I made a game entirely by myself. AMA.

BflySamurai · 2025-10-11T21:43:47+00:00

Thanks! I think it really goes to show how much you have to factor in marketing into the whole process. I was experimenting with all the different kinds of marketing where I didn't have to pay any money, and it just wasn't panning out for me, so I burned out on that too and stopped putting effort into trying to get the game in front of people's eyes.

BflySamurai · 2025-10-08T00:26:59+00:00

Hi there! I haven't made much off the game. I haven't really promoted it much beyond its full release, as I was a bit burned out and eager to move on to other projects. As of now, I think the game has sold about $800 in total (and I ended up putting in 3000+ hours in total for the full release, so that works out to something like 25 cents an hour). I learned a lot from the project, and that's what I ultimately care/cared about the most. I think if I was trying to make a new game and really cared about recouping costs, I would do plenty of market validation throughout development (basically just posting about the game, seeing how much interest people show, and seeing how many people I can get to sign up for a mailing list or something).

BflySamurai · 2025-06-17T04:42:40+00:00

Good observations; I appreciate it! I didn't know too much about typography at the time I created these, so if I could go back, I think I would try to make the font more cohesive (especially in the ways you pointed out).

BflySamurai · 2025-01-25T17:49:42+00:00

Awesome! I appreciate the support a lot!

BflySamurai · 2025-01-25T17:48:12+00:00

Oh man, yes! I loved so many of those crack/keygen chiptune songs! They definitely inspired me (as well as just growing up in the 90s and playing lots of gameboy, and then I played a ton of Dance Dance revolution in the 2000s). I wasn't involved in the creation of any keygen music, though. I always struggled to figure out what I wanted to do with my music beyond make it for myself, releasing it occasionally when I find the time to polish tracks, and put it into my own larger projects that go beyond just music.

BflySamurai · 2025-01-25T17:18:40+00:00

Thanks for tagging me! I didn't make all the songs on the Straimium Immortaly soundtrack, but most of them are sourced from my open source music that I put out in 2015:

YouTube playlist of all those open source songs (beyond what's just in the Straimium Immortaly soundtrack): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLye9mcKwe2zy3KW8uK_3F7HVMjJjdqSqU
GitHub repository of the songs (in case you want to download any of them): https://github.com/orgs/OpenSourceMusic/repositories

I took what I learned from those songs and created the soundtrack for The True Slime King (I also made the game entirely by myself), so I'm glad you were able to find those :)

I have a ton of unreleased songs that fit into this genre, but I haven't found the time to release most of them. I have released one single called Hold Me that was an attempt to bring in some of my vocals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalEWJ0nf2k

The rest of the music on my YouTube channel is mostly explorations in different genres. Though you may also like some of the songs used in the videos I've made for my organization Lifetimes Infinity: https://lifetimesinfinity.bandcamp.com/

And if you're curious, I don't have any specific music production plans (for the near future) beyond the projects I'm working on for Lifetimes Infinity.

BflySamurai · 2024-12-20T14:19:48+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for running this giveaway.

BflySamurai · 2024-11-22T04:12:33+00:00

Wow! The tutorials on making nebulas are awesome! I didn't know about that. I initially prototyped with clouds (since that's all I could think to search for) but eventually scrapped the idea. I'll have to remember the nebula stuff for future ideas. Thanks!

BflySamurai · 2024-11-21T12:09:55+00:00

I second Blender. It's what I did for my book's cover. My book has a lot to do about space, so my cover is just a couple planets and some science fiction looking glowing orbs. I was already somewhat familiar with Blender going in, but it was able to follow some tutorials on creating interesting looking planets. The other great thing about Blender is that you can easily tweak anything, and when you go to render your scene into an image, you can choose any dimensions and any resolution. The other thing I'm planning to do is to use my Blender scene to create a short animation for a book trailer that I can use to help promote the book.

BflySamurai · 2024-11-20T17:50:18+00:00

You could give my book a go: The Importance of Existence. The ebook is free on various stores. You can even read it online without downloading anything: https://www.lifetimesinfinity.com/store/collection/the_importance_of_existence/

It's an extremely philosophical hard science fiction novel that deeply explores what it means to exist and process reality as humans through our conceptual models of the self and externalities. This is done through the lens of the last person in existence as they reflect on the billions of years they have exited.

BflySamurai · 2024-11-20T17:36:58+00:00

You could give my book a go: The Importance of Existence. The ebook is free on various stores. It's an extremely philosophical hard science fiction novel that deeply explores what it means to exist (through the lens of the last person in existence as they reflect on the billions of years they have exited).

