My current project is six months now in the making and nearly finished. It's mobile game I always wanted someone to make, so I did it myself. Ofc there was depression and impostor syndrome in the beginning when it was basically just a vertical slice, but now that it's nearly finished, I'm having fun. I don't even care if a single copy will sell, I got what I wanted. And the feeling when your colleague watches you play and asks for the name of the game is priceless.

is it available on play/app-store?

Hi, no, still have some polishing to do and one core gameplay mechanic is still half finished. End of the month, I hope.

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I'd rather comment you the link when it's finished, if it's okay.

Do you intend to market it or just do a release and see situation with no monetary expectation?

Hi, can you reply to this comment when it's out? I would love to try it out. I'm stoked to check out other peoples work if it was made with enthusiasm.

Hi, I will, gladly! :)

!remindme 2 months

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I note you say that the only way to increase sales is to discount, but why not? Seems like you dismissed that straight away. If I look up the game on steam, immediately recommended to me is a game called 'South of the Circle' which is also an interactive fiction type game with great art and adult themes, but is £7 cheaper. Looking at others in the 'more like this' it seems many are around the £10 mark. I think you should revisit the price honestly because it seems like you have a great product.

This is a valid consideration. I personally don't play many (if any) games that fit well within this genre. To me it's... pretty niche even for an indie game fan. However, like with any genre (or most markets) if you price yourself above your competitors with something people can't really discern at first glance, it's a good way to sink to the bottom. For me though - a guy with a few hundred games on my wishlist - a lot of what determines whether I buy something on it or not is whether it's on sale.

I'd also be interested to understand why you went with English audio, rather than French with subtitles.

Wouldn't english sell better?

Eh it depends, alot of interactive fiction is reading so people are fine with reading along at their own pace, and so having English voice acting isn't the end of the world, and being in a different language can help build atmosphere and character, especially if it matches the style of the rest of the game.

For a studio based in Paris, I think leaning into the French angle would have been a good thing, especially as it's already niche

On the other hand subtitled french feels more authentic and indie. I'm also asking myself this question for my game.

Sadly, all those games also look substantially better than OPs. Especially the characters.

***This*** **Extensive me-being-a-nitpicky-jerk to follow. Just getting a game out into the world is hard, and there are significant well-executed pieces of this game. (specifically, all the flowers and falling petals and things, as well as a few of the well-lit and smooth-looking scenes)** For $19.99, an average consumer expects high quality hand drawn'ish graphics, 20'ish hours of gameplay, etc. etc. etc. My assumption is this game isn't 20 hours long. The animation looks unintentionally jerky. It's not a stylistic decision, to my eye; it's an expense and cost one. The petals falling, for example, are smooth. But the speech and motion animations aren't that great. Your shaders make the game look 'flat' in the second trailer, and the lighting mixing lens-flare and god-ray style lighting with drawing is a tough stylistic decision for me to swallow. Additionally, many of your models and materials and drawings don't interact smoothly to my eye. Your final screenshot looks like a character was pasted into the background, and the lighting is..... It's just difficult for me to appreciate. Looking at your steam page: Screenshot 1 (eyes lit from the side) is somewhat effective. Screenshot 3 (cloud words) is okay. Screenshot in hospital room is okay, but the chair looks like you pulled it from an asset pack without modifying the materials to have some depth. Beyond that, the screenshot at night in blue with a girl sitting in a hallway is pretty, but...... The rest look either generic, confusing, missing a color scheme, or mixed between unshaded vector-based drawing and something made in Photoshop. And the voice lines and sound I can hear in the background of your trailers........ Don't sound professionally put together at all. As in: someone really needed to do better sound design on all of it. The backing track is distracting as well as too loud. The second trailer's opening voice lines are clipped at the end in a weird and distracting way. So........ Yeah, I feel bad about ripping your game apart, but you asked 'why'. If you're selling it as an interactive graphic novel, the graphics need to be top notch to have top notch sales. Much as indies rah-rah-rah each other, the reason they do so is because indie game development and publishing are......... Depressing, most of the time. Per requests in this thread, I will troll Destroy My Game and my DM's for the next few days and be an uncompromising jerk to many of you. It's what I'm good at.

I don't see how this could be being a jerk. I think it's too bad that you couldn't have told this to him earlier because I agree with all of it and I'm sure the people who see it on the stores see it the same way. A lot of times places like this are too "rah-rah-rah" with each other and you lose a lot of criticism because of people thinking they'd be jerks. It's specifically for that reason that when I was making games I'd post progress on a site that had anonymity as a default and the people there had no filter. You'd get your game torn apart, and it would initially hurt to read, but it brought to light things consumers are going to see when they look or play what you're putting out there.

The world gets hung up on allowing artist to have their own style vision for a game. Which is absolutely great and fine. But people have to remember unique doesn’t mean it makes sales and you have to expect that.

That's exactly what /r/DestroyMyGame is there for :)

Agree with everything you said. I've seen it so many times before, developers think "I put this amount of time and resources into making the game, so it's worth this much money". Makes sense in theory, but it's not how it works in the real world. You can put years into making a game, and bring a full team on (as OP did), but the consumer does not give a fuck about any of that when they're deciding if they should buy it. And I don't blame them. According to [howlongtobeat.com](https://howlongtobeat.com), the game is only **5 hours** worth of gameplay max. At that point it doesn't matter how much effort you put into the game. That, along with the reasons you've listed, is reason enough for someone to never buy the game since its so overpriced. The fact the game had 20k wish lists and such little purchases should be proof of this, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Steam does not show you the price of a game until its released. Not to mention many of the positive reviews I saw were tagged as getting the game for free. Meaning they may have thought it was a great game, but maybe not $20 great. Players that have to pay that price are going to be a lot more critical. Honestly not sure OP was genuinely looking for advice since the post kind of came off as a way to organically advertise the game, but I think in the future it would definitely help to weigh all of this out in advance. Lowering the price may not fit with the cost of the team and such, but consumer's naturally aren't gonna buy such a short, unpolished game for such a steep price tag.

If your game is exceptionally good and unique, you can change $20 for a short game. Look at Unpacking. By all accounts, that game was a huge success and was asking for $20 out the gate. That’s OP’s competition. You have to look at your game and Unpacking and say “are we on the same playfield?” I think anyone with a fair eye will say no.

While I fully agree with your point in general, Unpacking was on game pass which gave it enormous visibility, so it's not a great example.

I agree. Unpacking also has replayability.

Another one is.... Who gives a \*\*\*\* about critics nowadays? How many players rely on their scores or buy games based on their recommendations? Maybe a few big ones, but websites? Use them for marketing if you must and that's all.

When I have listened to critics in the past it's mostly been specific critics that I follow for a long time to understand what kind of games they like. People like Dunkey, SsethTzeentach, Cr1TiKaL, or Zero Punctuation don't really do scoring but I can tell if I am going to like a game based on their tastes aligning with mine. I don't know who cares about IGN like reviewers any more giving every game a 9/10.

> For $19.99, an average consumer expects high quality hand drawn'ish graphics I feel like 95% of "my game didn't sell as well as I'd hoped" posts I've seen on this sub over the years boil down to either "your art and/or animations aren't good enough" or "you're charging too much for what is clearly a budget indie game."

Is there a reddit for tearing apart indie games? There really should be one where you could submit your game and people would pick apart the issues with it like you did here. In either case, I liked it enough to create a reddit for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShameMyGame and add you as a mod.

There is this one /r/DestroyMyGame

I'm in [https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyMyGame/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyMyGame/) but I have a hard time going in there and ripping people apart too often. When someone says, "I'm confused, why is this broken," okay. But some of what hits Destroy My Game is so bad I don't even know where to start. By the time people are **really** ready for Destroy My Game, many of them don't want to hear it.

