Thread 719229341

Hello 4Chan community!

I want to share a story about how my friend and I spent a whole year making a game. We released it on Steam... and earned only 7 dollars. Maybe my experience will be useful to someone, because I already identified the main mistakes we made during development.

How it all started
A year ago, my friend and I were working regular jobs, earning an average salary in our country. But all our lives we dreamed of creating our own game. Back in elementary school we used to invent projects in notebooks and imagine how we would bring them to life.

One day, we finally had the idea to make a game. The concept was simple: a gravity puzzle, where players could complete levels in different ways by changing gravity vectors and pushing off surfaces.

I had some experience with Unity, so we chose it as our main engine. We split the responsibilities: I worked on the code, and my friend worked on the graphics.Development struggles
For the first month we tried to combine work and game development. But after long workdays, we had no energy left - burnout came fast, and we just wanted to rest.

So, we made a radical decision: quit our jobs and live off our savings - about $3000. We planned to finish the game in half a year, but deadlines stretched, and money ran out quickly. We had to take loans and borrow from relatives. On top of that, we met people who promised to help but only wasted our money and time.

Release
After a year of development, we finally uploaded the game to Steam. I spent our last $100 to publish it, hoping for at least some kind of result. We had put so much effort into it, and most importantly - our huge desire to finally release our own game.

During the first two weeks we got about 200 wishlists. By the release date (August 25th), we were hopeful. But by August 27th, we had only 2-3 sales - totaling 7 dollars. That really hit us hard.

We started asking on forums what we did wrong, and here are the mistakes we realized:

Mistakes
Marketing.
We completely ignored marketing. We didn’t have enough energy or time, and one acquaintance told me: "Steam promotes games by itself." I believed that and did nothing. Huge mistake. Even spending one month on marketing would have improved our results.

Pre-release.
Our game was in pre-release for only 2 weeks. That is way too short. It should be at least 1-2 months, because pre-release is when the game gathers the most views on Steam.

Trailer.
It turns out the trailer is extremely important. I personally judged games by screenshots, but most people decide by the trailer.

Our trailer was awful.

The first 12 seconds showed the character walking to a level and loading screens.

There were no smooth transitions, making it choppy.

Small but important tip: when recording trailer footage, use a controller. Movements look much smoother that way.

Conclusion
That’s it. I have a few more recommendations, but this post is already long. If anyone is interested, I’m happy to answer questions.

I hope my story was useful.

Here’s the Steam page for our game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3916050/Gravity/

We have already improved the trailer a little with some help.
(And I’ve heard 4Chan can sometimes work miracles )

Thanks everyone!

>>719229341 (OP)
A year for 7 levels that look quite drab. Man. What have I done in a year? Nothing. Good luck anyway.

Not your personal army
Nigger
5

>>719229601
>>719229516
>>719229341 (OP)
basically autistic people suck ass at marketing and don't think like regular people
if you had hired someone else to do advertising you would have made far more
you could easily salvage this if you pull the game and relaunch it btw

>>719229601
Why did you put all your level content in the about section lmao
Also steam only promotes games if you actually hit enough wishlists

Pretty sure I've seen this story in some for or another for years now. Anyway, marketing is the most important thing by far. Marketing is more important than having an actual game. You're marketing your product to cattle so you have to make sure the cattle know what to buy and when to buy it. Having a functional game is secondary, the % of cattle that won't mind spendig money on nothing is bigger than those who do mind. This is asset flip scamming 101.
Now if you want to make an actual game and sell it, my only advice is make something for the normies. Friendslop like Peak, think of a gimmick and market it towards the twitch grifers. Also marketing is still more important than the game.

>>719231229
>Anyway, marketing is the most important thing by far. Marketing is more important than having an actual game
this is so true that people are actually making bank from just posting trailers for fake games on tiktok

If you look at "Bloodlines 2" as an example of marketing with no product you get a good idea of how badly that can go. Paradox has actively hired shills to talk about it and to generate hype, but everything you see from the game makes you disappointed and pessimistic. People will only think negatively about The Chinese Room and Paradox going forward because of this. You HAVE to have the correct amount of marketing for your product. Don't oversell a product you don't actually believe in. The short term gains is not worth it.

your game failed because you can't write a post without schizo spacing

>>719229341 (OP)
Looks cool, will buy and refund shortly :^)

Commenting for the algorithm. Hope you guys better recognition !

>>719231494
I feel like this is unironically true even while actually playing a game. A game selling itself well is more important than it actually being technically good.

>>719231884
it is true
the same for youtube btw
the thumbnail and title is far more important than the video itself

>>719229516
>>So, we made a radical decision: quit our jobs and live off our savings - about $3000
What the fuck? Why on earth would you quit your job if that's all you have?

