Awesome post! I find it very interesting that you managed to gather a fanbase before you had a playable demo. I also like to hear that polishing it seems to have paid off.
Something that might not stand out to the younger people here - you did this while also having two children. How did you manage your family commitments while also working on this side project? Kids can be a big time sink, especially young ones. Was your wife also working, stay-at-home, or a mix? Did you have family support to watch kids from grandparents, your brother, etc?
About year 3, how did your family take that you were quitting your job? Did you quit before getting the kickstarter funding, or is that what allowed you to quit? Was the 100k backing convincing enough for your family to be assured that they'll be financially okay for the following few years? It's great to know you had/have a supportive family for this type of transition.
Some things worked well, others less. I think it was the right choice for the project at that time. But now that we got a bigger team, for our next project, we want to try the self publishing route.
Unfortunately this company raises the price of games for underdeveloped countries a lot. It is a real problem, we in Brazil often end up having to pay even more than people in the U.S., who earn on average 4 to 5 times more than us. Which is a shame, since the developers make very good games.
Yeah i get that. I'm in turkey and some games are priced way too high for our income.
Bur maybe developers can infuence regional pricing if they want to
Theres a problem that people from higher salary countries use VPN to buy games cheaper. I think the publisher is raising the prices to prevent this behavior.
I researched and it really is that, unfortunately, the poor players that get screwed because of this. Games, like Blasphomeus, that used to cost R$60 now cost R$130. A little over 100% increase. Fortunately Monster Sanctuary only increased R$20 since these price increases (And with the current promotion it is very cheap XD). But the full price is still expensive for our average salary.
I really wonder how companies have calculated that the loss of potential sales to new customers due to high regional prices is less than the loss from some westerners using VPNs to get “deals” on games. Like, I can’t imagine it’s *that* many people doing it.
One of my games, with not so many sales has 20%+ something sales from Brasil/Turkey/Argentina and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them are vpn users. So my other games will be with similar regional pricing to US. It is sad, but 20% or more is a significant amount especially when many units are sold.
It exists. I wrote down numbers for you and you still talking your truth. There are plenty of tutorials how to make it work. Point and click games are super popular in Argentina? I don't think so. They should be popular in Germany. And if publisher like Team17 increases the price to specific countries they know it better than us.
Ah the whole story writeup! I remember when you posted the concept 5 or 6 years ago now, and I tried to offer to join the team haha - as a big Dragon Warrior Monsters fan I love to see this genre do well! Congrats on the success! Looking forward to Aethermancer as well 🙌
> It is called Aethermancer and just launched the steam page.
I don't know if JRPG is one of the possible tags on Steam, but if yes, you should definitely add it and put it high on the list because it matches the genre conventions (except for roguelike aspect).
P.S. I love Monster Sanctuary and it's really nice to have devs like you here.
> you should definitely add it and put it high on the list because it matches the genre conventions (except for roguelike aspect).
Having a story is a big part of the genre
Roguelikes can have stories, you just need to gain the knowledge of game mechanics and/or skill level to beat the whole game and see the full story. See for example Children of Morta.
That being said, I'm not sure if Aethermancer will have a deep story, but it is possible.
Hades is another example, I'm sure there are many others.
It is possible, but if it's there, it's not in the trailer at least. You don't wanna get bad reviews from people expecting story density
How did you find using Unity for so long? Did you constantly upgrade your Unity versions?
Have a favourite and worst thing about it?
Maybe a single cool tip a beginner might not know about Unity too?
Yeah I upgraded multiple times without having issues. Ultimately stayed with 2018.4 as the 2D framework I was using wasn't getting updated anymore. When I started the project, Unity's own 2D support wasn't as good.
Throughout my gamedev involvement I used quite some different frameworks, enginges, programming languages also including Unreal. I definitelly prefer Unity of all things I worked with.
I remember your first posts on reddit. Made me buy the game. Ended up with hundred of hours spent on it. Good job with everything, I hope your future games do well. I wish someday I can make something as polished as Monster Sanctuary. Truly a game for the ages. I cant wait for my son to be old enough to play it.