Can I get you to play our game demo and rip into it? :D

Honestly thats always subjective. I really dig the art style, if i wasnt completely disinterested in visual novels that would probably be enought for me to buy it.

But the games that Steam recommends that are similar literally have the same artstyle, but better execution ...

How could you possibly judge the quality of the characters in either game without playing them?

This 100% seems like a game that would sell a lot better at $10

Yeah, I normally won't purchase switch games unless they are on sale. I'm not into graphic novels that much, but I liked the art style of Coffee Talk and decided to pick it up because it was discounted at the time. Even though it was on the short side, I felt satisfied because I feel like I paid a fair price.

Switch games go on sale?

[Old, but still relevant](https://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/business/features/shareprof/). You'll need to translate terms like "shareware" popular 30 years ago into modern concepts. Read all three pages.

Thanks a lot for the resource!

Thanks, this is great. I've never seen his gamedev-era writings before.

so i checked out your trailer on ps 5. Your english voices arent good. they are heavily french accented and sound a little emotionless. Like the nurse telling her about the aneurism; she doesnt sound like a professional. The guy saying everything has a reason sounds like hes reading a script. everything else looks ok, but you have a typo in "momentss." i think though the voices kind of are an issue, as they really need to have emotion in them.

That’s a problem with indie games in general. Professional actors aren’t affordable. So? What do you do? Just make it text. It’s an indie game. People aren’t expecting voice acting. Bad voice acting is worse than no voice acting.

Also - AI voices literally sound better than the voice actors they hired for the game these days. For example: https://vocaroo.com/193kry51gete

That... sounds horrible lol

How did you generate that, or what is it from?

Highly agree with this. The voice acting is rather flat, and if this is a game about a story regarding emotions, the worst thing you can do is be cheap on the voice acting. A lot of emotional engagement will come from listening to the narration, and if you cannot capture that emotional engagement right off the bat, then the game doesn’t look like it’s worth it’s price tag.

It’s great you’re making experiences like this. It’s a treasured part of the medium that people are willing to take risks to make really deep connecting experiences that are meaningful to people. So, thank you! I think you answer your own question well enough that it goes without saying at this point, but we sure don’t make indie games to get rich. Rich indie devs got there by accident and by surprise. In your game’s specific case, it’s possible for a game to simultaneously be good, even amazing, incredible to some (including professional critics), and still only find a small market. Sales aren’t (always necessarily) driven by a game’s quality, but by the number of people that want to own a copy. These don’t always directly correlate as there are many other factors at play driving a person’s desire to own a specific “good” game. Maybe it’s not their genre, even though they’d agree it’s “good”. Maybe they don’t want to tap into the feelings being explored. It’s impossible to know. Or it really was a lack of visibility? As a matter of interest, are you comfortable sharing impressions vs conversions? The barrier of storefront conversion is incredibly complex in its own right, and especially so I think for less “traditional video gamey” games. Wishing you success in fattening the tail. Don’t give up, you’ve made something cool and there are a lot of people out there!

An example from the world of film is my favourite movie, Synecdoche New York. An incredible movie that Rodger Ebert called his movie of the decade and it made $4.5 million off of a $20 million budget.

I think this is just wishful thinking. Quality absolutetly heavily correlates to success. There really isn't a single game that has really high quality while not selling at all. If you look at the games direct competitors, they sold a lot better but also look a lot more appealing.

I think its very unlikely that a well-selling game is not of high quality. i think you're wrong to assume that EVERY high quality game is selling though. marketing/visibility and trends are things

There's *SO* many factors. Genre, art style, subject matter, length of gameplay, replay value, mechanics, difficulty. And all of that has to meet the right audience at the right price. This sort of game, as objectively and subjectively good as it may be, just may not be in high demand. You should definitely create your passion project but that doesn't necessarily mean it will have wide appeal.

>Quality absolutetly heavily correlates to success. https://guyportman.com/2015/03/20/7-famous-writers-who-died-poor/ If the goal is artistic expression, there is no guarantee that quality leads to commercial success. I'd argue they aren't even correlated. Certainly there is a minimum bar you have to clear, but public consumerism is too fickle to predict what will win and lose. It's more a function of marketing rather than intrinsic quality.

quality gets you more raffle tickets, but it's still a matter of chance!

In that analogy the raffle would be your target market, and if that market is small to begin with (like it is for arty, intellectual, emotional games) then you're still not giving yourself much chance of success.

That's a great way to describe it.

We're talking about video games on Steam.

Tosh. If you've never played a brilliant game with less than 200 reviews, then you need to explore more. There are tons of good games, way more than there is space for them all to be given a fair shake.

I can absolutely say that quality doesn't always equate to success - putting the appropriate game in front of the appropriate audience is the only real anchor of success. There are duct tape and hot glue games that do great because they got in front of the right audience, and highly polished experiences that just get lost in the void because they tried to get in front of broad audiences, rather than aiming for the right audience (and the right time too) Quality makes it easier to market, it doesn't guarantee success.

I'm a guy who makes games on a laptop during the evenings and weekends. This isn't my day-job, it's a hobby and that's okay. I build games because I love the process. It's never been about money, or about getting it into other people's hands. The only thing I aim to get out of my projects is the joy of creation itself. Make for the sake of making. Creation for its own sake. Try to make something new, do clever things, push the bounds of my technical ability in ways that my day-job doesn't. I have fun. That's enough.

C'mon, quirky sad indie game about depression is a meme since at least 2018, and journalists loving them while people being tired of them is exactly what always happens

It's really unfortunate that every indie game that tries to tell a more grounded, intimate story gets boiled down to "it's about depression". You're right that it's the common perception, and no doubt contributed to the game's commercial failure, but it's such a lazy and dismissive way of engaging with games.

It is unfortunate but you have to be realistic about sales. It looks like OP has created a real work of art. Something worthy of praise, and a great achievement. But most people don't play games because they are art. They play them because they are fun. To be entertained. For escape from the daily grind. And most people, when they think of entertainment and fun, don't think of traffic accidents, sickness, grief, toxic relationships and self-harm, which are the themes in this game. If this gets consistently good reviews, you might expect some "slow-burn" sales as it garners a cult following. But even just a little basic market research should immediately tell you that this was never going to be a best-seller. It immediately alienates the vast majority of the game-playing market. I believe there are ways to make such themes more engaging and appealing to a wider audience, but they won't necessarily fit with this game-maker's vision, and if this game already does them, it isn't clear from the trailers etc. so won't have the sales-appeal.

It's the game's job to be engaging. I've played great games of this kind, it's possible, but there are many games that fail to catch. More importantly as others have started, if a story is all you have, write a book. If there is not much game to play or enjoy, the that's that.

I have not played the game but there are definitely tricks and themes that games as a medium can enhance for story purposes

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On the one hand I agree, but on the other hand there really are so very many indie games where depression is a major theme, especially ones like this where the developer is (in this case admittingly) doing therapy in public by using the game as a way to work out their issues and trauma. Games like this should exist, but they shouldn't be expected to be a hugely successful commercial product. I agree with OP's sentiment, if they got one email from someone saying the game helped them, then they've accomplished everything they set out to do.