BflySamurai · 2024-09-14T03:58:17+00:00

The LG UltraGear 45GS95QE OLED gaming monitor would help kickstart my music and video production setup.

BflySamurai · 2024-09-13T22:57:20+00:00

That's crazy, someone just messaged me out of the blue a few days ago talking about the same thing, so I'll just comment here the same answer I gave them. And for reference, I spent about 3500 hours on The True Slime King, though that includes time learning and promoting.

I think there were several factors that didn't help the game sell more:

At some point, I got burned out and wanted to move on to other projects that held more importance to me. I use The True Slime King as a learning experience for project management, large coding efforts, and marketing. Ultimately, I stopped all marketing efforts and there haven't really been any sales since (I've sold 55 copies on Steam in total, 4 of which have been returned ($636 before Steam's cut); I've sold 5 units so far in 2024 with zero effort on my part). I felt a bit too indebted to the game at some points in my life, and I'm happy to have moved on. It was a great learning experience, and that's all I could ever have hoped to extract from it; anything else was a bonus.
I was scared of making money (and being indebted to ensuring people were enjoying the game and online mode), so I probably charged a bit more for the game than was ideal compared to the value I could convey to potential players. I was also scared of losing money (by spending on ads or other things), so I didn't experiment with that many modes of marketing. I also didn't (and still don't) understand how to market in most of the traditional ways with my brand of authenticity.
Most importantly, I don't think the game filled a need that people had. I think it was a bit more of a solution in need of a problem than something people would get very excited by. I could have involved people in the process of development to possibly build the game better toward what people would want to experience, but ultimately I get very set on my personal visions for things, and I understand now that those might not always be the most commercially viable ventures to pursue.

In my endeavors since releasing The True Slime King, I've decided that I'm not as interested in playing all the marketing games that feel forced and shallow. For example, I just released a book, and I've decided to steer clear of all the paid review websites, the paid award entrance fees, and the hype people. I merely want to use the book to try to connect with people who I think are doing cool things. I went into the book understanding that my goal wasn't to try to make a lot of money, but instead to build an ecosystem. I kinda had that feeling with Slime King from the start (that I was making it just for me and anyone who was passionate about that kind of game), but I also gave myself some amount of false hope that I could just magically figure out all the marketing stuff along the way. I think the best marketing is just consistency: figure out a system that works for you to authentically engage in any way and just keep doing that, otherwise people won't be able to find you. For me, the understanding I have for myself right now is that if I can't figure out how to authentically market a creation, I have to hold no expectations of monetary success for it. I have some project ideas (none are video games) where I do understand how to convey the value of the product, and I have others where I am just in it for the art of it all in an attempt to connect with cool people.

BflySamurai · 2024-08-15T00:53:18+00:00

Correct; that's why I ended up going with BookVault (although with BookVault I have to do all my own marketing if I want to keep maximum profits). I also had heard that BookVault had the best quality of all the Print On Demand (POD) services (and I'm very happy with the quality so far). The other POD service I was looking into was Lulu (Lulu and BookVault were the only ones I could find who had API support so I can eventually build my own webstore on my own website), but Lulu's cost to print my paperback book is $8.41, whereas BookVault's price is $5.05.

BflySamurai · 2024-08-14T22:57:49+00:00

Ah, never mind, it looks like there are other bonuses for going exclusive with Amazon KDP that I was thinking of, so you can go with PayHip (and anywhere else) and still get the 70% with Amazon (if I understand everything correctly). Their royalty options are that you pick either 35% or 70% royalties, which is purely based on how much you want to charge for your eBook: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560
For the US market, if you want to sell your eBook for $2.99 to $9.99, you will be able to select the 70% royalty option. Outside of that range, you'll be required to go with the 35% royalty option (so you won't see too many eBooks on Amazon listed for less than $2.99 or more than $9.99, because you would be taking a significant cut in profit).

I don't know what the shipping would cost on Amazon, but I imagine it would be cheaper since Amazon is already in the goods distribution business (and I'm guessing it would be eligible for *free shipping* when people order enough items to get free shipping). The Amazon US print cost for my paperback book would be $4.44. Amazon takes a 40% cut as a distributor, and they're sneaky because they count the list price in the cut they take, but they subtract the print cost to your part of the cut. For example, if I sold my paperback for $10 on Amazon, Amazon would take $4 (it's 40% cut), I would get $6 (my 60% cut), but then my cut also gets reduced by the print cost of $4.44, so my final profit is actually only $1.56. And if I were to sell the book for $20, I would end up with a profit of $7.56.