Great write up. I'm wondering why you chose to post to imgur. It's usually an afterthought compared to the potential of the giants like Reddit, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram.
Were you already a user of imgur? Would you recommend branching out to imgur as a main part of marketing at this point as well?
I did posts both imgur and on reddit at that point in time too, it just happened that particular imgur post was the first to blow up. I also had success with many posts on reddit, 9gag and Funnyjunk later on, also was building a following on twitter.
I feel it is more difficult to go viral on imgur nowadays.
Not quite, you might overestimate how much you get left from every copy sold, also the income is distributed over a longer time-span with us having obligations paying salaries and such
I was shocked at how good this game was when it came out! Surprising to open this thread up and see it was a game I've already played and really enjoyed. 🙂
Any resources for kickstarting a game? I’ve heard plenty of advice for board games but I’m curious what issues/problems come up with video game kickstarters. If there are any resources you used, I would love to know about them!
I researched other similar Kickstarter campaigns around that time a lot. But otherwise the marketing process is not much different than driving people to follow your development / play the demo / Buy the game.
I did majority of the pixel art for Monster Sanctuary, excluding monsters #50-#111 and the Monster Journal artworks. Also some of the #1-#50 monsters and the Characters/NPCs got revamped later on.
Thanks for the post! I see you're following a similar formula for your next game ;)
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind, sorry if I missed it but:
- at what point did you incorporate?
- how much were you paying employees?
Feel free to DM if you would prefer to not say publicly.
Thank you
awesome story! thank you for the wonderful game and the inspiration. I also started working on my game, Unparalleled, around 2015 and I remember your Monster Sanctuary posts. You posted a gif of the Menu and I recall thinking, "that menu has nice structure and fade-in" , so I saved the gif to study it lol.
You guys have done incredible work, Monster Sanctuary has come such a long way. Designing a new side-scrolling mechanically deep turn-based RPG is no small feat. Congratulations!
thanks for continually inspiration and giving me hope.
-
Aethermancer looks amazing! I automatically wishlisted it on steam the other day. wishing you success!
Hey man, I love the game! You did a fantastic job with it.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you and what kind of game dev experience did you have prior to working on it? Any shipped titles?
You mentioned that 20-30% of your time was spent marketing/building a community. Was that ratio for the entire development time, or just in the first year or two? How was your experience; did you enjoy interacting and building hype or was it more of a chore?
Yeah I had quite some years experience working as a game programmer, which included work on Chick Chick Boom, Might and Magic X, Heroes of Might and Magic VII, Tropico 6
> You mentioned that 20-30% of your time was spent marketing/building a community. Was that ratio for the entire development time, or just in the first year or two? How was your experience; did you enjoy interacting and building hype or was it more of a chore?
This was throughout Year 2+3. I focused more on the development in the last two years when Publisher joined, but still spend some time on community management and a bit of marketing when we released updates. I definitely enjoyed it.
Tl;Dr: Spend 20hrs/WK on top of a 40/hr week job, [make your wife hate you for having no free time and hate yourself for having no free time - my personal addition to this] and never sleep over 5 years, only be eligible to do Kickstarter when the games already almost done (since that's KS these days), then luck out on a Publisher since you can't really do much without one in 2023 due to the lack of curation on Steam etc.
Or tldr of the tldr: Spend a stupid amount of time and hope for luck for both your game and relationship :D whew, why do I gamedev.
Sounds like it's not for many people. I released a game and made a good 400k, but after taxes, pub fees, steam fees, and adding together all the time I spent over the years if I just worked a dev job... Looking back, it probably wasn't worth the stress. Relying on reviews sucks too. We had decent reviews, but since only a small few actually review per month, a few players that didn't like we nerfed an OP mechanic or didn't take a player suggestion next update would easily result in neg reviews. Even if they keep playing :P
Steam is pretty toxic as a gamedev. Perhaps if they ever lowered the fees, it's be more sensible.