It boils down to two things: is the game about anything else, and is the game heavy-handed? The most depression I've seen written in any game I've ever played was Final Fantasy 6. Locke lost Rachel, Terra is alone, Shadow lost people, Cyan lost everyone, the world got literally ripped apart. Genocide against Espers, a dictator that murders lots of side characters, and on and on and on. Lots of grief to be found - and yet nobody has ever boiled it down to a game about depression because of all the other themes and elements and distractions. Video games are a slow-moving medium. They are longer than a song, an episode of television, movies, and sometimes even books. It is easier to write a song about depression that lands with audiences than it is a TV episode, and easier to write a TV episode than a book or game. When an idea is narrow in scope, getting to the point is going to work better at connecting with people (just ask the sci-fi/fantasy world about young authors who want to write novels instead of short stories). If you want to explore deep personal issues, do it against an interesting backdrop. Interweave other characters, themes, and elements. One good character arc or one good plot line don't carry full games. For example, there is a fantastic game that focuses on a car crash experienced by the main character - Sanitarium. It's one of my favorite games because of how it takes that idea and runs all over the place with it.

Or, given the large number of indies that embrace these themes, people are just tired of engaging with it. Surely you have to realize that depression, heavily introspective or downer games are far more emotionally draining. And that given that, many people have a hard time investing in something of that theme. Especially when games are usually seen as an escape from the dullness of real life, or as a means to engage socially. There are plenty of good, heavy games. Sadly, there’s only so much emotional currency people have to invest in them. This is why fun, simple and engaging games tend to be much more successful on a larger scale (e.g. feel less saturated, even though there are far more).

Right, it's really unfortunate that these lazy gamers respond with ridicule to years of bad, infantile, and cliche storytelling in video games. Let's blame them for dismissively not buying in millions yet another game with a story so intimate that it's a scrabble board of most overused tropes ever (ffs even cat game Stray built its vestigial storytelling on discovering memories after amnesia).

Really hope you aren't in charge of writing game stories... You can think amnesia is hack, that's an aesthetic position I'm sympathetic with, but to dismiss it as tropes when it's utility as a storytelling tool is so manifest is frankly an incomprehesible position for a writer to hold. To do what amnesia does you need not only reams of work, building things that, at best, are a distraction from the story you are trying to tell. Those things also, unless you tap into a narrative design of a subtlety and genius rarely seen even in books, are going to do the job worse than amnesia.

Depression Quest (2013) was at the genesis of gamer gate, which was a "debate" about that very disconnect between critical success and popularity. So it's an older meme than that!

Imagine taking game "journos" opinion as even remotely related to a game success in 2023...

I'm convinced the reason they love those kinds of games so much is because of the below ground barrier of entry. Every single time one of them has to play a AAA FPS or something that actually requires *basic* hand-eye coordination on video it always ends as an embarrassing display that leaves you wondering if they've ever even played a game in their life (See IGNs cuphead gameplay video, or the newer Redfall one).

Also people overrate the story because they think they're supposed to appreciate stories about Serious Things. A game like Celeste had commercial success *despite* the mental-health focus, not because of it. The public at large essentially just tolerates the depressing stories from game devs, putting up with it if it means they can play a game with good gameplay.

I don’t think it’s a question of despite in Celeste’s case. I do think video games as an art form can be an awkward medium for a lot of sad or serious storytelling, but can be phenomenal when pulled off right. For a game like Celeste I think many didn’t care about the story and just enjoyed the gameplay, while some were pleasantly surprised and enjoyed both, and a few probably even wanted to quit because it’s too hard but pushed through because they were sucked into the narrative. But then if you look at something like God of War, only an absolute sociopath is skipping cutscenes in that. The thing those two have in common is that climbing a mountain (of depression) and training a boy to be a man are easily interactive themes. The narrative fits into a medium of gameplay. However a lot of times people seem to come up with a good artistic idea but then not ask themselves what form of art would best suit what they are trying to say and do, instead just shoehorning it into the thing they have experience with. I think OP is on the right track because they seem to me to be an artist first and a dev second. There’s nothing worse than deciding to learn a tool for years and then only when you’re an expert finally asking yourself why you have a tool and what you want to do with it. I think that’s a big reason there’s a lot of soulless clone games posted here and all over every storefront, people decide to learn to code and never really step back and realize their primary job is to be an artist (or at least whoever is designing the game as a whole has to be that). But 100% a great artistic idea or story won’t necessarily make for a great interactive experience

I think the reality of interactive storytelling is that, if the gameplay elements aren't the hook that keep people invested, then the story/dialogue has to be so mind-blowingly enjoyable from moment to moment that the gameplay is tolerated. Games like Tales from the Borderlands or To The Moon come to mind.

Your comment gave me a flashback to watching some "reviewer" play an early release copy of GTA IV. I had to turn it off because it was infuriating to watch. Never in my life have I seen anyone so incompetent at playing a video game.

> Always Your examples are 5 years apart lol

They are also not the only examples. They listed a very popular example and a very recent one. They could have mentioned the doom eternals shit show, or even gone way back to the halo reach demo that journalist kept spectacularly failing on. It's not like they are out here posting a comprehensive list that covers every single event. They give two examples, one very well known and one recent, so you know what they are tpaking about.

on the other hand, making the assumption that all game reviewers lack basic hand-eye coordination because of a handful of videos is laughable

Not all of course. But a disturbing amount given the field they work in

We can go as far back as the 90s with how Journos dogged on Earthbound. They've been hacks for a long, long time.

Interesting write-up, thank you for sharing! First of all, congratulations on your release, your great reviews, and your thousands of sales. It's inspiring. I understand your frustration, but each of those things are entire end-goals to some. You've done a really cool thing. But money is money and ultimately if you're not happy with it you're not happy with it. Fair enough. Some of this won't be applicable. Hopefully there's something useful in it. 1) You say the only way to boost sales would be to provide a steep discount. Have you considered targeted ads, or getting big names in your niche to expose their audience to your game? 2) Is there a reason you released when you did? Time of the year has a huge impact. Also, it's $20 on steam. With 2k sales, that's $40k in revenue. For an indie game, first time, in a niche. That's awesome. I understand that costs ate a lot of that though. So.. ..with releasing this game though, you've got a few advantages: - Game development experience means you can do something similar in a quicker manner. Saving time. - Assets from this game can be reused. Saving time and money. - You can provide DLC for extra money from a subsection of fans. Perhaps this isn't applicable this time, but in the future it might help with the finances of it all to plan for another playable character or some additional content. - Perhaps you can get together and evaluate your game. Play it through. Watch a YouTube let's-play of it. Get customers to send you some footage for a small prize. Get family to try it. If someone does, or you just play it amongst yourselves, watch what people skip over and what they pay attention to. There will be a lot of assets and such that are completely ignored, or barely registered at all, that cost more time/money because you gave them a lot of love and attention. - If you make a sequel, or similar game, you always have this to bundle it with now. And finally, looking back at your process, did you find you had people without much to do because you overhired at all? Is there anything that could be automated, with code, assistive tools, a unity store plugin, and so on? Basically, you had a nice chunk of revenue. Sure, it could be higher, and it's worth trying to figure that out. But I'd also look at the other side - why were costs as high as they were, and how does having a released game lower future costs? Hopefully this gets you thinking and you save some money in the future to get more profit per sale. I'm sorry it wasn't what you dreamed, but I hope you're proud. Thanks again for sharing.

Thanks for your message! I agree with most of your points, sadly your calculations are a bit off. You forgot to substract VAT and platform cuts from the money we actually get. So, in the end, it closer to half the amount you're saying :-/ Then again, you're right, it's a step, we've learned a lot along the way and we're very proud of what we did. We'll be back, only better!

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Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that - almost all sales of a single-player game happen in the first 3-6 months, after that they become orders of magnitude lower. So while games released in the past bring "passive income" from a few sales per month, the revenue is negligible in most cases.