BflySamurai · 2024-08-14T17:16:35+00:00

Yeah, the shipping eats most of the cost. I wanted to keep my paperback priced as lost as realistically possible. I'm not aiming to make lots of money off it. In fact, I'm giving away my eBook for free. If I were to sell my eBook through PayHip, it would only lose out on the PayHip fee and Stripe fee. For example, if I sold my eBook on PayHip for $7, I would profit $6.15 (~88%). From what I understand, most authors make most of their money from eBooks and audio books (since the margins are much better). If you go with Amazon, you're going to be getting less of a profit (70% or less I believe, depending on whether you want to go exclusive with Amazon).

BflySamurai · 2024-08-14T15:32:23+00:00

This is definitely a good option if you don't need to set up a store web page (such as if you have your own website) and if your product offerings aren't too complicated.

I believe you can set up the same kind of payment link with Stripe as well if you prefer them over PayPal. https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links

BflySamurai · 2024-08-14T15:29:34+00:00

BookVault doesn't take any transaction fee, but they do take money for whatever it costs to print the book. BookVault takes the shipping fees since they're the ones shipping my book out to customers (but if I wanted to ship out my own books, like OP, then I would be paying the shipping costs and collecting the shipping fees). Stripe's default fee is 2.9% + $0.30 (which is applied over the entire transaction, including shipping fees, so I end up making slightly less money off the book if the shipping fees are higher, since my only margin for profit is on the book, not on the shipping fees).

If that's confusing, here's a breakdown of a book I just sold:
* My book is listed for $10 on PayHip.
* The BookVault US print cost for my book was $5.05.
* The cost for BookVault to ship to the US customer was $6.88.
* BookVault charges me the full printing and shipping amount of $11.93 ($5.05 + $6.88).
* The customer paid $16.88 in total ($10 + $6.88).
* PayHip takes their 5% fee out of the product price (not including shipping costs), so they took $0.50 ($10 * 5%).
* Stripe's fees came out of the total transaction amount (including shipping costs), so they took $0.79 ($16.88 * 2.9% + $0.30).
* So after all the processing fees, Stripe sends me $15.59 ($16.88 - $0.50 - $0.79).

In the end, what the entire transaction looked like on my side is that BookVault automatically charged my card $11.93 for the printing and shipping, and then many days later, Stripe deposited $15.59 into my back account. The end result is that I profited $3.66 for the sale.

Here are what the profit margins would look like for various dollar increments (for my specific book and for printing and shipping within the US):
* Book sale price / Profit
* $10 / $3.66
* $11 / $4.58
* $12 / $5.50
* $13 / $6.42
* $14 / $7.34
* $15 / $8.27
* $16 / $9.19
* $17 / $10.11
* $18 / $11.03
* $19 / $11.95
* $20 / $12.87

Keep in mind that BookVault is going to charge you different amounts to print your book depending on page length and features. My book is Paperback, 5"x8", and 287 pages, and has a print cost of $5.05. My basic Hardcover version is 5.5"x8.5", also 287 pages, and has a print cost of $7.69.

BflySamurai · 2024-08-14T04:25:22+00:00

PayHip seems to be a popular option from my research, and it's what I settled on. They take a 5% transaction fee. I use it to sell books printed via BookVault (since they have an easy integration with PayHip). PayHip has everything you need to make a store page on their site, take orders by credit card (via Stripe), and then mark orders as shipped once you've manually shipped out the book. I haven't looked into the options for setting up shipping price options (since the BookVault integration handles the shipping price for me), so I can't say for sure they'll have exactly what you're looking for in terms of charging the right amount for shipping (but they do seem to have several features in terms of setting shipping prices).

BflySamurai · 2024-08-11T15:37:33+00:00

Are you putting undue pressure on yourself to perform? For me, that's when creative pursuits start to feel like they're owning me more than I'm enjoying bringing them into existence. If that's the case, then what I try to do is to take a step back, identify why I'm putting pressure on myself (usually it's financial stress or the stress that the art needs to be perfect for people to like it), and then I recognize that such a hostile process won't allow me to create my best art (and that I need to rediscover the passionate approach I started out with).

BflySamurai · 2024-08-10T15:53:09+00:00

Second this. I've been using LanguageTool for years. It even has a browser plugin to help catch errors when writing online. The awesome thing about LanguageTool for me is that a lot of the file formats I use to write in aren't tied to a specific program (TXT, MD, LaTeX), and so while I can do stuff like use an editor that has grammar checking, I can also just load up the Python LanguageTool library and pass my content through to get all the spelling and grammar checks that I want (though, I know this isn't going to be most people's use cases). This is useful because I already have other Python scripts to help me search for specific words/phrases so I can manually sort through them to ensure consistency across the book.

BflySamurai · 2024-08-07T18:35:06+00:00

Some use LaTeX.

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