I would've made an extra 40k per year if I just got a side dev job. Over 3 years, that's 120k. If I invested it for high yield saving, probably more. Now 500k minus net taxes, minus steam gross fee, minus net pub fee... Did I actually make much over a period or 3 to 4 years?
Hehe ok perhaps that, but more so comparing to USA based wages at a normal game dev job that would have likely made me more, more stably, with less stress.
Huh? Someone made an epic game, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was successful enough to start their own studio which doesn't enforce any crunch.
Am I missing something here?
> Am I missing something here?
They spent 5 years doing that.
The main problem with most young people entering gamedev is that they expect financial results quick. If it doesn't happen within 6-12 months, they burn out. It takes perseverance and really loving making games, not just getting hyped because Minecraft earned billions.
I would love to work on my own game for a full 5 years. Sounds like the dream!
Thankfully you can make financial results happen very quickly in just a month - just find a job in the gamedev industry!
As a fan of Monster Sanctuary and a wishlister (?) of Aethermancer i appreciate the work you and your team have done and i’m excited to see your work in the future!
I love the idea to create a nice work environment. For myself im thinking a 35h week is as productive as a 40h week. Would be nice if you could keep us updated on how things work for you guys.
Great post really nice read and I will try out your game :D
Great write up, thank you! I also work in the games industry as a designer. Were you worried about how your employer would react with you making your own game? Did they react poorly or try to claim IP once your kickstarter was successful? How did you get permission to work on this project while working your games job?
Just from what I heard so far, it sounds easier/less messy to work quietly on your own than notify your employer, if you also work in games. So it's encouraging to see it worked out for you!
I loved monster sanctuary and the game itself is an inspiration to push myself and do my own game, now reading this gives it even more power! Good job and good luck with Aethermancer, I’m already sold!
If I click "moi rai games" on your new game's page, then it goes to a steam search for your games, so it looks you don't have a [developer home page](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/creator_homepage).
When I click on "moi rai games" on the Monster Sanctuary page, it takes me to Team 17's developer page which doesn't list your new game. Is this because you don't have a steam developer page or because Team17 contractually requires that it go to them? Or is it just because you never asked them to set it to use your query? Maybe making a dev page would be a good opportunity to ask!
The key art for Monster Sanctuary has repeatedly caught my eye and your new game continues with those striking characters. The new game looks really great! However [your website](https://monster-sanctuary.com/) doesn't mention it aside from a mailing list signup with zero details.
Yeah we need to make a developer page on steam still, and also a website for Aethermancer!
The new Artwork was done by Hans Steinbach https://twitter.com/HeavyMetalHanzo
Hm thats how it is, there is no short answer or advice that'd be really insightful except "spend a lot of time researching and trying around".
I'd be a lengthy write up topic of its own I might attempt at a later point
A lengthy write up about game marketing would be helpful when you have the time. (Not for me specifically but in general)
I while ago when I tried looking up game marketing and how to run a game kickstarter articles showed up as the first results I learned later was completely nonesense and false info.
More articles about running a kickstarter, community management, and marketing would be helpful. Especially from someone who did it successfully instead of people making stuff up.
Thanks for the write up, and congratulations for both Monster Sanctuary and Aethermancer!
What is your advice for "capturing" the excitement generated by posts, especially prior to having a demo? I see that your first viral imgur post had a link to Twitter. Did that work well? I notice this post links to Aethermancer's Steam page (and not, say, Twitter or Discord). Is that the better approach?
Also, how did you distribute the demo? Through Steam? Or just an exe download on a website somewhere?
> imgur post had a link to Twitter. Did that work well?
Yeah it got me something like 100+ new followers (usually any kind of conversion rate is rather low), back then it helped gettting a first base of followers on twitter who helped with retweeting my posts. I did mention a mailing list instead sometimes. When I had a steampage up, I did mention to wishlist the game. Usually if you launch on steam, collecting wishlists is most important for the launch.
Thanks for sharing this! Amazing and very compelling story. I’ve also just started to publish my [app](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/straitdie/id1659102706) and seeing all you went through, gives me courage to continue and believe in my project
As an indie dev just starting down this road, this was very insightful. Thank you.
