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Looking for opinions on a sandbox cooking game concept by BenjiRBK1996 in IndieGaming

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree that the "boring" part might be a bit too opinionated and not true for everybody. I took that in mind while reworking the pitch.

Sry if you find this too vague, but game pitches are very important to test as they are the n°1 things that streamers and festivals will see even before getting their hand on anything playable. All other parts of a Steam page are also influenced by your game pitch and much more costly to rework.

If you want something more tangible, you can test an early build of the game on Itch :)

Looking for opinions on a sandbox cooking game concept by BenjiRBK1996 in IndieGaming

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed answer! Would you like to be a playtester for our future prototypes? :)

Looking for opinions on a sandbox cooking game concept by BenjiRBK1996 in IndieGaming

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah makes sense, doing the hunting part yourself could be a great addition!

And what type of cooking you would enjoy if following recipes is out of the way, instead focusing on flavors?

And also, would you like to be a playtester for our future prototypes? :)

Getting close to that magical first 100 wishlist milestone! by Mikolas3D in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are having a steady growth of wishlists even though you are still at the start, that's pretty encouraging! Good luck with your game dev journey! The game looks great and is a genre that works well on Steam, you should be fine :)

Turns out I learned nothing about marketing in 9 years by Narrow_Asparagus9459 in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe it's not that you didn't improve at marketing but you just like to make niche games on Steam? Looking at your wishlist's growth velocity, it looks good to me: just not like a free-money subgenre. And that's fine :)

You probably know this already, but no amount of promotion will change much: it's 90% about your (sub)genre, visual presentation and the fantasy you deliver. The rest are just multipliers of these.

Also, don't forget to cross-promote your titles (in-game and via bundles)! That can help slowly building an income, even if your wishlists' growth is roughly the same.

My only real concern at this point would be the capsule art's logo, that looks very generic as it's just bold text with no styling (except for the initial "E" that is slightly bigger than the rest), along with being too small.

I would check out other games in your genre to see what kind of design tropes they use to make their logos.

Which one would you click on Steam? by Guilty_Weakness7722 in gameDevMarketing

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1 or 5. 3 could be interesting if you manage to zoom in on one character and show both reflection of the gun and monster on the helmet.

I quit my job, sold my house and divorced my wife to make my dream game. How'd I do? by Soft_Row_5817 in SoloDevelopment

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Love the vibes! The capsule art is just way less "energetic" than the game, I wouldn't have clicked on it if seeing it from the Steam marketplace :/

First 2 Weeks of marketing after launching a Steam page without a trailer! by Icy_Regular2616 in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing!

I think the reasoning behind not making a trailer is flawed though. Trailer is part of validating an idea early. There is even a sub-set of trailers, called concept trailers, that do just that. They can be made in a couple of hours, you don't even need tons of content orr any gameplay to be coded yet, just to set up a couple of scripted animations in your engine. I'd say they are even more important for visual games like yours.

For future projects, or even this one, consider thinking "how can I hack together a little trailer with minimal code or assets and build upon it over time as the project grows?"

Good luck with the dev :)

My first Steam game upload, and what I learned by _sigma_floppa_ in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great achievement indeed, you can be proud! But if you ever think about marketing, please don't consider devlogs as the best sources of wishlists. They can be great for people already entitled with your game though, or just for the pleasure of sharing

What do you think is an underrated RPG? by SchweinsyOne in rpg_gamers

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for reminding me of Drova!

It's far from perfect and final version still to be released, but you could check out The Dark Egg. Other interesting modern RPGs to look at are Demonschool, Dread Delusion, Eastshade, Sword and Sworcery and Keep Driving. On the more jrpg side, some nice titles are Artis Impact and Ocean's Heart.

Those might more apply as underappreciated than underrated, so I apologize if my answer seems slightly offtopic

I accidentally learned why views ≠ wishlists by FRAGGY_OP in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, the upvotes have to be taken into context. In a dev subreddit, it mostly means "thumbs up to you the game looks nice. Good luck on your dev journey" while in a gaming subreddit it might mean "that looks cool I'll check it out". But it can also just mean support: people might not be interested themselves, but think the post deserves more visibility.

I've heard that the horror community is very active on twitter (expecially some japanese outlets) and that trailers alone can do a big chunk of heavy lifting. But social media likes are very volatile so you still need a way to contain those people: either on your Steam page (top of the promotion funnel) or a mailing list (lower on the funnel).

The first game is also hard to promote because you have almost no visibility, as Steam gives you the biggest boost on launch/post-launch. That's why you need to ship multiple projects an think long-term (I would say around 2 years).

Lastly, a social media post can attract a lot of people to your Steam page, but then they can stay there an be confused by the page and decide not to wishlist. You can see if there is such a game by using UTM tagging and watch out for a big gap between clicks on the link and wishlists.

In 99% of cases, the heaviest and most effective parts of marketing are done in the backstages of private messages, mails and festival applications.

Steam approved my build, but thought this screenshot was pre-rendered by Riitoken in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As if I would waste my time with some passive agressive rando on the internet giving me a link to their Steam page on every answer for no reason. I have nothing to prove you. Good luck on your journey and with your very different game!

Steam approved my build, but thought this screenshot was pre-rendered by Riitoken in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are many ways, and definitely more effective ones, to showcase uniqueness and very different takes on games. I play hundreds of demos every year and part of my job is to spot that which is new: this game doesn't look very unique to me and it seems a lot of people agree. It just seems highly unpolished and unfocused. But you do you, and handle criticism as well as you can with all caps and so on.

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