>>719229341 (OP)
hey anon, maybe you could try and make a kick ass trailer and relaunch it? I don't think anyone would complain, like a second try? or maybe add enough stuff to warrant a separate release with an amazing trailer. You guys already did most of the actual heavy lifting, now simply iterate on the skeleton of your work and make better graphics, trailer and stuff.

Congrats on making a whole ass game, you are above 99.9% of us retards here who just screech and cry over gamesd instead of at least making some. I sincerely wish you guys the best of luck forward!

>>719229341 (OP)
get a better title for the game
literally unsearchable generic name

>>719232182
Well I think they can't do a relaunch since it'd cost them another $100. It's tragic.

>>719229341 (OP)
huh... you guys made a cash grab clicker game before this as your first game and yet you claim to be passionate about creating games? Kinda sus.

>>719230658
Yes, there were more levels and there was a plot in the game. But in fact, there was another person, not a very good one, whom we kind of hired, promised a percentage, but also paid as much as possible. But we had different views on the game, and after a small quarrel, he disappeared. But okay, if he had just disappeared, but he cleaned up the repositories of our game, rolling us back a lot and because we were running out of money and the debts we had accumulated over the course of a year needed to be repaid, we decided to release the game in this form, most likely it was a mistake

tl:dr
Why would anyone pay for it?
How would anyone know about it?
Should have studied the history of indie games that were successful and how they made money before you started

lol

>>719229341 (OP)
Fuck you, blueberry.
If you were a functioning human being you wouldn't quit your job trying to make it big with slop on steam. Also as the other anon said
>Not your personal army,faggot
This is not make a wish for retards

A small remark about the reason why I quit my job, as it may add to the completeness of the picture. At work I received a fairly average, in some sense even good salary. But the relationships in the team were just terrible, I do not want to complain, but I have some syndrome that hinders my relationships with people. So I often like to just sit on the form and not leave the house, I have one and very good friend (with him we made a game) and to be honest, except for financial failure at some moments of development, sitting in a room with my friend and developing an idea, studying various documentation, I lived the best moments of my life. I do not regret the dismissal at all

>>719231494
How? Funny. What genres are trending on tictoc? I guess not rpg.

>>719232549
Regarding the previous game that is on this account, please do not attribute it to our duo, since I live in a country where there is a problem with steam and other services (not Russia) We bought this account, where there was already a game, it seemed to us the easiest way

>>719229341 (OP)
Greetings.

It seems like too many people want to make games, and there's just not enough time and money to go around. Don't get me wrong, I am one of them.

I wonder, for some, if making games a way to cope with not really having anything to look forward to after work.

In any case I do wish you the best. Reddit would be kinder though, r/gamedev.

>>719229341 (OP)
What country are you in?

>>719233481
>making games a way to cope with not really having anything to look forward to after work.
Likely. I made games since I am a child and only released like 3 mods over the course of 20 years. Believe it or not, I have near half a dozen finished documents, pitches, art books for games and likely 50 or sp sketches of games. Even if I would have the money and people sourced to make the games, I wouldn't.

>>719229341 (OP)
So why did you delete your reddit thread, was it you getting called out for using ChatGPT to write your steam page?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1n0hpvx/we_quit_our_jobs_spent_a_year_making_a_game_and/

>all our lives we dreamed of creating our own game
>We released it on Steam... and earned only 7 dollars
that's your biggest mistake. bringing money talks into a passion project

>>719229341 (OP)
A few questions for you. Could you please answer them?

>What was your actual objective by making the game?
AKA, certain player number, certain amount of copies sold, etc... ?
If this was not defined, please say so.

>Out of 10, how confident were you that you were going to reach your objective during development?

>What's the unique strength of your game?
Also known as the "selling point"

>Who was your target audience?
If this was undefined, you can use "players that played [another game name] before"

If you're answering specifics on those questions for the first time, you should have seen a game dev coach during pre-production while you still had a job, or during development when things weren't going as planned.

This goes for any other anon working on their game and not facing specifics.

>>719233915
Video games are a business, it's not 1973 anymore

>>719234042
Everything is a business, hence everything is soulless.

>>719233760
I did not delete the post from the reddit, it was deleted by moderation, for what reason I do not know, and yes there was a lot of criticism, and the use of the gpt chat was not the main criticism, basically everything concerned the trailer of the game. Below I attach a screenshot

>>719234036
Yes, thank you for the questions, 1. the goal when creating the game. To be honest, initially we wanted to create a community around our game so that in the future we could supplement and develop the game and people would watch it and give feedback. But the further we made the game, the further this goal faded into the background, and the desire to earn money or at least return what was spent came to the forefront, I understand that this is the most incorrect and mercantile approach, but it turned out that way (. 2. We were almost 10 out of 10 sure that we would succeed. 3. We considered interesting gameplay with gravity to be a strong point. 4. We counted on people who love speed puzzles and speedrunners (since I also loved to complete Minecraft for speed)

Buy an ad faggot. Also post your shit on /agdg/ so we can laugh at you. we already have

>>719234391
Why are you guys so cruel? Have you lost your soul while making videogames?