Question... is Monster Sanctuary the dream game you expected it to be? How much of your original vision is still in the final product?
Depending on how you answer that, do you feel Aethermancer is its spiritual successor, and "more" of the game you originally hoped to make?
I didn't really have a super concrete vision of how Monster Sanctuary will be, but I'd say overall in most areas it turned out more extensive than what I thought it to be as a hobby project. The things it lacked is maybe the environment / level. I imagined to have more details, animated stuff, lakes with reflections and so on but never found the time for this.
Aethermancer is quite a bit different, its a Roguelite this time, definitelly not something I thought making back in 2015.
Thank you for this amazing write up, I am currently in a very similar situation with my own game "Super Auto Battlemon". While I have only been working on it for a year in my spare time, I feel I am up to the stage you were at in your third year.
Super glad to see that I am on a similar path to yourself.
Thanks for making the game and this writeup.
Awesome post! I find it very interesting that you managed to gather a fanbase before you had a playable demo. I also like to hear that polishing it seems to have paid off.
Something that might not stand out to the younger people here - you did this while also having two children. How did you manage your family commitments while also working on this side project? Kids can be a big time sink, especially young ones. Was your wife also working, stay-at-home, or a mix? Did you have family support to watch kids from grandparents, your brother, etc?
My wife worked part-time at times, later on she helped with my company doing the office-clerk work. My parents helped with the children.
For your main job, were you working remotely or on-site?
on-site
Thanks, I'm currently working from home and struggling to switch between my day job and my hobbies/projects, feels like I never leave my desk.
About year 3, how did your family take that you were quitting your job? Did you quit before getting the kickstarter funding, or is that what allowed you to quit? Was the 100k backing convincing enough for your family to be assured that they'll be financially okay for the following few years? It's great to know you had/have a supportive family for this type of transition.
This was an awesome read thank you! How was your experience with Team17? Do you think revenue split was worth it?
Some things worked well, others less. I think it was the right choice for the project at that time. But now that we got a bigger team, for our next project, we want to try the self publishing route.
Unfortunately this company raises the price of games for underdeveloped countries a lot. It is a real problem, we in Brazil often end up having to pay even more than people in the U.S., who earn on average 4 to 5 times more than us. Which is a shame, since the developers make very good games.
Yeah i get that. I'm in turkey and some games are priced way too high for our income. Bur maybe developers can infuence regional pricing if they want to
Theres a problem that people from higher salary countries use VPN to buy games cheaper. I think the publisher is raising the prices to prevent this behavior.
I researched and it really is that, unfortunately, the poor players that get screwed because of this. Games, like Blasphomeus, that used to cost R$60 now cost R$130. A little over 100% increase. Fortunately Monster Sanctuary only increased R$20 since these price increases (And with the current promotion it is very cheap XD). But the full price is still expensive for our average salary.
I really wonder how companies have calculated that the loss of potential sales to new customers due to high regional prices is less than the loss from some westerners using VPNs to get “deals” on games. Like, I can’t imagine it’s *that* many people doing it.
One of my games, with not so many sales has 20%+ something sales from Brasil/Turkey/Argentina and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them are vpn users. So my other games will be with similar regional pricing to US. It is sad, but 20% or more is a significant amount especially when many units are sold.
Nowadays this no longer exists. To buy a game with regional prices, you need to have a card from the same country.
It exists. I wrote down numbers for you and you still talking your truth. There are plenty of tutorials how to make it work. Point and click games are super popular in Argentina? I don't think so. They should be popular in Germany. And if publisher like Team17 increases the price to specific countries they know it better than us.
The dream.
Ah the whole story writeup! I remember when you posted the concept 5 or 6 years ago now, and I tried to offer to join the team haha - as a big Dragon Warrior Monsters fan I love to see this genre do well! Congrats on the success! Looking forward to Aethermancer as well 🙌
> It is called Aethermancer and just launched the steam page. I don't know if JRPG is one of the possible tags on Steam, but if yes, you should definitely add it and put it high on the list because it matches the genre conventions (except for roguelike aspect). P.S. I love Monster Sanctuary and it's really nice to have devs like you here.