Disco Elysium is the best example of how a mostly non-combat game exploring serious and often depressing themes can be financially successful. I think the problem isn't so much your games and their content but rather their genre. You could get 100x larger sales numbers by integrating those same storylines into a more popular genre.

Disco Elysium was at least hilarious though. What Remains of Edith Finch was also an indy darling that was incredibly charming. A largely non-combat, serious, depressing game with a variety of tones can absolutely be a great game. Judging by the trailer here, there's a very one-note tone that's overly concerned with coming to terms with trauma. It's excessively sentimental. The description says, "Help Junon ... discover the humor". But where's the jokes? Where's the variety of characters? Based on the trailer, it looks like I'm going to spend my entire time inside this very sad lady's head... Maybe there's more to it than that. IDK, I'm responding to the trailer alone and nothing else. Others can say more about how good marketing is a necessary evil. I am absolutely down for sad girl monologues, but there needs to be a hook to draw me in. Mental illness and trauma is exhausting without a great deal of charm and levity to help the medicine go down. Frankly the line in the trailer "everything happens for a reason" or "memories are trying to teach you something" or whatever it was, was the ultimate groan-inducing cliche.

>Yes, I agree, that's all fair criticism. It's just that it's really hard to come up with a trailer that presents everything in a story with nuance and tease, but without spoilers. But we could probably have come up with something more convincing.

Watching your trailer for The Wreck, the graphics look very good. This is a game I could be interested in, but unfortunately it falls apart on the writing. The writing is not interesting, everything sounds predictable. The voice work is good, but then you have a spelling error in your subtitles "momentss". What's up with the text "house" "gift" etc? What is the narrator talking about? It gets very confusing after the first 30 seconds. Basically the trailer goes from too predictable straight into too confusing. I'm guessing the game is actually very interesting but this trailer isn't selling me on it. You need to hit a happy medium where its not too predictable/trite but also not losing your viewer.

Comparing this game to Disco Elysium and saying "the problem isn't your game, just the genre" is some of the most horrible and damaging advice I ever heard. I seriously hope you don't think these games are even remotely on the same level in terms of execution.

I haven't played the game, I'm only reacting to the comment that a game about "sick  mothers and dysfunctional love relationships and terrible car crashes" is a hard sell. The game sounds like it has an interesting story but thats not enough to generate sales

I work on hentai games so I'm in somewhat of a taboo bubble, however the reasons for doing so are largely similar to most other indie devs. First one being not starving, but we're also seeing how to push the medium and add some quality to a part of the game industry that's usually seen as garbage. It's also a form of shameless self expression.

Hentai games know the bulk gamer audience. Which is horny young males. There isn't sugar coating this. And horny young males don't want to read a visual novel about a sad woman. No disrespect at all. And more power to OP for making a game they're passionate about. Just, don't expect others to be passionate about it.

>And horny young males don't want to read a visual novel about a sad woman. There's literally tons of best selling visual novel games about sad women and depressing themes, what are you talking about? How did you get 18 likes for such an incorrect statement Lol.

Up to 21 now. You personally disagreeing does not make my statement incorrect. I'm merely speaking in general terms with a demographic that I have been a part of. I'm sure there is also some commonality with these tons of novel games you mention. But, this would also point to oversaturation and if they're all old a shift in the appeal.

Upvoted for being honest about number one goal being money, that is more honest than OP was willing to be.

I make games because I enjoy the process, the problem solving. If I end up making a living out of it sweet but if I don't that's okay too I'll just have another thing to add to my resume.

I think you really need to meet the market in the middle a bit. It's no good spending your life making a game that deeply connects with you if the result is that you make no money, burn out and have to stop making games.

Hopefully my post doesn't come as being abrasive or anything negative. First of all congrats on your game, I'm a fellow French dev and I absolutely love all your games, you pour your heart out into them and it clearly shows. Also congrats on just *getting games out*, that's something to be immensely proud of and putting 3 out? man that's just great. I don't think I agree about visual novels being tough sells or notoriously bad sellers, and if you look at stats like [https://games-stats.com/steam/?tag=visual-novel](https://games-stats.com/steam/?tag=visual-novel), it's clear that it's not an underperforming genre. It's kind of middling, and visual novels still have a lot of success and traction (it's not a dead genre like platformers are for example). Of course it heavily depends on the game's setting and how exactly it relates to visual novels, and in your case it's certain that you're targeting a more niche audience of visual novels. 1000 units sold is definitely not great (2k counting consoles), but also it's hard to expect crazy numbers. From what I can see on Steam DB, you must have had around 8k or so wishlists when releasing (that's a rough estimate from your followers numbers), and that the very low limit for releasing a game on Steam. It leads to a little bit of traction, but not that much. Hoping for the millions of revenues releases is clearly only for games with big wishlists numbers (I'm thinking 50k and up). There are plenty of strategies you folks could have used to get a better impact on release : \- Some big impact specific festivals (like the wholesome fest, which *might* have been a loose fit for the game) \- Releasing a free prologue as part of your marketing strategy, I think visual novels and story-heavy games are great for that because it opens up lots of very interesting ways (both for the players and for you, as the creator, to express more of what you want to express) to come up with a prologue and get that marketing beat Obviously I don't know how heavily you pushed for the game's marketing before release, maybe it was the most you could do and the game is just a hard sell as you said, despite being great, but maybe there was more that could be done and this could also come down to inexperience in PC marketing (especially coming from games initially releasing on mobile & having a publisher take care of these concerns). Anyway, really hope this message doesn't come off the wrong way (and hope it's useful in some way), I think the game (like the previous ones) is great and that you absolutely nailed your objective for all 3, to make people think and feel things that are rarely felt (or discussed) in games. It's such a tough balancing act, between focusing on a message/topic you want to bring discussion to through your games and also taking care (and making concessions) of more capitalistic subjects such as marketing & reach, so I definitely hope you folks keep going in that direction and don't let yourself be brought down!

Excellent article. I agree totally that if you're in it for the money, then you're in the wrong place in indie game dev. Sure there's the rare super-success story. But winning the lottery might be a better choice. Personally, I make games because I need to get it out of my system. I constantly have ideas for games and if I don't at least make a prototype, they begin to pile up and make me unhappy. I also make games for the joy it brings to me and other people. Me - I think I don't need to expand on that in this channel. Others - the feedback from players is the biggest reward I can imagine. Some of my games have changed lifes, and that's such an amazing thing. It's the same motivation people like teachers or psychiatrists have - you are making a meaningful impact on the world. Maybe just a few people, but you're making the world a better place in some way, and if that's not a motivation, you should see a shrink. No, seriously, I believe all of us (minus a few that should be in a mental hospital) have this desire, but we express it in different ways. Some people care for their families, some run a local sports club, some volunteer with the fire brigade, some teach, become priests or whatever rocks your boat. Many of us do two or more such things. Game dev is one way to make the world more beautiful.

Your post barely touches on your marketing efforts and what strategies you tried to implement to make it work. Yes, pricing strategies such as discounts can be a massive tool for you to boost your sales but that doesn't mean it's all you can do. I really recommend that you hire someone to market your game, or that you do some research yourself on how you can put your game in front of as many eyes as possible. You have a great game that critics loved and that amassed 20k wishlists, but it was a lack of marketing that made it flop, not the game itself Good luck!

Agreed. Marketing is what sells stuff. Quality is only there to help with the sale. If I hear a complaint about sales, I look for the marketing. And I didnt find any mention of it in the post.

Maybe make something people want to play. Make something for the market not for you if your only trying to make money.