>>719229601
>one acquaintance told me: "Steam promotes games by itself."
This hasn't been true for a while now. Other indie devs complained that steam was the gatekeepers to PC gaming and Valve didn't want that title, so they just let anyone slap their slop on steam and now it's flooded with dogshit.

>>719234302
Thank you for answering.
If you were 10 out of 10 confident, you must have been really shocked by the reception.

Did nobody outside of friends and family test the game during development? Any demo? Prototypes? Anybody who loves to speedrun Minecraft like you, for example?

Either way, even if you know your audience well, without marketing, even if the game was flawless you would have had trouble get return on investment.

>>719229341 (OP)
>extremely generic name that doesn't show up when searching for it on google
>boring overdone genre that appeals to a very, very small audience
>selling it for a few dollars, signaling to potential customers that your product has little value
>trailer is boring, just shows gameplay
>no marketing whatsoever
>7 (seven) levels
Geez, I wonder why your game flopped. Back to the cagie, wagie!

>>719229341 (OP)
>But after long workdays, we had no energy left - burnout came fast, and we just wanted to rest
So just work on it on the weekend? Or take vacation? You had no deadline to finish your game so you it's not like it would've mattered if you didn't have time to work on it every day.

>>719229341 (OP)
No, you cretin - you are not a gamer, you don't know the history of computing or gaming. You are a faggot who thinks this is r-eddit.
Steam and GOG are drowning in shovelware. Take the first step to analyze why your game is shovelware and leave your self pity somewhere else.

>>719234438
Everyone here is bitter because they don't have gfs.

Should've kept your job, was thinking the same. I make mods instead.

>>719234710
Honestly this, really. There are so many random tasteless game devs from random shitholes that don't actually play games, that's the only explanation I can think of when I see their shitty store pages, like how the fuck did you look at this and think it was fit for consumption?

>>719234592
$3 may be the right price for this game if it's short.

The problem to me is that it's visually boring, a lot of grey from what I saw.

>>719232698
> cleaned up the repositories of our game
Did you not have local copies? Did you not have backups? If it's important back it up, lesson learnt.

>>719232698
>but he cleaned up the repositories of our game
holy retard

>>719234945
It doesn't matter how boring the game is, if you tell people it's garbage, they will see it as garbage.

>>719234391
>>719234391
And here I thought ginger have soul...

>>719229341 (OP)
>>719229516
You should had made your main character a little girl in swimsuit.

You might want to put a demo at least.

>>719229341 (OP)
If OF girls can buy ads, I think you can figure it out.

>>719229516
nice pasta

Game looks like shit. A big issue is that, like everyone else said, the levels are uninteresting and not unique in the slightest. In the trailer, when the player is falling down between the panel segments, if you're making a game where gravity can be manipulated, there should be some indication in the level design on whether or not you're progressing, like different level elements signifying the player hasn't done a loop. See: Half-Life testing where players went around in circles nonstop. You're dealing with literal retards.

>>719229341 (OP)
>generic gray scifi cube rooms
Drop acid and do another art pass.

>>719234683
This is the curse of indie devs who came from corpo jobs-y’all treat your dream game like it's still part of the Jira board. Working on weekends sounds good until you realize your brain is fried from spreadsheets and Slack pings all week, and burnout just turns your "passion project" into another unpaid internship. You’re right that there was no deadline, but sometimes that lack of pressure makes it even worse. No urgency, no dopamine, just a slowly rotting Git repo and the creeping sense of failure.

You can always claim the game sold 30K$, fix the graphics a bit so it looks attractive and get a software job at an established game company.

>>719229601
>one acquaintance told me: "Steam promotes games by itself." I believed that and did nothing.
tl;dr but this is really funny

>>719229516
>>719229601
Several criticisms of this pasta:

-Indie Game development should never start with a specific focus on making money. It should be about making cool stuff that you and your friends find fun to play.

-Your game mechanics looks like ass and the implementation is boring and there is no amount of marketing that will help you.

-You have no demo on the steam store page, and that is fucking retarded.

-Using unity is beyond fucking retarded

-Game development always takes longer than expected and there will always be some kind of issue that causes that to happen

Game development is not some kind of get rich quick scheme, you will likely not make anything that ever makes enough money to quit a existing job and should only be left to the passionate. You got what you deserved.

Anyone bought this? Based on anons post I think it could be schizocore, maybe even kino with a few art tweaks

>>719233131
>We bought this account
reported to steam ;) fuck you account scammers.

>>719229601
What kind of marketing would you have done if you had done marketing?