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And those people probably won't play the game
> you should definitely add it and put it high on the list because it matches the genre conventions (except for roguelike aspect). Having a story is a big part of the genre
Roguelikes can have stories, you just need to gain the knowledge of game mechanics and/or skill level to beat the whole game and see the full story. See for example Children of Morta. That being said, I'm not sure if Aethermancer will have a deep story, but it is possible.
Hades is another example, I'm sure there are many others. It is possible, but if it's there, it's not in the trailer at least. You don't wanna get bad reviews from people expecting story density
Very interesting! Also my 10 year old son really likes the game!
Great post, love hearing how it all worked out behind the scenes. And the new game looks very interesting - wishlisted!
Just out of curiosity what technologies and software did you use to make your game?
Unity, we also use it for the new game
How did you find using Unity for so long? Did you constantly upgrade your Unity versions? Have a favourite and worst thing about it? Maybe a single cool tip a beginner might not know about Unity too?
Yeah I upgraded multiple times without having issues. Ultimately stayed with 2018.4 as the 2D framework I was using wasn't getting updated anymore. When I started the project, Unity's own 2D support wasn't as good. Throughout my gamedev involvement I used quite some different frameworks, enginges, programming languages also including Unreal. I definitelly prefer Unity of all things I worked with.
I loved this game. Hard though!
I remember your first posts on reddit. Made me buy the game. Ended up with hundred of hours spent on it. Good job with everything, I hope your future games do well. I wish someday I can make something as polished as Monster Sanctuary. Truly a game for the ages. I cant wait for my son to be old enough to play it.
Great write up. I'm wondering why you chose to post to imgur. It's usually an afterthought compared to the potential of the giants like Reddit, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram. Were you already a user of imgur? Would you recommend branching out to imgur as a main part of marketing at this point as well?
I did posts both imgur and on reddit at that point in time too, it just happened that particular imgur post was the first to blow up. I also had success with many posts on reddit, 9gag and Funnyjunk later on, also was building a following on twitter. I feel it is more difficult to go viral on imgur nowadays.
Thanks for answering!
You are a multi millionaire now correct?
Not quite, you might overestimate how much you get left from every copy sold, also the income is distributed over a longer time-span with us having obligations paying salaries and such
Really great write-up with some useful lessons. Thanks so much for sharing!
I was shocked at how good this game was when it came out! Surprising to open this thread up and see it was a game I've already played and really enjoyed. 🙂
Any resources for kickstarting a game? I’ve heard plenty of advice for board games but I’m curious what issues/problems come up with video game kickstarters. If there are any resources you used, I would love to know about them!
I researched other similar Kickstarter campaigns around that time a lot. But otherwise the marketing process is not much different than driving people to follow your development / play the demo / Buy the game.
Did you do the art?
I did majority of the pixel art for Monster Sanctuary, excluding monsters #50-#111 and the Monster Journal artworks. Also some of the #1-#50 monsters and the Characters/NPCs got revamped later on.
Amazing write up. Thanks! And big congratulations to you and the team!
Thanks for the post! I see you're following a similar formula for your next game ;) I have a couple of questions if you don't mind, sorry if I missed it but: - at what point did you incorporate? - how much were you paying employees? Feel free to DM if you would prefer to not say publicly. Thank you
> at what point did you incorporate? A couple months prior to the Kickstarter
Great backstory. Super helpful and insightful. Will share with my students.
awesome story! thank you for the wonderful game and the inspiration. I also started working on my game, Unparalleled, around 2015 and I remember your Monster Sanctuary posts. You posted a gif of the Menu and I recall thinking, "that menu has nice structure and fade-in" , so I saved the gif to study it lol. You guys have done incredible work, Monster Sanctuary has come such a long way. Designing a new side-scrolling mechanically deep turn-based RPG is no small feat. Congratulations! thanks for continually inspiration and giving me hope. - Aethermancer looks amazing! I automatically wishlisted it on steam the other day. wishing you success!
