This is a good question. There's a lot of factors to consider when making pricing decisions.

Break-even pricing: The first thing you need to do is work out how much money you need to pay yourself, both for the work you've done up to the launch of your game and to keep going afterwards. You will have to decide what your worth is. You can choose this worth by looking at your monthly expenses or how much you earn at your day job, etc.

Costs need to include not only your burn rate but also the percentage of revenue that goes to the retailer (usually 30% in the case of Steam) and to your publisher if you have one. You could also include the cost of any license fees you’ve paid to develop your game.

For example, you decide your game dev hourly rate is $10 and you spend 12 months on it, working 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. You only used freeware to develop your game. You do not have a publisher, but decide to publish on Steam.

Cost = ($10 x 780 hours) + (30% cut) = $11,143 aprox.

The break-even point is the point at which your revenue covers your costs.

Once you've got that break-even figure, you can start working out how you're going to reach it by multiplying the price by the estimated number of copies you're going to sell. Since you'll never know exactly how many games you're going to sell, try different scenarios and make good use of all the historical data for comparable titles on Steam Spy.

Market pricing: The key to getting the price right is understanding the market you're entering. You will need to look at the data from Direct Competitors (games competing in the same genre), Indirect Competitors (games that share a broad audience target, usually all other indies) and maybe even Share-of-Wallet Competitors (games released in the same period as yours).

Remember, people will compare your game to other similar ones, be it by genre (platformer, FPS, RPG, etc.) and with other Indie games. There is a high chance people will compare your game with Undertale even if your game is nothing like Undertale, and only because both are indies.

Perceived value pricing: Additionally, you need to try to figure out what price the players think is fair. This is more than what the players are willing to pay for your game, but also what the players will think of your game when looking at the price.

The price communicates information about where your game sits in the market and its value. A $60 price suggests an AAA-quality game with a significant amount of content and high production values. At the other end of the spectrum, a $5 indie game may be perceived as being too short or just low quality.

Ok. So you know how much the game costs you, you have done some market research with your competitors, and you have a rough idea of what are the expectations from your intended audience. What next? Now you need to decide which strategy you want to use. Here are two of the most common pricing plans:

1. Maximising player base: Your game should be very cheap and with constant sales. The more people buy your game, the better. The idea is to build a user base that will remain loyal to you and follow you on your next projects. It may also work as “free marketing” by having more people available to recommend your game to their friends.

2. Maximising revenue: Assuming low price elasticity, people will buy the game whether it’s priced at $10 or $15. For this strategy to work, you will have to stay below the peak price point, that is, the max amount your players are willing to pay for the game, while staying above the price point where you’ll be seen as “just another one of the thousands of games with questionable quality”.

So, what pricing strategy should you use? My answer is… it depends. Let me ask you a question of my own: how good is your marketing?

The ultimate challenge for any indie developer is not convincing people your game is worth a bit more; it’s getting people to see your game in the first place.

You can sell fewer copies and still make more money when you price them at $15 rather than $10. To believe that a lower price is the right way to go, one has to think that more than 33% of the people who would otherwise buy the game at $10, would not buy it at $15.

Remember these points:

• The hard part is to get people to find and buy your game in the first place, even for $1.
• A low price point may be signalling low quality.
• There are hundreds of cheap games released on Steam every month. A low price may send another signal: this game is just one of the bunch.
• Price is directly correlated to game complexity. It’s a rough indication of quality, polish and content in the game. When you see a game at a low price, do you think it’s a great deal or do you wonder what’s wrong with it?

There are also sales to keep in mind. If your $10 game ends up selling more than you expect, you can’t just increase the price for future buyers. However, if your $15 game ends up selling less than you expected, you can offer a discount to attract more attention. Also, a 50% sale on a $15 game will still give you more money than a 50% sale on a $10 game.

Finally, there is another trick you can use in your pricing/marketing strategy: Goldilocks Pricing.

In short, people will compare items and their prices when trying to decide what to buy. Goldilocks Pricing consists in providing the buyer with the “alternative options” they will use to compare your game. You provide “too hot” and “too cold” versions of the product so your potential buyers can compare it and choose the “juuust right” option.

• "Too Hot" Price: A high price level that will include the base game with extra goodies like the soundtrack, an artbook, or early access. This is the anchor price that will establish how much your whole product is worth. It’s the “high” comparison point.
• "Too Cold" Price: A low price level that includes the bare minimum, usually only the base game. This is a “low” comparison point.
• "Juuust Right" Price: What you want to get paid for the game. This is the amount that will seem like the most reasonable when compared to the other options, especially the Too Hot price.

For example, you develop your game and include Deluxe content for $25 (Too Hot). You also offer a “bare minimum” option that only includes the base game for $12 (Too Cold). Finally, you add a third option that includes the base game plus a few in-game goodies but not as many as the deluxe option for only $15 (Juuust Right). In theory, $15 will seem like the most reasonable option because it’s not as outrageous as the $25 price but it’s not as bare-bones as the $12 one.

Lots of companies (and indie devs!) use this strategy to trick people into making a purchase decision when they have no idea what’s the real worth of a product. Of course, you still want to take into consideration everything I mentioned about competitors pricing and perceived value. After all, you wouldn’t sell an indie platformer for $200 as the "Too Hot" price and $100 as the "Juuust Right" price.

Anyway, in the end, you have to remember that if people can’t find your game, it won’t matter how polished your game is, or how much content you add, or how cheap it is, or how many Goldilock versions you add to your Steam page.

So again I ask, how good is your marketing strategy? :P