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I'm worried my game is going to get buried :/

A topic by pixeltroid created Jul 27, 2020 Views: 453 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(4 edits) (+5)

So I started my itch.io game-page ( https://pixeltroid.itch.io/citadel-stormer-2 ) on June 21, 2020 to promote my 2D action platformer. On the same day, I uploaded a demo and decorated the game page with a logo, icons, background, carefully selected thumbnails, screenshots, gameplay video, write-up and all the relevant tags. I even started maintaining a devlog, to ensure that viewers and players know the status of the game. I also posted links to my gamepage on the itch forums. Sadly for me, it's been more than a month now, and I have only 100 views, 18 downloads and 2 follows.  And the "best" part is that for the last few weeks, it has not been making any impressions, so I guess the game has been buried completely and is not being seen in searches.  

On the other hand, on the same day that I started my game-page here, I uploaded the same demo (and the same write-up, thumbnails, screenshots, video, tags) on the rival site "GJ". And my numbers are significantly better over there -- 351 views, 133 downloads and 11 follows. My game was also featured at the top of the GJ "hot page" for a while. It still keeps getting downloaded a few times every week. Its doing better on GJ even though I don't have a devlog over there or even promote my game on their forums. 

Does any one here know why this is so?

Can someone take a look at my game-page and tell me if there is something wrong or lacking? Or if I have missed out something? 

Perhaps it could be because visitors to this site are not interested in demos and only want full games. Alright, but now my concern is that even if I do release the full game here and juice up my game-page with a wider variety of thumbnails and showcase the more interesting parts of the game, the game will still not get noticed because it's already been buried. I just don't see how my game would even be seen anymore. 

I fear that I blew the chance to make a good first impression and that there are no second chances. 

Should I just delete my game-page and re-make it when I release the full game?

Any answers would be appreciated.

Moderator(+2)

Deleting the game’s page and recreating it serves no benefit. When you make a major update for a game, you can make a devlog marked as such, and it will bump the game in a similar way new games are.

As for the views/download ratios, I can’t say for sure. I’ve published a game to both Itch and GameJolt (I assume that’s what you meant by GJ) and had more success on Itch. You are quite likely getting more views because the game was featured, and not because “you did anything right/wrong”.

I don’t know the process on GameJolt, but on Itch, it is decided by specific members on the team what game is going to be featured, and the only thing we can do is keep making fun games and hope it happens sometime.

Congrats on getting featured :)

Hi Dark Dimension. Thanks for the reply.

I think my game was only "featured" on GJ because it made it to the "hot" page as a result of being downloaded a lot in a few days -- and not because the GJ admins decided to feature it (there's a separate section on GJ for that). So....making it to "hot" created a  positive feedback loop and helped my game get seen and downloaded a whole lot more. 

Yet, the opposite is true for me on itch. 

Admin(+1)

For clarification on featuring, we have a few different ways games can make it to the homepage:

  • Video feature: Our curation team selects a game, records it for our youtube channel and we place it up on a big banner on the top of the homepage
  • Featured games: Our curation team selects these
  • Fresh games: These are auto-populated from activity across users on our site, admin/curators do not select thees manually

Additionally, you can show up on the homepage in other ways that aren’t “featuring”:

  • Releasing a new game will have your project show up on the homepage of your followers
  • Your game can appear in the “recommended games” section on people’s homepage if your game aligns with that account through our recommendation algorithm

We also frequently feature games on our Twitter account, that’s handled by someone different on our team and they choose independently of what’s going on for the homepage featured (although they often share the same items)

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