you and your buddy spend 3 full months working on a village builder game

> you and your buddy spend 3 full months working on a village builder game
> create your own path-finding and AI systems
> teach yourself to make pixel-art and retro-shaders
> make literally everything yourself
> figure $2 is a fair price
> release it
> get featured on the front page of itch
> holy shit! this is awesome!
> store page gets loads of traffic
> mfw literally 0 people actually buy the game
> come to the realization that nobody is interested in a pixel-art village builder
> a couple of more months go by without sales
> set the price to $0 and face defeat

Such is the life of the indie dev

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thatfish.itch.io/return-of-the-skeletal
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Maybe its about marketing.

See Kingdom for example, its a very simple game, very short, little to no replayability, and it still sells.

Sorry to hear that user

why the fuck would you ever release it on itch

What’s the name of the game? You aren’t very good at shilling, user.

Do you have a youtube video to show some gameplay ? like another user said, Kingdom sold well, maybe it's still salvageable. Let us help you.

Because if I released it on Steam I'd be $100 negative instead of $0 negative

Yeah you can check out the store page it has a video there.

I mentioned a game in another thread and they said the graphics were too undefined and bled into each other which I think might be the reason why people don't take kindly to it but I honestly don't know.

thatfish.itch.io/return-of-the-skeletal

>instead of $0 negative
You assume that your time you've spent working on it is worth $0. You're not $0 in the negative, you're above that. So much so that $100 is not that much of a steep price to pay, especially when you only need to sell ~70 copies to make it work.

>0 people buy it
>all those people in the comments from months ago

hmm

Yeah I suppose you're right in a way. It's sort of hard to judge though in terms of money expended while working on the game. Obviously I still gained from the work I did in terms of experience so that's something

Free copies I sent out to people on reddit sadly.

>make a shitty game in 3 months
>start crying when people prefer to buy games made a team of dozens or more people over the course of multiple years
You're right, you're the perfect definition of an indie dev

I'm not crying. Yeah the game's shitty. I realized that fairly quickly when literally nobody bought it. I just thought it was a worthwhile story to tell.

It came as a shock to me because I think I was so snowed in on the idea that my game was actually worth someone's money.

I believe the risk is worth, at least you can see more people playing it.

Here some things you could do, you have little to lose:

>try to get it on steam, gog and epic
>put the game for $2 or $5
>give free copies to lots youtubers and streamers
>go to as many internet foruns you can and shill it
>many tech oriented foruns have active boards for videogames, go shill there too
>look out for discussions on other games of the genre on steam, sometimes people make rec threads

What were you expecting user?, you haven't exactly struck gold, what are you doing better than say, Don't Starve?, or Darkwood?

And you've already given up and started sulking, either continue supporting the game, working on it, adding features and marketing, or take the xp you gained and move on.

Would be worth something if it was released 10 years ago when the market wasn't flooded by indies making games in 3 months releasing several hundreds of games every year.

Okay so I looked at your video.
What I thought while looking at it without any filter whatsoever:

- The music you chose is... bland and didn't convey any feeling whatsoever, weird.
- Your UI is really gross/too big/not defined enough
- It's too much zoomed in. It was like seeing a game in a 360 or 480p resolution, uncomfortable.
- The pixel art is not exactly a strong selling point but it should be enough if you pour more "soul" or distinct art style in it.
- After watching your video, I was not able to understand what your game was about so a real lack of info there.
- Maybe you should try creating a demo !

>teach yourself to make pixel-art and retro-shaders
should've taught yourself how to make actual art instead
blocky pixel art is trash that screams of laziness and a desire to pander to nostalgia that a majority of the hipsters who praise the style don't even have
2d rendering is fine, but the pixel art shit gotta go

Mostly it's just a story about my experience releasing my first commercial game. I'm not here to shill it and I'm not trying to turn this into a sob story. I think it's a worthwhile story about how even small expectation can be broken.

At this point I've already moved on to new things and I don't intend to update this game anymore. But I think it's sort of a cool game despite its flaws which is why it makes sense to still have it up for free.

Given the response from the ones who have actually played it and the amount of work I'd need to put into it to rework it I just don't feel it's worth it. At this time I can't put it up for any price higher than free.

I overvalued my product and have already moved on to newer things which are hopefully much better!

so what's the hook of the game?

I'm not a huge fan of pixel art honestly, it was just an exercise in a new area that I hadn't tried to do anything in

It's got pixel art!

By the way OP, thanks for sharing your experience. It takes courage and you are right in working on another game ASAP as long as you keep, what you learned from this one, in mind. I wish you the best, who knows, in a matter of months or years, you could be the next big thing. Don't let your dream be dream !

