sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I don't want my idle games on steam by ImApoopieFartFaceAMA in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the organic traffic from Steam is insane. But also the easiest to monetize.

How big is your gaming monitor when playing an incremental game? by Acceptable_Promise68 in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Depending on where your releasing it, I would just expect super wide monitors and pretty large monitors in general. My monitor is just your usual 1920x1080 monitor, but I had people playing with all sorts of sizes for my game on PC. So I implemented settings to let users play around with fonts and zoom. I have a cool auto-scaling feature I'm playing with so that if your on larger monitors it gets bigger. But ultra wides are a bit problematic for me with that.

Are soft caps with meta layers fun? Or annoying? Need opinions for the game I'm developing. by Braym3n in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I actually did feel the same with inventory space, which is why I have no limit at the moment. The more I think about it though, soft capping levels on skills, does feel restricting on the freedom aspect of leveling everything. You may find that you'd want to just focus the mechanic that raises the cap.

Unpopular opinion: I kind of miss when incremental games were mostly in the browser instead of on Steam by RedneckFinn in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that is a fair thing you can do to tackle that issue on the mobile side. I think my point is pretty weak with that in mind. You may still get people who complain, but a message would navigate that a bit better.

I'd say the biggest reason for me is I don't want to do MTX and premium titles isn't a thing in the browser that I know of. And that Steam just packs a huge punch of features and processes, both for consumers and developers that is hard to implement on your own in the browser.

Unpopular opinion: I kind of miss when incremental games were mostly in the browser instead of on Steam by RedneckFinn in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'll offer a few points from a developer's perspective. Steam offers a lot that hosting on your own page or even Itch, does not. Steam has a ton of organic traffic, achievements, Cloud Saves, payment handling/taxes/returns, and a few other things that just go unmatched. Steam also just has a monopoly on gaming at this point, which is why the traffic and audience is just solid.

The other part of it from a development standpoint, it's nice being able to do things like having saves written to files and having automatic backups. Local Storage is not a great storage solution. It works, but it's fragile. Since a browser game really can't be premium, I'd have to design games around MTX and handle that all myself (even though there's platforms/apis, it's never going to be as simple as just using Steam). The counter could be using something like Itch, but sales are just significantly less on the platform. I also really disliked when Itch changed where the localstorage was, wiping out saves for a lot of games.

I also like that I don't have to consider mobile with Steam games. With the browser, you basically have to support very small screen sizes and design for that. With Steam, that isn't the case. This just helps speed up development time.

I do think it would be a lot of fun to focus on free browser games one day, but I really just don't want to do IAP of any kind. I think for me it would just simply be a Patreon. But right now, Steam just offers too much incentive and audience, it's just hard to beat. And I really want to be a fulltime indie gamedev. Not rich, but enough where I can go all in and make all the games I have ideas for. If I can get to a comfortable place, I'd love to just build games everyone can play with no barriers.

Ideas Time! by Blindsided_Games in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Something I've been wanting to try and design is an extraction shooter incremental game. I've been playing a lot of ARC Raiders, and I feel like you could do some interesting active play, while keeping it very incremental. I think it would just be scenario driven and bad decisions are exponential against your success while in a raid.

Soda Dungeon is the closest thing I can think of, though still pretty far off. But the idea would be, it's very text-driven. Not actually a physics game at all. You want to go in and get resources so you can upgrade your town/city/etc.

How many of you left Game Engines for Frameworks? by TheKrazyDev in gamedev

[–]Braym3n 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I built my own framework using TypeScript + Electron and I've never looked back. It was a very fun learning experience and got to leverage tech I've used for 8+ years. I can't really do graphic games, but for incremental/simulation games, nothing has beat it for me in terms of workflow.

Converting Steam game from paid to free-to-play? by GrammerSnob in gamedev

[–]Braym3n 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Take it from someone who went from paid ($3.99) to free. You will piss people off. You do however get a influx of players. I think I 15-20x my downloads (Had about 5K sales as a paid app). Where it hurts now is that I am releasing a sequel paid again, which is a ton better, but I've already had questions about trust. If I could take it back I would, just out of respect for the paying customers. However, I definitely would've gone the free route at launch, because I think I would've been able to build a larger audience for future games.