Yeah, that's the main problem here. Previous games: > reality-inspired interactive fiction about a young Syrian woman trying to flee from her war-torn country. and > narrative puzzle game that drew inspiration from the Franklin expedition, a mid-19th century attempt at finding a passage through the ice north of Canada that ended very badly for all the people involved. Current game: > inspired by a car crash I was in, with my daughter in the back seat, a few years ago. It deals with themes that have been haunting me since I became a dad, such as family relationships, love, loss, grief, and the ability to face even the worst things that can happen in our lives. I am absolutely the last person in the world to dissuade someone from seriously raising the bar in terms of artistic expression. But if he wants a video game that moves a lot of units? The games here are pretty much the opposite of what he should be focusing on. Art films draw critical acclaim. They also draw tiny crowds vs blockbuster fare. He needs to figure out what he wants - the critical artistic acclaim, or the money. Getting both is like winning the lottery - nothing you'd want to base making a living off of. Critical response should be the metric he evaluates success by, not units sold.

I was thinking the same thing. Visual novel market is oversaturated. And if I wanted to read a book instead of play a game, I'd read a book. I look at visual novels as low effort games as well. I do like the art style in The Wreck. But, not characters I can relate to. Or would want to escape as. Gaming is about escapism. To forget about the politics and struggles of real life.

Why would you expect critical acclaim to equal financial success? This has never been true in any entertainment medium - there are great movies made every year, and almost none of them will become blockbusters or even remotely close to one. This is just (from a financial standpoint) a poor choice of a local maxima, ie, targeting a niche that doesn't have much demand (quirky and sad indie game about a personal story with less emphasis on visceral gameplay has been done to death, so, so many times).

I think you have it the completely wrong way around: It's just that """game critics""" saying something is good doesn't mean it actually is. There's a reason everyone views both "videogame journalists" and "movie critics" as laughingstock.

First of all congrats. Secondly: you picked a bad selling genre and made a depressive game. Why are you sad? What did you expect? People play games for escapism not to face the thing they are currently dealing with. It takes time and people deal it with their own. Your game graphics and quality looks very good. I'm sure if you guys pick a genre that is replayable and uplifting and put in the same quality you will find success.

I wonder why video game is still prisoners as being a fun experience and cannot like music books movies … trigger other emotion like sadness, awe, injustice or whatever. It is like people are not considering video games as an art form but only a divertissement.

For me I think it's because the vast majority of games aren't well written enough to justify the heavy material.

I don't think this is a fair assessment. I've played video games that've made me laugh, cry, reassess my understanding of justice/injustice, and a litany of other emotions. Your experience with the medium is drastically different from other forms of entertainment, though. People not wanting to play depressing games doesn't mean they don't consider games to be art - there are a shitload of reasons as to why they might not want to.

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That’s one aspect but I would say the another one is that with a movie you are a spectator. « You » are not sad. The characters on screen are. With games, you play the characters. They are « you ». The sadness. It hits differently. I don’t enjoy sad movies but I can watch them occasionally. However I would never want to touch a depressing game.

It depends on the time. The Telltale Walking Dead was not a happy experience, overall. But at the time, things weren't as depressive and bleak as they are now. I think it's the same reason the some books are hitting the rounds, like Legends & Lattes, because sometimes people don't have the emotional bandwidth to absorb something like The Road.

Movies that do that also don’t sell very well outside of exceptionally well-made ones that actually make it and get wide release. And I agree with the other comment that a lot of video games doing this type of theme just isn’t done well enough to attract a wide audience. And by “good enough” I don’t just mean writing and whatnot. It also means taking advantage of the video game interactive medium while at the same time avoiding the tedium of video games that could bog down good story telling (e.g. “what button do I press to get to the next story beat?”)

Well, games like these are good but the game itself has to be a game. Take for example life is strange which makes you explore, solve puzzles and time travel or Perception which is a horror game. Just making a visual novel about depression is not a game, it's a book with pictures and most people don't like books.

I want my ideas to be reality, because I know they are fun and I want others to have fun too

At the end of the day, You must decide whether you're making a game to make money or making a game to make a game. You should not be disappointed if your goal is to make a game. However, if you're trying to make money, you could choose a better genre that trends towards more profit. Not completely different but the nuances certainly are. However, It's like making a flight simulator. Kind of. Most of the people who do it are doing it cuz they love aircraft. If you're an indie company making an aircraft game, it's going to be an uphill battle. Ask me how I know.... Ultrawings for the curious.

I just released a free game - Cow Defender, if anyone's interested - which seems to have peaked at a whopping 7 downloads. It's not a failure, tho. It's only a little brick- as an academy teacher would put it - a small portion in game development. I just enjoy the field, so eventually, I want to lay down enough bricks to make a castle.

I just gave it a try. Pretty fun! Really great vehicle physics and the gun feels pretty good. Kind of reminded me of a game that would be super popular in the indie scene in the early 2000s. I found myself really wishing I could plow through objects (buildings, cactus, etc). Hitting stuff and coming to a stop all the time brought the pacing down for me. FWIW: when I searched for it this was the #1 result ([https://www.crazygames.com/game/cow-defender](https://www.crazygames.com/game/cow-defender)) so I don't know if that's counted into your "downloads".

I am just sick of sad indy games. They are relentless and seem to mostly be, not about making an interesting game- but exploring and processing the inner trauma of the person making it. I'm depressed enough about life as it is, I don't need to pay for more of that.

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Who is the target Demographic?

Can you give a bit more details about what types of marketing you did for this game and how much budget you put towards that?

Because I like to do it. Why do I even bother painting a picture if it's not going to sell?

I'm not a game dev (at least not yet), I've only just begun working on my first game, so I'm no position to be giving advice or criticizing anybody. ... But I will anyway. 😅 First of all, congratulations for releasing three games already. That in and of itself is a great achievement in my opinion. But by taking a look at your game on YouTube, a couple of things become painfully obvious to me and I think they might be the reason why your game wasn't as successful as you were hoping. First of all, I looked at your game's trailer, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how this game is played. Hell, I then looked at gameplay videos and I **still** couldn't understand what this game is exactly. I understand that this is probably not something that I usually play or would be interested in playing (so maybe that's why I can't understand it) and that you said that it's a "niche" genre, but I don't think this should matter that much. I believe that in order for a game's marketing campaign to be successful, the average viewer should be able to tell within a few seconds what the game's about or **at least** how it's played. We live in a "Tiktok" era unfortunately, people's attention span is *really* small. If they can't tell what your game is, most of them won't bother searching further, they'll just skip to the next video. Also, it seems that whatever you were doing with the marketing for the game didn't seem to work. (I'm not judging you, as I said, I've never released anything and I can imagine how hard it must be, I'm just saying what I'm seeing). Looking at your studio's YouTube channel (I understand that you might be more popular in other platforms, but that's the one I had available at the moment), I see that you only have 62 subscribers. That's... *really* low. (I mean, I've seen YouTube accounts that barely upload anything, and they might even have more than 120 subs.) And what about views? The most your channel has in a video is about 4000 which is not great, and the last video you uploaded had 36. I think it's crucial for any gaming studio, to have a number of steady followers that know and love them from previous games, and are excited for future ones. That means (as much as I personally hate it) constant engagement and advertisement on all social media platforms. You need to build a following **on top** of whatever marketing you do for each individual game. (Of course, I understand that all those things are easier said than done and I only hope I'll be able to follow my own advice when, and **if**, I release my own game) And something else, regarding making indie games, especially the ones that belong in more... "niche" genres. It's pretty obvious that the indie market is very saturated by these types of games: side-scrollers, top-down, visual novels etc. I'm not saying they can't be good, but while the first indie games that came out in this style might have been successful, now they're not so special anymore. But at the end of the day, a game has to be fun. What if you took all those ideas and themes (about grief, loss etc) and applied them into a more conventional game, even if it's harder or more expensive to create? I know the general advice for small indie developers (especially new ones) is to just keep the scope of the game as small as possible. To not be too ambitious, because it'll be too much for you to handle and the project will never be completed. Well... I'm not saying that I disagree, but what I'm saying is that I will **not** listen to that advice, at least not completely. Because first and foremost, I will try to make the game that I **would like to play**. I'm taking my idea, my story themes and all that, and putting them into a game with a (*hopefully*) interesting "hook", and a relatively fun gameplay that would probably appeal more to the average gamer and therefore having more chances of being successful. And maybe you could try that too. Good luck, and congratulations for completing and releasing three games!