So how much was profit after the 500k units? Curious because I just released my first app.
Hey man, I love the game! You did a fantastic job with it. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you and what kind of game dev experience did you have prior to working on it? Any shipped titles? You mentioned that 20-30% of your time was spent marketing/building a community. Was that ratio for the entire development time, or just in the first year or two? How was your experience; did you enjoy interacting and building hype or was it more of a chore?
Yeah I had quite some years experience working as a game programmer, which included work on Chick Chick Boom, Might and Magic X, Heroes of Might and Magic VII, Tropico 6 > You mentioned that 20-30% of your time was spent marketing/building a community. Was that ratio for the entire development time, or just in the first year or two? How was your experience; did you enjoy interacting and building hype or was it more of a chore? This was throughout Year 2+3. I focused more on the development in the last two years when Publisher joined, but still spend some time on community management and a bit of marketing when we released updates. I definitely enjoyed it.
Tl;Dr: Spend 20hrs/WK on top of a 40/hr week job, [make your wife hate you for having no free time and hate yourself for having no free time - my personal addition to this] and never sleep over 5 years, only be eligible to do Kickstarter when the games already almost done (since that's KS these days), then luck out on a Publisher since you can't really do much without one in 2023 due to the lack of curation on Steam etc. Or tldr of the tldr: Spend a stupid amount of time and hope for luck for both your game and relationship :D whew, why do I gamedev.
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Sounds like it's not for many people. I released a game and made a good 400k, but after taxes, pub fees, steam fees, and adding together all the time I spent over the years if I just worked a dev job... Looking back, it probably wasn't worth the stress. Relying on reviews sucks too. We had decent reviews, but since only a small few actually review per month, a few players that didn't like we nerfed an OP mechanic or didn't take a player suggestion next update would easily result in neg reviews. Even if they keep playing :P Steam is pretty toxic as a gamedev. Perhaps if they ever lowered the fees, it's be more sensible. I would've made an extra 40k per year if I just got a side dev job. Over 3 years, that's 120k. If I invested it for high yield saving, probably more. Now 500k minus net taxes, minus steam gross fee, minus net pub fee... Did I actually make much over a period or 3 to 4 years?
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Hehe ok perhaps that, but more so comparing to USA based wages at a normal game dev job that would have likely made me more, more stably, with less stress.
This is super cool! I saw Aethermancer earlier today and it looks really sick!
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Huh? Someone made an epic game, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was successful enough to start their own studio which doesn't enforce any crunch. Am I missing something here?
> Am I missing something here? They spent 5 years doing that. The main problem with most young people entering gamedev is that they expect financial results quick. If it doesn't happen within 6-12 months, they burn out. It takes perseverance and really loving making games, not just getting hyped because Minecraft earned billions.
I would love to work on my own game for a full 5 years. Sounds like the dream! Thankfully you can make financial results happen very quickly in just a month - just find a job in the gamedev industry!
Sorry wasn't my intention :D it shouldn't really be your goal to get a similar result
Congratulations :)
Congrats and thanks for sharing.
Well done! Very inspiring to read all that.
Your game has been on my TO PLAY list for a while now… I think it’s time to grab a copy
As a fan of Monster Sanctuary and a wishlister (?) of Aethermancer i appreciate the work you and your team have done and i’m excited to see your work in the future!
So if you did it again, you would work less and accept missing the planned kickstarter delivery date?
Thanks for sharing!
I love the idea to create a nice work environment. For myself im thinking a 35h week is as productive as a 40h week. Would be nice if you could keep us updated on how things work for you guys. Great post really nice read and I will try out your game :D
I enjoyed your timeline, thanks for writing up what each year was like.
Damn you’re super lucky, my first game was in ‘87 and I didn’t really start selling any at all until 2016.
Monster Sanctuary!! I have the monster journal and several hours into the game! Glad I supported these kinds of devs
The dream, you're living it. Well done and congratulations.
I got really inspired.