>>719229601
>Our trailer was awful.
>The first 12 seconds showed the character walking to a level and loading screens.
there was a loading screen in the fucking TRAILER?

>I have a few more recommendations, but this post is already long.
you need to not give any recommendations until you launch a successful game. right now you're coping hard, trying to turn this failure into a perceived success via "valuable lessons". and that's not a bad instinct to have. but don't let it tip over into fake expert territory. you literally realized marketing is a thing after you launched a game. that's your actual level of expertise. absorbing some good advice from others after the fact does not put you in a position to start sharing "recommendations", so stop that immediately before it becomes a habit.

since you didn't do marketing before launch it's also safe to say you didn't do proper playtesting and your game is no fun. those are the next things to fix.

>>719238312
>You have no demo on the steam store page, and that is fucking retarded.
smart observation
>Using unity is beyond fucking retarded
dumbest thing anyone has said ITT including OP.

>>719238312
You should be focusing on money because otherwise you'll never be able to guarantee returns or engagement. It's not a good idea to do it for your first release though, and also not a good idea to dive headfirst into developing a commercial game.
You should triple your expectations of dev time and quintuple your budget over realistic expectations though. $3000 for two devs over half a year is a fucking joke, that's not even enough for a month. And not even accounting for marketing and time spent doing it.

Unity is great though stop smoking cock

>>719238698
>dumbest thing anyone has said ITT including OP.
>he doesn't know about the unity stigma

Saw this on reddit couple days ago -- if anything, youre doing the smart thing of using the perceived failure to get some visiblity. Playing with the deck youre given is clever.

>>719238836
>able to guarantee returns or engagement
I would argue that a 2 dev unexperienced team shouldn't be doing this in the first place but each his own I guess.

>>719232982
It seems like you might be autistic and people take advantage of you. Don't worry anon, but try to relax and keep your gamemaking dream alive

>>719229341 (OP)
7 levels and that is posted on the store page in the about section LUL That number sucks and is probably something you should hide

>>719238860
the unity stigma is a meme only remembered by pajeets who fantasize about Unreal Engine saving them from poverty. normal people don't care if a game was made in Unity one way or another. the fact that games run on "engines" is expert knowledge to them. they don't fucking care. does it have good reviews? is it fun? does my PC fit in the recommended specs? these are questions you should be asking if you want to understand the viewpoint of the average gamer. and especially that last one is going to go in Unity's favor every time. Unreal games all run like shit and that is definitely something gamers have noticed.

>>719239209
>normal people don't care if a game was made in Unity one way or another
normal people don't play muted color boring gravity games either. I don't think "normal" people are the audience for this game.

>https://store.steampowered.com/app/3916050/Gravity/
looks like total garbage, do you guys even try to view your game as a customer? you look at this shit and instantly dont care

>>719237195
true, if you are that uncreative you might as well do substances to make something good looking

>>719229516
>live off our savings - about $3000
holy fucking kek
I hope this is a larp because even if you are from a shitty low-eco 3d world country, how utterly retarded do you have to be to leave 2 jobs when you only have such a pitiful cushion to survive.
I have 100000€ in savings right now and never in a million years would I think it's enough to go full ConcernedApe with it.

>>719237195
this big this. It presents like shit.

>>719229601
>Mistakes
>Marketing.
>We completely ignored marketing. We didn’t have enough energy or time, and one acquaintance told me: "Steam promotes games by itself." I believed that and did nothing. Huge mistake. Even spending one month on marketing would have improved our results.
Rookie mistake
Like actually, this is the most important part if the game itself isn't really amazing

>>719229341 (OP)
>>719229516
>>719229601
Shut up you fucking faggot

>>719239502
It's a reddit post, copy and pasted fully.

>>719239020
Yeah you need experience to do it. Marketing isn't as hard as you'd think from how many shit slop games die in the depths of the Steam catalog but it takes a LOT of effort.

If you release the game on iOS you might have a better chance, this seems like something someone who doesn't play games often would want to try.

I made a naughty game in RPG Maker and made some money. Not much, but enough to survive for a few years. I did ZERO marketing. I let the game spread by word of mouth without worrying about anything, and it worked.
The thing is, when I was a teenager, I had made some silly little RPG Maker games, and I discovered that I had a talent for creating characters, because I received emails for years from people talking about the characters of my games and how much fun they had with their adventures and jokes. Again, not many emails, but enough for me to realize that if I tried my hand at it, I would probably make some money.

So basically, the secret is:
>have a talent for doing something that catches people's attention
>create a product with your talent and sell it

There's no secret, really. As I always say, instead of watching videos on YouTube, or buying courses, or reading books, just identify your talent and use a video game to show it to the world.

>>719239846
>I made a naughty game in RPG Maker
link or stfu

>>719239846
piratesoftware your game sucks and the only reason you got as far as you did is because of nepotism.