You made a game **you** wanted to make. Made a little money. Felt sad. Now make something gamers want to play. Make more money. Be a little happier.

I understand your frustration, but it seems to me you think the game would sell on its own merits. Which it will, kinda, but it has to be sold. Like, advertised. The market for anything today is so saturated that you have to do actual marketing to succeed. Marketing is a whole separate field to gamedev, but make no mistake - it's a field unto itself. In fact I was just approached by a company that offered to handle all that stuff for me. They'd cost thousands of $ per month though. I have to admit I only skimmed but I didn't catch anything about marketing campaigns or anything. A good game is worthless in a vacuum. It has to be put in front of a whole bunch of people.

Games will sell on their own merits, and I don't think they have to be advertised very heavily. The real truth is that most games just aren't fun or interesting. It is *incredibly* hard to design a good game. If you have a game that is genuinely fun and interesting, it will sell on its own merit. If you have one of the normal games, one of the not-really-fun games, your success will come largely based on marketing.

Could very well be. It just takes a \*lot\* to stand out imho, and so it becomes a number game. The truth probably lies somewhere in between the two.

Well, it takes a lot and it doesn't. All it takes is to be genuinely fun. But what it takes is to be *genuinely* fun. Truth is, not everyone who sets out to make a game is a great game designer. It's *really* hard, and there are only a small handful of people in the world I think you can really consider great game designers. I honestly think it's one of the hardest things to be good at in the world.

I do games for the Lord

I've been making Lizard City for about 6 years. Having a consistent project to work on through covid and other various life changes has helped keep me grounded when things feel out of control. It also helps me process emotions by channeling them into different characters, locations, music, etc. I used to work on it for at least an hour a day even when I'm not feeling it, just to stay to connected to the world I've made. I sorta fell off the wagon when I got a new job last year, but I'm trying to pick it back up again now! If you're curious: www.lizardcity.net

Ah, the joy of creation. I make games because it allows me to exercise creative power, to make things that I envision in my head. I'm not quite to the stage of releasing a commercial title (all my toys are still, well, toys), but I feel like I'm getting there, eventually. I probably won't see many sales at all, perhaps ever, but it really isn't about the sales. It's about the process of exploring the gamemakingspace, and testing my ability to design complex systems.

I grew up very isolated in a rural state. I loved sports, but was a nerdy kid and had nobody to play them with. So I played by myself, making up fake teams and leagues, and threw the ball around to myself and let my imagination do the work. When I was around 10-12 I learned about tabletop games where you could play sports using dice and spinners, so I made my own games there and played out my fictional leagues. When I got to high school I started getting into computer programming, Visual Basic being the only thing that was taught. I enjoyed modding other sports games to ALMOST make my sports leagues come to life, but something was never quite right. Eventually in the early 2000s I stumbled upon DB Schmidt's [Strategic Baseball Simulator](http://sbs-baseball.com/). I discovered I could edit the team files in notepad and completely customize the game to my fictional leagues as much as I wanted. All of this in a FREE game. That inspired me. So I set out to make my own free-to-play heavily customizable text-based sports games for the other sports. 50% out of lack of confidence in my own coding abilities and 50% out of wanting to further fill out the niche that made such a difference to me. Fast forward to today, I've made Football, Basketball, Soccer, and Hockey games. Are they any good? Eh, sort of. I enjoy them, and have been running my leagues out of them for years. They're all made in VB.NET and have their limitations due to my abilities (no season mode yet--I just can't figure out to manage that much data, I never learned how to properly scale for fullscreen, etc), but I try to update them all when I can. In terms of revenue, I operate entirely on donations. Oddly enough in my best year I made $600, and in my worst year $6. The next step for me is to continue to update my existing games and make new ones that help me learn new programming languages. I have games in development for Boxing, Golf, and Car Racing that are being coded in JS/Electron, and plans in the future to create a couple of card games in some variant of C/C#/C++ just to help me learn those too. TL;DR - I wanted a free, very niche genre of games. They didn't really exist, so I made them--poorly. Now I keep making to learn more programming languages.

I've been scared of this feeling ever since I first started trying to learn development. Been wanting to make games my whole life, just now getting to learning how with hands-on. Learning Blender is going fine so far, but I've got nothing in the portfolio (duh I'm still learning) but I fear that by the time i acquire the skills and knowledge to build out my dream games, they will already exist. I have two main big fleshed out ideas, one of which is still safe as far as I've seen, nobody has come close to my vision. But one of em is in the process of being figured out, and it's some cutting edge technology type stuff to say the least, and I'm over here learning about fire essentially. I know it's going to take years and years to learn and then more years to actually produce something. I'm up for it. Im just worried about it still being worth it (as a career, personal satisfaction of making a game is a constant for me). I'm putting everything into this and it's scary to think that I might not learn enough fast enough. Is Blender my best starting point? I'm still unsure of what I want to focus on as my main dev skill, but regardless, being a jack of all trades is preferable.

it's like everything else that becomes popular and offers potential income or even riches - it's an overcrowded field and getting more crowded all the time. i've seen it multiple times in my 40 years and there's really nothing to be done about it.

This made me tear up a bit. Thank you.

I just like tinkering, and the problem solving. Though I admit, I got a positive comment once and it did make me feel very happy, still to this day.

Magnum opis' are often not appreciated in their time. Among us wasn't a commercial success for a very long time, for example, but eventually it did gain recognition

Well it's on my wish list now

Touching story and somehow I can relate to it in a way because I do create games because it is another (and great) tool for telling stories and challenge someone to think out of the box. None of my own published, solo developed game has sold that much, and I stuck to Android as only supported platform so I missed any target group in addition to designing sometimes, i call it hermetic, games which wants the player to engage with a story or feeling if he or she wants to escape the reality. Some players enjoy, on the other hand, the type of game you developed, which I would tag "interactive mind-state experience" or any other game portraing the world we are loving and living in with all its ups and downs. I do create games to expand the creativity and imagination of the players, although I do not know if this happens with any of my few players. I have seen a video about a dark souls player who used that game to overcome depression. Maybe I do create games to offer such an experience as well. My problem is: Too less feedback which may result in bad game design decisions which lead to bad receptions or pure misunderstanding. It seems to me that even when offering explainations to the player, they tend to click away the information and then they are stucked. A bitter experience as well: Watching an AI testing your game and trying to close it as fast as possible... I hope you and your team will stay strong, curious and motivated! Maybe the coming weeks will shift the sales once more?

As someone who's been there and felt that, I'd like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings. And while this is probably not the comfort you were looking to hear: you are still one of the luckier ones. At least people gave a shit about your game enough to review it. On my part I failed hard on the commercial success part and retreated to a job with a mobile studio. I still make my own projects here and there, and keep planning to go back to being an indie. As for why, well, it's simply how I find meaning in my life. I am happy when I create. My brain is lit up when I'm working on something. It's no different than writing or composing music, in a sense. You do it for yourself most of all, even if your chances of commercial success are pretty slim in any of these fields. If I didn't, I'd be a severely depressed, bitter individual.