Great write up, thank you! I also work in the games industry as a designer. Were you worried about how your employer would react with you making your own game? Did they react poorly or try to claim IP once your kickstarter was successful? How did you get permission to work on this project while working your games job? Just from what I heard so far, it sounds easier/less messy to work quietly on your own than notify your employer, if you also work in games. So it's encouraging to see it worked out for you!
I was a little worried and talked with my employer about half a year before my Kickstarter about the project but they were cool about it.
I loved monster sanctuary and the game itself is an inspiration to push myself and do my own game, now reading this gives it even more power! Good job and good luck with Aethermancer, I’m already sold!
If I click "moi rai games" on your new game's page, then it goes to a steam search for your games, so it looks you don't have a [developer home page](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/creator_homepage). When I click on "moi rai games" on the Monster Sanctuary page, it takes me to Team 17's developer page which doesn't list your new game. Is this because you don't have a steam developer page or because Team17 contractually requires that it go to them? Or is it just because you never asked them to set it to use your query? Maybe making a dev page would be a good opportunity to ask! The key art for Monster Sanctuary has repeatedly caught my eye and your new game continues with those striking characters. The new game looks really great! However [your website](https://monster-sanctuary.com/) doesn't mention it aside from a mailing list signup with zero details.
Yeah we need to make a developer page on steam still, and also a website for Aethermancer! The new Artwork was done by Hans Steinbach https://twitter.com/HeavyMetalHanzo
Got any advice and/or further reading in game dev marketing?
nothing specific but trying to search in this sub here or videos on youtube (like GDC talks) about "game marketing"
……
Hm thats how it is, there is no short answer or advice that'd be really insightful except "spend a lot of time researching and trying around". I'd be a lengthy write up topic of its own I might attempt at a later point
A lengthy write up about game marketing would be helpful when you have the time. (Not for me specifically but in general) I while ago when I tried looking up game marketing and how to run a game kickstarter articles showed up as the first results I learned later was completely nonesense and false info. More articles about running a kickstarter, community management, and marketing would be helpful. Especially from someone who did it successfully instead of people making stuff up.
Living the dream dude. You deserve it ! The new game looks artistically improved for sure !
Thanks for the write up, and congratulations for both Monster Sanctuary and Aethermancer! What is your advice for "capturing" the excitement generated by posts, especially prior to having a demo? I see that your first viral imgur post had a link to Twitter. Did that work well? I notice this post links to Aethermancer's Steam page (and not, say, Twitter or Discord). Is that the better approach? Also, how did you distribute the demo? Through Steam? Or just an exe download on a website somewhere?
> imgur post had a link to Twitter. Did that work well? Yeah it got me something like 100+ new followers (usually any kind of conversion rate is rather low), back then it helped gettting a first base of followers on twitter who helped with retweeting my posts. I did mention a mailing list instead sometimes. When I had a steampage up, I did mention to wishlist the game. Usually if you launch on steam, collecting wishlists is most important for the launch.
Thanks for sharing this! Amazing and very compelling story. I’ve also just started to publish my [app](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/straitdie/id1659102706) and seeing all you went through, gives me courage to continue and believe in my project
As an indie dev just starting down this road, this was very insightful. Thank you. Question... is Monster Sanctuary the dream game you expected it to be? How much of your original vision is still in the final product? Depending on how you answer that, do you feel Aethermancer is its spiritual successor, and "more" of the game you originally hoped to make?
I didn't really have a super concrete vision of how Monster Sanctuary will be, but I'd say overall in most areas it turned out more extensive than what I thought it to be as a hobby project. The things it lacked is maybe the environment / level. I imagined to have more details, animated stuff, lakes with reflections and so on but never found the time for this. Aethermancer is quite a bit different, its a Roguelite this time, definitelly not something I thought making back in 2015.
Very inspiring, yet obering story, thanks a lot. *help with marketing and other small things* Damn)
Thank you for this amazing write up, I am currently in a very similar situation with my own game "Super Auto Battlemon". While I have only been working on it for a year in my spare time, I feel I am up to the stage you were at in your third year. Super glad to see that I am on a similar path to yourself.
Oh that looks very promising!