>>719239362
I think it's just obviously an early prototype that they only released because they ran out of money. nobody can say
>my vision for the visuals was that everything you see is random pieces of gray metal with no color palette, no lighting, no contrast to anything
>my vision for the gameplay was you jump across floating platforms like in a CSGO bhop map but with really stiff movement (no momentum) and also there are these boxes falling around in big otherwise empty rooms, yeah.
>for trailer audio I'd say no sound effects whatsoever and let's use ambient landscape shot music like we're on a cliff looking out at the ocean, except of course we're looking at random gray metal boxes. that will go hard for sure.

nothing OP did has any deliberate plan or vision to it. somehow on a two man project neither of them had any idea what they actually wanted to make. they just fucked around for a year and the result is a grayboxed prototype of a physics puzzler that they are now in the thankless position of trying to sell to end users.

>>719239502
are you paying off a mortgage or why is that not enough to live on for 5 years?

>>719239846
>ust identify your talent and use a video game to show it to the world
a game about masturbation and arguing online you say

wow, I'd love to get in depressing drab cagie after a long day of being a wagie

>>719239973
>are you paying off a mortgage or why is that not enough to live on for 5 years?
>live 3-5 years on your savings
>95% chance of earning 7$
>congratulations! now you have 0 savings and must go back to job search 5 years older with a big autistic gap in your CV
yeah... as far as retarded financial decisions go, you might as well just keep your job and start playing the lottery

>>719239846
Its better to be a ntr game

buy an ad

>>719240324
why when he can post here for free ;)

>retard OP upset his retard game he 'spent a year on' didnt sell at all
>wahhhh my retard game
No open cares OP.

>>719240324
he can’t afford it :(

>>719229516
>quit our jobs and live off our savings - about $3000
I don't know what country you live but that's not enough for more than 1-2 months anywhere in Europe and especially the anglosphere.

>>719229601
>The first 12 seconds showed the character walking to a level and loading screens
I don't want to be mean, but you're not making it easy for me.

>>719229601
>Mistakes
>Marketing.
>We completely ignored marketing. We didn’t have enough energy or time, and one acquaintance told me: "Steam promotes games by itself." I believed that and did nothing. Huge mistake. Even spending one month on marketing would have improved our results.
I knew immediately this'd be your mistake
Steam does market your game, but it only markets it once it gets going
It'll get you from 100 sales to a thousand or from a thousand to ten thousand, but you need to get those initial sales to let steam know you're not just slopshovelgarbage

>It turns out the trailer is extremely important. I personally judged games by screenshots, but most people decide by the trailer.
If a game doesn't have a trailer I just close the store page

Sad to hear it went so bad, anon
I'd suggest not giving up, get back to your job and start devving in your spare time instead and make a dev blog on xitter. This is by far the best way to get people interested in your game, just use all the hashtags other indie devs use because they get looked at a lot and make frequent posts of all the small advancements or troubles you run into etc. ideally with small videos

>>719235513
This

>>719232698
>he cleaned up the repositories of our game, rolling us back a lot and because we were running out of money and the debts we had accumulated over the course of a year needed to be repaid, we decided to release the game in this form, most likely it was a mistake
So this happened near the end of development? How big was the game going to be originally?

>>719241508
I won't say that 50 percent of the game was lost, but initially there was supposed to be a plot, and not levels but scenes, only 12 scenes, now you can play any level. But initially the narrative flow was linear.

>>719232698
...Did none of you really had any backup of your most recent build?
What the fuck

>>719241812
If the issue is related to git you can always go back and retrieve the code.

>>719229516
>live off our savings - about $3000
Holy shit, what the fuck.

I gott'a commend your bravery, I can't even imagine doing that. Even $30,000 isn't enough savings for me to think of quitting my job.

I've got about $150k in my savings accounts and I'd still be leery of doing something as ambitious as this. How in the world do you survive on 3k for a year? Are you just eating canned tuna? I hope that's not split between two people.

>>719229601
>(And I’ve heard 4Chan can sometimes work miracles )
NYPA.

But the game's cheap and I've got some sympathy, so I brought a copy anyway.

Oof

>>719235513
Doesn't always work.

>>719231692
>You HAVE to have the correct amount of marketing for your product.
When BG3 got pushed forward to avoid Starfield, this place was fucking FLOODED will shill campaigns. It was the least organic marketing campaign I've ever seen, because they very clearly had to rush it around the new schedule instead of trying to pretend they were ramping up posting.

>>719242231
Yes, we lived on 3000 thousand only for the first 6 months, then we had to borrow from friends and banks. We also had a chicken coop, since I live in a house, there were a lot of eggs for tomorrow for almost a whole year, if mainly pasta or rice from meat we tried to take bones for soup and canned food

>>719229341 (OP)
>>719229516
>>719229601
kys

>>719237985
I know this feeling very well. I write amatuer fanfiction and it's fucking terrible when you're fully engaged, ready to write, eager and with high motivation... Right as you're heading off to your day job.