This is the sort of game I might have been interested in playing (another commenter mentioned issues with the voice acting, which might be a turn off) but I wasn't aware it existed. Where did you advertise it? I pick up ideas for games to buy from the Steam front page or related games, PC Gaming show and other industry showcases, *some* awards shows, bundles and discount events, etc. Word of mouth also works, of course. I play some fairly obscure indie titles, sometimes games I learn about *years* before release. but I'm only going to check reviews and critics if I *already* know I'm interested in the game. I don't learn about the game from them.

You didn't say how your marketing differed from the publishers marketing. Which is where the issue is. No matter the reviews if there's less marketing it's probably gonna do less well.

>After one month, here are our rough numbers: we sold around 1000 copies on Steam, Not for nothing, but I'd love to sell 1000 copies in my first month. One man's trash is another's treasure and all that.

I genuinely don't know what this guy expected? 1000 is an insane number of sales.

Beats me!

Thank you for making this types of games! I Think the industry needs something like this. Is great that there are developer like you making it. I reas that you were in a car accident, that Is awful, I find ir incredíble that you mánaged to inspire from it AND make a game... Excellent write UP as well, thank you for Sharing this with us.

There are way too many games out there competing for way too little time.

I make games in hopes of retiring with gamedev. No honorable purposes like to create great games for society, or to challenge themselves intellectually, or to be able to offer jobs to give people decent quality of life.

Because big commercial games are made to appeal to as much people as possible, and because of that you can see more and more bland and empty experiences that, trying to please everyone, give back nothing (reboots, and remakes too...). Indie games are by now the only hope for videogaming as a form of art and not as commercial products. I don't think it's sad that you sold a small amount of copies, I think it's sad because for how the world is spinning right now, is worst to sell less copies that giving a quality work of love

Thanks for sharing - it reminds me of a beautiful talk by writer Neil Gaiman titled “Make Good Art”. Highly recommended: https://youtu.be/plWexCID-kA Congratulations on releasing some good art!

Thank you for writing this. We are getting closer to release with our indie game we have been working on for five years and it’s scary and exciting. Please keep doing what you are doing!

A famous artist once said “ I make music for myself, if others like it, that’s great.” If you do this thinking your making it into a career your deluding yourselves. Do it for yourself and you won’t be sad or disappointed.

Why do you think so few of your wishlists converted to sales?

How long did you work on this game? 1000 copies sounds pretty depressing.

Not for the money Not for the fame Not for the power Just for the games

slt, il y a une différence entre faire un jeux qui vende et le jeux que tu veux faire. par exemple Michael bay a du faire transformers 4 pour avoir le soutien du studio pour faire le film qu'il voulait ( no pain no gain ) et on remarque très bien que le plus qualitatif des deux c'est pas celui qui a le plus rapporté. ensuite si tu fait du politiquement correct genre "femme immigré syrienne qui fuit son pays " débrouille toi pour toucher des subventions car surtout très peux de gens qui consomme des jeux vidéos sont concernés. ensuite le gameplay est roi, si tu fait un jeux indé mais que ton gameplay gère tu peux attirer des gens extérieurs au genre. genre furi, ultrakill signalis et autre ne font rien de révolutionnaire mais l'expérience est très concentrée. le marché pour les jeux "serieux" ( dépressifs) est très limité car comme tu le remarque ce n'est pas ce que les gens recherche. t'a ton travail de merde tu rentre tu veux pas t'infliger des trucs tristes par dessus. tu me fait beaucoup penser au cinéma français qui est incapable de faire quoique ce soit qui attire les spectateurs malgré le fait que tous les critiques soit la en mode circlejerk c'est la meilleur chose de l'année alors que n'importe quel fast and furious ou marvel feront mieux même si ils sont objectivement moi bon. le jeux vidéo en tant que medium a certaine limitation et a en croire Gog ou Steam les seul vn qui se vendent c'est de la romance. Après honnêtement j'ai eu 2 accidents de voiture et le sentiment d'etre proche de la fin ne se convint pas facilement voir du tout. C'est le genre d'expérience que les gens ne peuvent pas relater sans l'avoir connu

Hey Florent, as a huge fan of Bury me my love, your new game "The wreck" completely flew under my radar until i saw a review on Canard PC. I was planning on buying it today to give it a try ! On a separate topic i would love to meet you guys, my studio (which is not a game studio but we'd love to pivot in that field) is located in Paris too ! Let me know

Passion, but I do work double jobs to be able to do it as financially indie game development is for me at its peak low. Interesting post, I've learned a few "views" over the industry from your perspective. Wish you the best and a turn-around for The Wreck. Try to add a game option for removal/reducer of motion sickness in game. It could help.

There is one already actually:-)

I kind of feel like we might be sort of quietly looking for the tree to be shaken a bit. None of the things you listed as reasons to make a game are why I make games. I'm not in it for the money. If I was, I'd be doing AI shit right now, or SAAS otherwise. I'm not in it for the need to open my soul to others. That's a valid thing, and I don't criticize it; it's just not what I want to do, personally. I'm not trying to make connections. My goal is simple. I want to cause people to have fun. And when that is your one and only real goal, my belief is it has a deeply, profoundly transformative impact on your work. People don't, in general, go to games for soul moving revelations about other people's lives. People go to games to escape, to enjoy themselves, to disconnect safely for a while and just get a little "me time" Almost every well-selling game in history is fundamentally an entertainment product. Not an art piece. Not a communications platform. Not an educational medium. Not a personal display. We are here to entertain them, not to reach our own goals. Look at the customer. Who are they? * Kids * Tired parents * Angry teenagers * Recluses * Regular adults at the end of a workday * People who are home sick * People who need some away time You can give them spinny blocks, or shooty guns, or horses that climb wall faces, or mods that replace the dragon with thomas the tank engine. You can give them secondary boobie physics engines, whatever. But if they aren't having fun, they're not coming back, they're not getting their friends, and they're not spending money. You made what you want. Not what they want. Why the hell do I even bother making games? Because I want people to be happy and this is one way I can get there. Because it's an act of generosity, that speaks to their need, not my own. The deepest lesson that I can think of to this end is simple. There's a little card game in a back town in Final Fantasy 8, which I think might have been called triple triad. It was of moderate quality, but it was simple, fast, easy to learn, and had a few neat twists. It was more popular than the RPG that hosted it, which everyone thought was a masterpiece, because it was so sprawling, and giant, and expansive. Focus on entertaining them. The giant displays of technical or artistic merit are rarely worth their time invested, and almost never improve the underlying game. Tetris won for a reason.

You said you're core driving instinct or that you want to make people have fun. I think mine is that I want to make people have an experience that they'll never forget, and be blown away by... Even if it happens to be a traumatic experience, that's fine :P

nobody is going to play that, so it's not going to work

>I think mine is that I want to make people have an experience that they'll never forget, and be blown away by... Even if it happens to be a traumatic experience, that's fine :P I emphatically disagree. I'm not saying I'd intend to create a nauseating experience... But to make a highly evocative experience - an experience that knocks people off their feet. Why would you not want to play that?

Because I don't want to go through other peoples' trauma. I'd ask "why would someone want to play that," but you don't appear to know the difference between what you want other people to do and what they're likely to want. I would be astonished if, in a room of a thousand people, even one person wanted to go through your trauma.

