itch.io

Wish you the best! Are you on Bluesky? That's the only social media we use at the moment, I'd be happy to give you a shoutout but don't expect too much- we are terrible at social media and have the same struggles you do ;)

As people have said before, there are so many, it's very difficult. I think, rather than worry about mass markets like Facebook, you might be better off finding and individually contacting people who you think will have a special interest in your game. 

You're Indonesian, right? Maybe start with the local approach and contact Indonesian Youtubers, Twitch streamers, bloggers etc. who have an interest in indie games. Even if they don't have huge viewing figures, they will have an immediate interest in you as a developer, and making contacts is always good, and can lead to bigger things.

I think people can worry too much about their portfolios and websites, and keeping it simple is usually a good idea.

Often people who commision artists (and I've done this myself), will be looking at a lot of profiles and asking themselves these questions:

Is your art a good fit for the game?

What are your costs?

Are you pleasant and reliable to work with?

How do I contact you?

And, of course, if the website ian't purely for commissions but also for a way for people to know more about you, or even as a diary function, then you could incorporate a blog section or something.

I've checked your posts on the Help Wanted forum and, yes, you do have a big task ahead as you basically need a whole studio!

Obviously you'll have to devote a lot of your time to recruitment. I don't know how much you're doing already but maybe finding the right person and asking them individually is one idea. Checking out game jams, for instance, is a good way to find people who want to get into game dev more seriously, 

You might also need to reduce the scope of your project and work with you've got or can realistically get (for instance, can the game designer do the level design and UI too? Do you really need so many artists? Can you get the audio you want from open source assets?.

Anyway, good luck and hope you get the game you want!

The best thing to do- I find- is to google games of the level of indieness you want and see where they appear. For instance, if you search Dragonsweeper (which is a simple but very addictive browser game released on Newgrounds), you'll get sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Kotaku, daily.dev and Thinky Games. 

There are many, if you dig around. One of the problems is that websites that review indie games can be very much like indie games themselves in that they're usually small, specialist, hard to find and- because they exist 'for the love', they often come and go very quickly. 

Often the best place to go to is websites specific to a genre or region. Our upcoming adventure game, for instance, has had coverage in Adventure Game Hotspot, przygodomania.pl and Quest Time (a Russian site). Also, there are individual reviewers  such as FutureCopLGF who posts videos of the best Newgrounds games each month, there are microbloggers, forums, small collectives who enjoy playing indie games with friends,  sites that enjoy indie games and do something different to promote them (like your own website! Thank you for covering Five Day Detective by the way ;) ), there are podcasts like Save Your Game with Pushing Up Roses, or the Adventure Games Podcast, there are thousands of individual Twitch streamers and Youtubers.

Essentially, there's a tonne of great indie stuff out there and the scene's alive and well, but it often takes some finding. I'd love for websites like itchio to do more to help give a platform for people who cover their games- maybe a specific forum? As this helps us all :)

Search people who Twitch stream / Youtube similar games to yours. Email them.

Sounds simple, but this is the best advice you'll get.

Is it not loading at all? What browser are you using? I've just tried Firefox and Edge, and it's working fine in those.

If it's a problem within the game, go to Settings -> New Game -> ✓ to reset. It might be that there's a clash between the version you were playing before and this one.

Definitely. I think the main reason is that there are some very popular streamers who specialise in indie horror, so these games get a lot of traffic, and attract people who love horror games to itchio.

Thanks for playing! Yes, sorry, we've added an extra hint as one puzzle was driving everyone crazy, but we haven't updated the translated versions with this just yet!

Welcome in!

Strong narrative and creative puzzles? We have those! :D

https://krunchyfriedgames.itch.io/five-day-detective

Just checked and the downloads are working fine on my laptop (Windows 10). What device/ operating system are you using for this? I've noticed you've made this comment on other games too.

Woo- thanks!

Cheers- that really helps us!

Thanks :) Good luck with part 2!

Good topic! First game: Witches and Bandits and Swords (Oh My)- 2017. It was developed from a choose-your-own-adventure ebook I wrote for Kindle:

Latest Game: Five Day Detective, a point a click adventure. Kept the same core team of Coder Mike and I, but have now commissioned artists and translators.

Alas, I have no smartphone!

This looks like it could be very cool but after the first dialogue scene, the game got stuck on a loading screen for me.

Esto parece que podría ser muy bueno, pero después de la primera escena de diálogo, el juego se quedó atascado en una pantalla de carga para mí.

Puedo hablar español usando DeepL translation- ¿es eso lo suficientemente cerca? XD

Saludos desde Inglaterra de todos modos. Me alegro de ver a alguien de Cuba aquí.

Thanks for playing!

I really enjoyed playing- it looks fantastic and controls really well, so great work!

A few things that could do with improving:

First time round, I fell off the map and kept falling. It would be good to have the escape button as a way to return to the menu.