And of course by the time you're home you're dead on your feet and emotionally drained.

>>719241986
Yes, we had a repository, and on the hard drive, but we had not updated the versions on the hard drive for a long time, which was a mistake. We mainly used Plastic to store versions, a bad person deleted the repository and everything was lost, we wrote to tech support with a request to restore, but alas, nothing helped

>>719242987
For something as important as that you ALWAYS need to have a bunch of backups. At least 2 different drives with it in case one fails, at the very least.
I don't want to kick you while you're down, but holy shit, you did absolutely everything wrong at every point of the journey. I'm almost impressed.

>>719243442
I understand that I screwed up at every stage, but alas, I try to perceive it as an experience, although sometimes it is hard to realize that I spent a whole year of my life on something that did not live up to expectations. But there are also advantages: I was offered a good job and am currently going through interviews.

>>719232982
>>719239054
If he is autistic, he needs to request autismbux immediately.

>>719229601
>Marketing.
>We completely ignored marketing
What the fuck were you expecting anon, you're supposed to spam your game in reddit, 4chan and whatever other site how the fuck are people gonna learn that it even exists?

The best marketing on planet earth cannot save this piece of shit.

>>719232976
Stfu retarded newfag. We are each other's army. That's the point. Coming together. Kill yourself now. You don't belong here. Cattle ass normie faggot..

OP you made bad choices, but you can recover. Listen to some of the anons in here. They are helping you

You're obviously trying to make a Portal clone, but you're doing it 15 years after Portal 2 came out, and using tech that is less impressive.
Indie games usually need a distinctive art style to make up for low production value.

So... how will you deal with the loans you took now?

>>719229341 (OP)
>So, we made a radical decision: quit our jobs and live off our savings - about $3000
sirs... u must live like kings

>>719229601
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/3916050/Gravity/
There is LITREALLY SIX (6) titles with the name "Gravity."

Maybe do market research before throwing your game out to die with a literal who generic title?

>>719229341 (OP)
an indie game by literal nobodies that's been out for 3 days and more importantly looks uninteresting and without any inspiration whatsoever
do you realize how many fucking games are out there? You will have a hard time getting players on a free game that looks so dull, and I play a lot of dull looking strategy games

>>719232698
>but he cleaned up the repositories of our game
>Gave version control admins to an employee
WHY WHY WHY.gif

>>719245065
I am currently going through job interviews, I have good experience in the field where I worked before, I developed virtual reality simulators for industrial production, now there is a +- vacancy in the same field

>>719243938
everyone always says marketing but marketing is a much bigger task than you may think. 4chan likes to laugh and point at overinflated game dev budgets, with marketing taking up the bulk of the costs, but it's like that for a reason. even if you have a finished product, it's important to do market research for what is topical and popular, not necessarily to copy that but to package your product in such a way that it promises to meet the demands of the market. you might say it's simple enough to spam your game on 4chan or other social media sites, but it needs to be done in an intelligent way so that it doesn't feel like an advertisement. each social media site has its own rules for what is acceptable as well, with most subreddits banning you if you post something you made yourself, as it can be considered an advertisement. also most coders have autism, so it's always better to bring in someone who can do the marketing for you. of course, indies would lack the budget.

>>719229341 (OP)
This doesn't look like something I would play, though I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games anyway. If you take a look at similar games, portal, the witness, whatever, all of those games use a visual style that is very legible. you have all these textured grates, these cubes with led strips on them, it's a very busy look. couple that with gravity shifting mechanics and it's just nauseating to look at. there's a lot more to it than that, but your game lacks visual appeal. I'm not saying you can't do a sort of busy mechanical look, but it needs to be done in such a way where It isn't distracting. I suggest relaunching the game like the other anons, but adding an anime girl to it and changing almost nothing besides a better trailer. and screenshots. Just put one in the corner like the citadel dev, and have it bounce up and down when you walk and stuff. Add fall damage and voice acting so she can die painfully. make shorts of her dying and put it online, send copies to streamers.

if you shill ur game on 4 chons i will buy it to support my fellow anons
simple as
also bought the farming sim with fairies btw forgot the name

>>719229341 (OP)
>>719229516
>>719229601
Didn't read. Nigger.

>>719247248
I wanted to add that this is just my stupid suggestion. the point is to package your existing product in a marketable and tasteful manner. this is not game dev related, but an anecdotal incident that happened in canada, was that a pizza chain made a lot of money off of the trump tarrifs. the chain, pizza pizza, announced what they called a reverse tarrif, and proposed a percent discount on all their pizzas. the actual deal they offered wasn't any better than their competitors, but the novelty of the deal and they way they marketed what was really just a standard discount got them a lot of sales. a lot of games I see 4chan anon make are usually both visually unappealing and not fun to play, but this is true of MOST GAMES RELEASED TODAY. I think while Gravity looks boring, I would still enjoy it more than any of the horizon games, which sony has marketed the shit out of.