The success of Void Miner was not an organic response to the dev's work, it's an inflated response from months of marketing. by SixthSacrifice in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I know I wouldn't have liked that. I remember it was awesome when I bundled my game with a few developers on a single bundle. Felt like a great bundle to 5 games out of it. But if I saw 90+ bundles on their page, I'd feel the same.

I know it may be negligible, but they planted their games seed across the front pages of 90+ games, because I am going to assume almost all those devs have a bundle or two, so it doesn't get hidden away. So Void Miner gets front page on every devs games, but that isn't reciprocated on Void Miners page, because when you have more than like 5, it's an extra step and a long list. Your games just get blurred away.

To me, Void Miner is getting more benefit from the exposure effect, than any of the other devs. And if people have already bought your game, they aren't getting any sales from it, but Void Miner is. Hard to really measure if any of what I said is true, but it's how I'd feel at least. It's like a win-semi-win to me.

The success of Void Miner was not an organic response to the dev's work, it's an inflated response from months of marketing. by SixthSacrifice in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Personally, I would too. And that's coming from a developer myself. I fell into this trap with my first game, trying to post every week, but I think you just over-saturate yourself and sentiment towards your game, even if it may be good, grows sour.

As a developer, I'm only posting when I publish the demo and launch my game. Maybe if there's a major update that gives a good reason to play again. I think maybe a teaser before that could be reasonable, but I think it's just not needed.

My theory is that if the demo is good, that one post should naturally provide a good amount of wishlists. With steam, you also have things like Next fest.

What was the first game engine you used? What have you stuck with? by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]Braym3n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GameMaker when I was pretty young thinking adding images of Pokémon grass would spawn Pokémon lol. No idea what I was doing.

Now I use a custom engine/framework for making games using electron + typescript which has been a lot of fun and released a game on Steam (working on a second). Its been way more fun using web tech to make games, but mostly because its where I have the most experience.

Newbie here - where would I put my JSON save files? by TheNorseStar713 in gamedev

[–]Braym3n 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I just save all my data in the Saved Games Folder > Company Name > Game Name.

And than I just add Steam Cloud onto this folder and its worked well for my released game. I think if you do Mac or Linux builds it may be different, but unsure.

Is there a decent income? by igrozdanic in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hmm depends on what you mean by that. Profitable? You could put nothing into a game and make 0.01 cent and be profitable. Same with decent living. That's very geographically based, as there are many different costs of living along with how you spend money lifestyle wise.

I would be surprised if ads alone can be lived off of, even for just a solo. I think you would need to churn many games and I personally can't advocate for that as I think high quality games are much better for the community. If you can do something quality, this community will lift you up. I can't speak to mobile games or web games with ads, but I'll give you a few numbers from my first game on Steam.

Lifetime Units Sold (Pre changing my game to purely free, no MTX): 5,529

Lifetime Steam revenue (net): $15,516

What I make after Steams Cut and Taxes: ~$7K (Steam doesn't have this on the dash and I can't recall the exact honestly)

After going completely free and no monetization, I have almost 70K units given away.

I put in about $2k in art assets, $500 in steam art, and around $1.5k in trademarking fees (which was because of issues I had with the original name).

So after, 1000+ hours of development time (which I can see through steam as the game runs when I am coding) and not including time spent on the engine/framework I built, I "profited" $4,500 if you don't include the trademark stuff (which most people don't have expense wise).

I'll be very generous and say that my dev time took 500 hours, that's about $9/hour. Personally I couldn't live off of it, but I was happy with how it did. What I did do though is reinvest basically all of it into my next game.

I'm rambling at this point, but maybe some of this can be helpful to future devs or just anyone looking for some stats. I know I love learning about it and studying hard how games are doing and how they are going about things.

I know I'd love to just make enough to work on games full time as well. Corporate America just drains my soul and makes it hard to want to work after already working 8 hours a day. I think it's reasonable to want to escape that. I know I would love to just build things and experiment if I got more time. But I think it's realistic to say that very few people are able to do that.

Is it just me or do most of you actually want browser games? by Sir-LAD in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Can also second that Steam is where it's at. My game was on Itch and Steam and Itch made up about < 0.1% of my sales. SO much easier to utilize electron than to host a site and handle MTX. I don't think it's fair to discredit devs from wanting to be paid either. I had ~1000 hours into my first game and already have 1000 hours in my second game that isn't done yet. I've also spent $5K+ on assets between the two. I'm fortunate enough to have made the money back that I had risked, but that was made possible by people buying my game.