My controller didn't work (it's a Logitech which counts as an Xbox controller),

Would be good if I could reduce the graphics settings (apologies if you can and I just missed this).

If the game is played on keys or controller, I think you should be able to navigate the menu this way too (and if you release the game on Steam, this is something they're quite strict about).

This is obviously a very ambitious game, so I definitely appreciate all effort, but maybe needs some polish and playtesting :)

Would be happy for any feedback on our point and click style adventure, Five Day Detective :)

Available for download and browser.

Thanks for your video- enjoyed that. Good to see your technique developing!

It's an interesting idea. I think it works with Rented Nightmare because it kind of complements the atmosphere without being all about the streamer, but it might depend on the game.

If you fancy trying it with our new adventure Five Day Detective, I won't complain XD

Well, you're a lot richer than us! And that's a lot of colours too. We don't get nearly so many different referral sites.

So, two years have passed- not quite a weekly update, but nm.

And we've just released a fourth game- a point and click style adventure called Five Day Detective. Go play it, it's good XD
Anyway, our stats are now:

Views 103k

Downloads 10.1k

Browser Plays: 22.4k

Revenue $23.99 (we can afford an extra coffee to share since last time!)

Also, we're on 299 followers so... once again, who wants to be 300???

Thanks for playing! And that's quite an incredible British accent ;) Congrats on solving the puzzles too- good perseverance. Also, we still have 'cowboy coffee' over here. I haven't heard that phrase before, but I'm definitely going to start using it!

She now has a point and click adventure podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/save-your-game/id1729089915

Thanks! Enjoyed your commentary, and how you avoided the British word for 'cigarette' ;) Soup Con is the place to be!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for your comments- glad you had fun!

We have actually given in to popular demand and added hotspots to the next build of the game. This will be uploaded soon (we've also fixed the Wrong Un bug).

We haven't given in to demand with the puzzles yet, though! I think these are hard but fair ;)

I'll keep you posted on the full version. This could be some time off but we do have the main coding elements and most of the story done now.

Hi Vaken, good to see you back! Hope you enjoy it :)

An immediate issue for me is your game's thumbnail. This stuff's very important for promotion because it's the first thing many people will see of your game. Your screenshots look pretty good, but the thumbnail looks like a rushed afterthought and people may be put off clicking onto your gamepage because of it.

I'd definitely suggest redoing it. If you need inspiration, look at the thumbnails of similar games that you like. See what they're doing well, what appeals to you, and how you can apply this to yours :)

We're planning to do both of these but... not til next year. Sadly I can't give you future stats XD

I'd say it's not a bad thing to put out a paid game on itch, because you don't lose anything other than potential views of people who'd only play for free. And having a demo on your page fixes that problem altogether.

However, if a dev doesn't think they'll get their $100 back from Steam, I'd be surprised if their game would sell more than a few copies here either. Exceptions might be very niche games with a small but dedicated audience (some visual novels, or asset packs maybe).

I've just realised @hechelion and I have both read your question in an entirely different way, so I apologise if this answer isn't what you wanted!

Thanks for your comment! We're umming and arring a bit about the prompts/ hotspots. The worry is, it might make it too easy if we show every interactable object, but this is certainly something we'll think about for the full game.

Heh, the game wasn't intended to be heavily British- maybe that's just how it came out XD

We wanted to go with keyboard/ controller character movement for this one from the start. Sure, some people will prefer using a mouse and cursor, but this is the road we've gone down, and there's no turning back now.

So, essentially, you've got a band together but don't know what sort of music to play.

You've also got issues with income but video games are unlikely to make money in the short term so, I'll just concentrate on the first issue.

First of all, you need a project you're all passionate about and think is worthwhile to ensure everyone has motivation. Maintaining a four-person team over the long term is very difficult, and you must be prepared for people to drop off, whatever you do.

It feels like you have good communication on your team, so that's an excellent start. You just need the much maligned 'ideas guy'. Maybe schedule a meeting on Zoom, or Discord, or however you do things, for a week's time, and ask people to write down ideas for that meeting (no matter how vague). These could be ideas in terms of theme/ genre/ story/ tone/ mechanics/ existing games to draw inspiration from/ art/ whatever. In the meeting, you could go through these and see what makes people enthusiastic.

Coincidentally, a lot of people have been writing on this forum lately struggling with ideas, and I wrote a thread here to try and help. Hopefully you'll find this useful. 

Wish you luck :)

Edit: At some point, you're also going to need a leader. Once all the ideas are on table, someone's got to be moving things forward. It might be that this is you.

Further Edit(!): As @Magicsofa says, do not worry at all about being nearly 30- that's a great age to start out!

Spitballing is good! Think I'm gonna take tonight off, and coder Mike and I can talk it over for the main demo build and see what we come up with. It might be that this would just be less frustrating if the character's movement was changed to come to a dead stop before the walk cycle was over. There'd be a trade off with the animation quality though. There always seems to be a trade off!