>>719247512
Based anon. Honestly, 4chan shilling is scuffed but it's the only "marketing" some of us can afford. I'd rather 10 anons buy the game and roast me honestly than 100 redditors look at it and say "neat" before forgetting it exists. Also respect for buying that fairy farming sim-you're doing the Emperor's work out here.

>>719232698
>he cleaned up the repositories of our game, rolling us back a lot
Either you're bullshitting or you're pants on head retarded. Either way you deserve everything bad coming your way.

>>719242627
>just a vn
>18 dudes bothered to review a lolige
not dismal

where do you work now and how do you manage, OP?

>>719229341 (OP)
the name "gravity" has zero search engine potential and is retarded
the trailer having 12 seconds of walking and load screens is retarded and you should have realized sooner
your game (from the 6 seconds i watched) looks like a bad movement practice map from cs or unreal tournament. more confusingly is that your character is slow as fuck so you can't even get any satisfying movement out of it
make something people want to play next time but more likely from this post >>719233131 you're gonna get banned from steam and your financial info blacklisted so find something else to do i guess

>>719242771
>the jew didn't fear the indie chicken farmer

>>719229341 (OP)
lmfao this is quality bait i can't believe i never thought of effortpost cosplaying as an indie dev
probably the best trolling on this god forsaken rotating door of a website i've seen in the last five years

>>719243754
>he needs to request autismbux immediately
let them eat cake moment

>>719242627
>>719248152
this better not be some ddlc shtick

Putting aside the failures of the op. It really doesn't seem viable to try game dev anymore for any reason other than making it for yourself
Markets oversaturated, diluted by slop. Very little chances of even being acknowledged unless you win the jackpot with streamer bait and even then it's only for a week
Unless you're born with a silver spoon, the only way you're going to make it to the next month is being a wagie stuck in a cagie burning the rest of their life for a crumb of pay

>>719249484
May only be a week but god damn what a week that would be. Making millions with the lowest type of game you could possibly make.

>>719243712
>I was offered a good job and am currently going through interviews
Alright I was about get sad, but now I'm happy for you.

>>719248663
If life gives you lemons make juice out of it

>>719229341 (OP)
I'm pretty sure your mistake was making a game no one wants and expecting it to sell.
If anything your trailer makes it look like a motion sickness simulator

>>719250719
You don't get it. No one's gonna give you a stipend for being autistic outside of parts of first world.

>>719229601
>Steam promotes games by itself.

Kek.

>>719229516
>>719229601
Actual decent info in there. I'd just like to point out that one of your screenshots has a puzzle with a time limit (don't stop for more than 5 seconds) and that gave me the icky-wicky.
The price tag will turn some people off of the game (3 dollars, must be shovelware). You'd probably sell more copies (not much more) if it was closer to 20, as retarded as that sounds.
Advertising should have been most of your budget. Even Ballmer admitted that it's not developers developers developers, but advertisers advertisers advertisers.

>>719244568
>normie
You don't belong here either.

>>719232698
Would you say all in all you had fun and don't regret it?

>>719229601
Gameplay looks like it has potential, but I guess people want more speed and levels that look more diverse than what is given now. It looks very basic.
t. played Cyber Hook, which looks basic but with style

>>719229341 (OP)
Would it have killed you to add color to your game? You have some green and red boxes and that's about it.

Even dark forces had SOME variation between boring grey corridors.

>>719229601
>Marketing.
>We completely ignored marketing
You can't really ignore marketing despite what forum posters might lead you to believe.
For every smash hit there are a thousand games that don't even get noticed.
When releasing a game you want to learn from what other developers experienced
https://www.managames.com/DungeonGuardians/topics/development-diary/

>>719244568
fuck off, retard

>>719229341 (OP)
>no furshit
yikes! deserved.

>>719229601
>Steam promotes games by itself
There are over 50 new games on steam every single day. Steam promotes popular games by itself, and unless your game had marketing outside of steam (streamerfaggots or other forms of marketing) there is a 0% chance it will show up on any of the pages.

>>719232698
I assume you're talking about git repositories. Which are distributed, meaning you have a full copy of the history when you clone it to your machine.
Since you didn't have that, it sounds like you just let this guy do all the work and didn't contribute or even test his work.
There's a good chance he'll convert his work into his own project.

>>719251101
>>719229601
lol this.
Pic related is one fucking WEEK on steam. Reminder that this is literally getting worse as we speak as the rate of games being made is going UP. The chances of someone even seeing your game is tiny.