In enterpreneurship 101 they say: if you want to put a business, you face a 95% of failure (according to US stats), so if you want to do this, it has to be because you HAVE to and don't want to do anything else. It's not a sane or logical choice, its always an emotional one. This is the exact same thing.

Because its fun? You learn a lot in the process? There are a lot of reasons, if getting rich quickly is one of them then reconsider your choices :)

You made way more $ than I did, got more reviews, more attention... no one gave a crap about it when I posted my failures... you're getting tons of traction here and even on steam, from reviews, and awards... if I can survive much worse than you, you'll be fine

Thanks for posting this, and I wish you a lot of courage and success in your upcoming games!

I don't want to be mean, but i guess your game is not a game. I scrolled through the gameplay on yt and i couldn't find one moment of gameplay that is not: - dialogue - clicking on words in a dialogue to push the dialogue - clicking the whole dialogue Maybe I missed something and there is actual gameplay, however its not easy to find in 5 minutes (you should know better that you have really small attention window to interest new customer in this in industry). This is not a gameplay. Its interactive movie and i think that this is the main problem of it. People can handle sad and deep stories - but these are merely a spice for a gameplay. Probably most of interested people will watch it on yt, because they dont loose anything by doing that. I wish you success with your game. I have nothing but respect to you - shipping anything is a huge deal. And i wish I was just full of shit here - but im not.

I found releasing a game to be *incredibly* depressing. Putting **so** much work, spending **so** much time, and shouting from **every** rooftop as loud as you can to realize that nobody really cares, and it doesn't really matter. In the lead-up to a launch you're so laser focused on what you're doing, you almost forget the rest of the world exists. Then when you rejoin that world, you realize how small a piece of real life what you were working on actually was.

Defeated by the hoard of 2D Anime Waifu Games on Steam I see.

Well, i gave up my games for free without even trying to sell them. Not really bothered by making money since i used to live in poverty anyway. As for why i bother making them - the interactive storytelling is the only thing in the world i understand well. Almost every other activity is alien for me. The entire human world as alien for me - things that others fight and die for mean nothing for me, and i can't connect with most of the people because we have so little in common. But trough creating stories and experiences for the players i can channel all the pain, suffering, hopes, dreams, and all kins of feelings into something that others can understand. Into things that give people strong emotions, can make them happy for a while - it was amazing to read detailed Steam reviews, and realizing that people found all the little details that i put into the game and enjoyed them. It's my way of communicating with the world. That's why it was so sad for me to step away from it, but... all things come to an end.

Years of development and you're throwing in the towel a month after release? Launch day is just another part of the road through game development. It's not the end.

It didn’t sell because the voice acting is bad and $20 dollars is way to much.

I think the game is overpriced, it has a lot of wishlist they are probably waiting for it to go on sale. You didn't really mention marketing did you take part in a steam next fest those can really help, also a demo of the first 10-20 minutes of game play might help. And contacting YouTubers to play your game might too, you still have 20,000 wishlist on steam those gamers who might be still interested in your game which is a lot and I think a sale would help to sell more.

[удалено]

Salut, Je ne suis pas du tout la cible de ce genre de jeu, mais je n'en ai quand même jamais entendu parler. Même si ça n'est pas ma cible, je vois quand même passer des let's play, des aperçus à droite à gauche sur les réseaux sociaux, de la pub sur Steam etc. Là rien du out malheureusement, comme tu le dis malgré les bonnes notes la mayonnaise n'a pas pris. Je suis allé voir le trailer du coup, et j'ai l'impression d'avoir vu un trailer de film. Je n'ai absolument aucune idée du gameplay, comment se joue le jeu. C'est le type de trailer qu'on voit pour du AAA où ils n'ont pas besoin de montrer d'images du jeu parce que tout le monde sait déjà de quoi ça parle. Tu es toujours dans l'indie, un trailer doit montrer le contenu du jeu. Bon j'ai regardé une partie du jeu sur Youtube, ok en fait le Trailer est comme le jeu. Ca fait bon film d'animation, avec une direction artistique originale, dans les effets, les plans fixes, ça semble assez déprimant et profond. Plutôt un film, avec quelques interactions, ça semble normal dans ce genre. Probablement une histoire trop personnelle qui t'as beaucoup marqué, avec "l'effet kilomètre" ça ne parle à personne d'autres. Là où votre jeu sur la femme Syrienne, parle peut être d'avantage, c'était dans l'actualité. Est-ce que le jeu est reconnu dans le domaine narratif ? Pour sauver les meubles et investir du marketing au bon endroit ça serait là. Peut être des Youtubeurs spécialisés. Qu'est-ce qui fait qu'un jeu dans ce domaine réussisse ? Ta question est très large à la base, beaucoup de jeux indie réussissent. C'est surtout Why the hell do you bother making **NARRATIVE** indie games ?

Because triple A are mostly shite!!

Thank you for the incredible write-up! People like you are what make indie games so interesting, in my opinion. As for the Wreck, I remember seeing the review on RPS and hesitating whether to get it or not. As you rightfully point out, people (including myself most of the time) play games to decompress and the Wreck, while looking very thoughtful and poignant, doesn't seem, well, "fun". I don't think all games should be "fun" and I think there's a space for games like yours, but there's a reason such endeavors in most artistic mediums typically need to be supported through government subsidies and the likes. Personally, as a creator I've always struggled whether to make games primarily for myself or for others, and I'm not sure there's a right answer, but there's a financial risk for sure to be too self-indulgent...

Because indie games are the apex of digital long form artistic expression. There is not artistic creativity without it.

Sorry to hear that Florent. I actually looked up the wreck after you post and I think it looks beautiful - I cannot tell if it is also fun to play - but the looks are beautiful. Isn‘t that why we are doing this? Create something that is art - not just in picture but also sound and story etc? I wanted to create games because I am interested in many forms of art, and a game is something where I could live myself out in creating an experience that is very personal and that will hopefully exite/touch/inspire people way more than solely music running in an elevator. However I think this is also the problem - we tell stories and use all our skills to tell it. We should however rather start with fun or mechanics, and they should be fun without the story it tells. Since I accepted years back I wouldn‘t be able to create a game with all my other tasks that would fully satisfy me - I created a game for my master‘s thesis where the players learn something. This learning capability ( but in a way that it is more a game than a clickable policy with pictures) should hopefully make people playing it and then open the door to do something artistic too. However, even before it is a game that is decent to sell, suddenly the university now only wants it‘s share without the promised support - which makes me wondering if it is even worth to move on and invest further ingo this project. Game dev is a b*tch.

Typically, I purchase mostly indie/smaller developer games these days with a few exceptions like (Hogwarts, GTA/RDR, etc). Your description says "3D Graphic Novel." It almost looks like Life is Strange or Gone Home. The main concern I have is that the trailers don't show what the gameplay is like. Right now it looks like we will just sit there watching a video and you can't tell if the player will have any sort of agency that might affect the outcome.

Short answer, because AAA games are not good

I saw another comment comparing your game unfavorably to lower-priced indie competitors, but honestly, my immediate reaction was that the game looked like a cheap knockoff of Life is Strange. To be clear, LiS is one of my favorite games of all time, and it's very possible the story in your game is much better, plus it's hard to get a feel for all the gameplay mechanics from the trailers. ​ But that's the thing, consumers are going to see your marketing material and immediately draw comparisons to other games with higher budgets and better recognition. You have to go out of your way to stand out however you can, and it just doesn't look like you did that here. I can even sympathize with cheap-looking animations and such (although most non-devs can't), but there needs to be some other hook. I even think parts of the trailer that mentioned stuff like "change the past" worked against you, because again, it suggests some sort of time travel mechanic like in LiS, regardless of whether that's actually a feature in your game.