animation and better gameplay make up for the poor art, because that is the only thing I will struggle to change.

(+1)

Well, a lot of animation is art and can't really be separated from it. (Not quite 100% of it, there's some aspects that are more about code, but code alone won't get you there.)

I'd say that having a fun game and grabbing people's attention in the first place are two related but distinct things. You don't need the best art to be successful, strictly speaking. (Undertale and Baba Is You spring to mind. But don't copy their art styles either, obviously.) And the best art isn't necessarily the most complicated art--a simple style that takes shortcuts can work if it's distinctive and cohesive.

It's hard to give a straight answer on this. There isn't a firm "if you do better than this than you will definitely be successful and otherwise you will flop" bar. But I'd generally assume that being better at art helps, most of the time.