>>719246098
>+- vacancy
>+-
This poster is either african or russian

>>719251736
Yes, I'm reminded of one twitter user who made a game and I think he even dropped out of college to do it (yikes.). He complained about nobody seeing his game and it being pushed down the list. I think indie gamers should try to figure out which days people release a bunch of games and try to avoid releasing them on those days. I'm sure somebody has done the statistics somewhere or at least could do them.

>>719229601
>Mistakes
everything looks monotone gray, to the point that not only artstyle but readability suffers, which in a game where you mindfuck the player with changing gravity is a big no-no. player needs at least some kind of landmarks to make sense of where he is and how to get somewhere else.
also your game didn't have appealing booba or/and furry characters in it. capture the coomer audience and you'll be fed for a while. make it so when you look down you see your own character's boobs, and make jiggle physics reflect the gravity shenanigans.

>>719229516
>4Chan

>>719251046
I see. I'm sorry.

>>719229341 (OP)
Hello, just want you to know that you're our FOTM laughing stock at our amateur dev general. I hope you guys can still go back to your daily job, as steam is already filled with shovelware that nobody buys. Also buy an ad

>>719229516
Hello ChatGPT!

>>719235513
Doesn't always work.

>>719247864
This is an AI post

>>719252757
500+ reviews for Early Access is amazing, tf are you on?

>>719233131
>>719252025
>not Russia
This poster is definitely russian

>>719233760
>was it you getting called out for using ChatGPT to write your steam page?
Uh-oh, Stinky!

>>719229341 (OP)
When you get some more money, run some ads on tiktok, twitter, and facebook.

>>719252757
Not all pedoniggers are trannies though
Besides, I don't hate onanism, I mean onirism
It's an actual game with a shitton of content
The devs definitely care about their game and don't give up
And I mean it's not necessarily a bad game either

>>719229516
>full time gamedev
you're fucking retarded
>We planned to finish the game in half a year
you're fucking retarded
>we got about 200 wishlists
wishlist conversion rate is within single digits

>3 posts for an op
>first has no text, has a clickbait youtube video title for a subject
>2 gpt generated posts summarizing something
>ends with an advertisement link begging for sales
Is this going to be like those threat interactive threads where the advertisement is suspiciously allowed to stay up?

>>719253627
Talking about your experience in gamedev isn't against the rules anon

>>719253839
Tell me more how "buy my game, here is the link" or "donate to me, here is the donation link" are "talking about your experience in game dev" you illiterate ape.

>>719251736
I have trouble accepting these people inhabit the same plane of reality I do.
Do they all take out loans, try to make a game and fail ?

>>719239660
this
no matter how dogshit your game may be but use a couple streamers/youtubers/''influencers'' to shill your garbage and retards will praise it into heaven regardless of quality
>just let people enjoy things

>>719254204
You don't have to buy it. You can press ctrl+w and do something else. Instead you're wasting your time arguing that a legal thread is against the rules.

>>719244568
>Kill yourself now
No, you should do that.

>>719229341 (OP)
Nice vomit sim. Pay us $3 to get sick.

>>719254748
A lot of it is probably asset flip shovelware or worthless DLC for the asset flip shovelware. People flooding the site with zero-effort junk in the hope they might net a sale or two. Possibly there's some money laundering there as well, make a shit game, get some rube to buy Steam gift cards and send them to you, then use them to buy your trash.

>>719254817
>it's not an advertisement because you don't have to click the link!
Get bent.

>>719230692
I share the same sentiment of this anon, but 7

>>719260247
yoooooo

>>719259923
That's an informal rule.

>>719229601
You should've been able to intuit how important presentation is, nigga.

>>719229341 (OP)
>Puzzle platformer
>Female Protag
>3D assets that don't feel cohesive
yup, reddit Indie Dev time.

>>719229341 (OP)
op are you still there? dont kill yourself, use this game as a demo to apply to larger game companies.

if you are checking this thread out and haven't realized it: coming to 4chan to do an after action review is the genius plan the marketing firm they went to after 0 sales came up with. I'm loling. I can't believe we're just doing every ethically questionable thing we can with the internet now, full fuck it mode

>>719229601
The problem is your game doesn't look fun, and I highly doubt it actually is.

op you should have made a trailer, set the game to be released two mouths like you said. Give some free copies of you game away to no name streams so they play it for free, advertising the game to other people. Also make your game $10, then put it on sale for $5 half of the year, it makes your game have more worth.

>>719229341 (OP)
Where are the colors? The voice acting? and all the npcs you talk to? You call this a game? You need to do better. Your game looks inspired by portal, most people dont remember the game for its puzzle elements, they remember it for its story. Does your game even have a story?????

>>719229341 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbA06BQrQbg

>>719229341 (OP)
I'm not playing a shitty gravity puzzle

Aint reading all of that but good luck with it

or im sorry that it happened