It's a simple village builder where you've got villagers that collect resources and soldiers that defeat skeletons.

Your goal is to track down where King Skeletal has his fortress and defeat him.

The game is extremely unforgiving but it doesn't take much time to master.

Shit user that sucks. I wish I could buy your game but I really don't give a shit about builder games.
Wish you good luck next time. At least you got some dev experience and can work on more ambitious projects.

Dude, what were you expecting? You didn't even spend half a year working on it and it shows. The game seems very simplistic and the pixel art could be better, only slightly better than Realm of the Mad God. It's almost as if it's a proof of concept? Consider it as a way to build up your skills and move onto more ambitious projects.

I honestly wouldn't want anyone to buy the game at this point as it's sort of bug-riddled but itch.io only allows $0 priced games to be pay what you want so that's what it's gonna be

I wish I could set aside 3 months to work on a game

>teach yourself to make pixel-art
Just from this pic alone, I would not buy your game, primarily because it looks like shit.
Next time, hire an actual artist, or teach yourselves art fundamentals before trying to do pixel art.

I wasn't expecting much, honestly. 10 purchases or so? But at this stage I can see why nobody would buy it and that was also why I decided to put it to $0

Agreed

>not fighting other cute pixelated youkai girls
wasted potential!

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Honestly yeah if OP had just made it an anime game it would have sold like hotcakes.

I didn't know buying games on itch was a thing

OP knows it is not morally right to take advantage of the mentally handicapped

I have another game on my storepage for $1 called The Walking Fish which was made for a game jam. That game sold like 50 copies (one guy even gave me $9 tips).

So it's definitely a thing.

This makes me wonder what the wallrunners guy is up to

maybe your game is shit, looks comfy though

Oh shit!
You're the guy from the walking fish thread. Did you manage to improve the space station visual yet?

I mean it's not *shit* but it's not that good. It honestly is kind of comfy (despite the sometimes annoying graphics).

If I can compliment my game I think it totally nails the comfiness.

Yeah see pic related. I'll add a before pic as well!

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idk, I bought rise to ruins and that game looks like dogshit

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I believe you, i just never heard of it before.
I can imagine it's hard to sell games on a site with a lot of free games on the front page.

I don't know, man. Rise to Ruins seems like it already has a lot more varied assets that what my game offers

Why are indie devs so entitled in thinking that every game they shit out deserves limelight and success? Just because digital storefronts exist doesn’t mean you should be on them. Fucking whiners do something useful for a change.

I think it's just a matter of over-valuing your product because of the amount of time you spent on it and the pride you take in it.

I think the failure of this game taught me a good lesson in terms of respecting the market and putting more work into my games as well as being more objective.

it looks awful t b h

Well I respect that. It seems that many people agree.

The art is just too... Man I can barely tell what is going on on that screenshot.
Iike the pants on those people (I think they're people) almost blend with the road (if that's a road)

First off don't shit so much on yourself and your work. The first thing most authors are told after they finish their first real story/short story is have a unbiased person read and give critical info about it. Almost no ones first piece of work is good but it still is a stepping block if they don't give up and keep coming up with good interesting ideas.

The fish needs more tits. And the ability to naruto run

Well I mean I want to be realistic about the situation and in hindsight I overestimated myself that much is true.

But on the other hand I'm still very proud of myself for having put myself out there and actually made a "working" product that I can at least allow to stay up (for free)

And despite all of this I'm already working on my next game and have since September of last year!

Don't take it personally user, that's just where we are now, we've come so far that markets are incredibly saturated, games, movies, music, literature, whatever you're trying to do, someone or several someones have probably already done it, and much better than you did.

Just look at all the shovelware on Steam and itch, unless you can differentiate yourself, don't expect to stand out.

Its all about marketing. The marked is flooded with indie games. I like them but most of them have no visibility.

Now you indie devs get the musician experience. There are shitloads of great musicians and bands out there. But 99% of people will only know the same 100 artists. Because they are the ones getting pushed very hard by a multi billion industry...

learn economics dood. opportunity cost etc

meanwhile my shitty text game sold over 5k copies

I did spend more than fucking 3 months on it tho

Put on mobile and steam. add some story or something.

Well there's marketing yes, but I think I came out the gate a bit too quickly with an unpolished game that had been done many times before in many better ways

Yup 3 months is a short time and I was too eager to get it out

I'd probably do that if I still cared about the idea but now that it's been out for months I've already moved onto new things

The marked is saturated

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People actually buy games on steam you cockgobbler.

>3 full months

You got a game done in 3 months?! Damn, bro, that's pretty badass.

I've been telling myself I'll make a game since like 2012 and I still don't have jackshit to show for it except a couple of incomplete toy programs where you can move a sprite around, kek.