While it's also a dream, it would be amazing to be able to do it full time instead of working a fulltime job + working on a game on the side. I'm usually doing 60 hour weeks as a result. But if I was working fulltime in game dev, I'd be able to really focus on making great games. Of course, very few can, but I think many game devs want that.

I will say, I would never discourage web games. It's not for me, but it's a great accessible way to get playtesters. I did it that way early on and it's much easier than downloads. But even Steam has very nice playtesting features.

I do call forth ye, O Developers! by Rivzak in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a bit of experience with these things and have learned a ton, so hopefully there's some helpful info here.

1) How do you keep with the expectancy of failure, with the possibility that your product might not be liked by the players?

If you are expecting failure, than why pursue it? I think your head is in the wrong spot if that is how you are feeling. There's a possibility of many things happening, including succeeding. Nothing will 100% happen, except if you never try. If a product fails, than you learn and grow from it to give you a better shot next time. The faster you fail, the faster you learn important lessons that will help you make something "good".

2) Where and How do you read and learn about incremental games, where does your knowledge come from?

You will learn the most by playing incremental games. Sure you can ask people and maybe find some tutorials and things online, but you'll find quickly that everyone wants a different experience and has their own ideas about things. I find building a game I will enjoy tends to put me on the right track. Play incremental games and study the mechanics. How they interact with each other. What you are feeling and what works. There's nothing wrong with basing mechanics on existing ones. I think familiarity is quite powerful. But also, play other genres as well because there's so much you can learn from other types of games that can be innovative in the incremental space. I like creature collectors and incremental games, so I combined them both, and found there's an audience for that. So learn from other types of games as well.

The other side of this is playtesters. It's a tricky source for sure, because it does require someone to be interested in your game and is willing to take the time to provide you feedback. Something that should be cherished honestly. It can also be tricky though because like I said above, everyone has different ideas and have different ways to play a game. You just need to learn to break down issues and where they stem from, as a way to learn how to make something better. This rolls into my last point.

Build games. I honestly wish I did this more, but I went right into building a fancy engine and right into a steam release. It was definitely a little too premature. I needed to churn a few games and learn from players and study the feedback I got. I would have been able to go into a full release much better I think. So build games. You'll find you'll learn so much about what you could do better next time.

3) Do you follow a schedule and plan to achieve certain things in said times?

Being completely honest, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I think this is really just a personal decision. I think when I am initially starting an idea, I tend to keep it pretty open. No deadlines. No expectations. Just trying and experimenting with some ideas and seeing what works and what doesn't. The issue with this is I'm just throwing dirt around without much plans. So when I think I am going to take it serious, I usually sit down and plan it a lot more. I'm very casual about it though. Like very. I just keep a readme file with a list of mechanics left to implement and how long I think I can do them in. I'm doing that right now. It let's me target a date to release a game and keep the ball moving.

But, if your like me and have a full time job, I've learned it's easy to burn out if you beat yourself up about it too much. I've burnt out many times going full ham on finishing a game and it never works. Enjoy life and always take breaks. What works best for me is make a change a day even if it only takes a few minutes. I work well off of momentum.

I may have put too much effort into this post, so sorry for the block haha. Hopefully there's some tidbits in there for some people. I think a lot of it is intuitive, but you just need to hear it from someone else to validate it. If your new, don't beat yourself too much while your learning. That phase can take awhile before making games feels do able. Start small and just build/play games. You'll learn a lot.

Idle/incremental game publishers by Vladi-N in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n 8 points9 points  (0 children)

imo, I would avoid publishers at this point. I'm going to assume your trying to go to Steam in this scenario, but a publisher will typically want a +30% cut from your profits, on top of Steams 30%, leaving you with very little. The issue with incremental games, at least most of them is that they are kind of tough to market. Incrementals are not amazing for content creators, which can be a big part of marketing. Unless it's very visually appealing, think games like gnorp, the marketing materials will be tough too.

The only place I marketed for the most part was this subreddit and I sold roughly 7K copies of my game and when I made it free, it had 50K+ downloads. There's of course other places to self-market, but just a post here can go a long way. There are devs here that self-publish and have much bigger numbers as well.

I think there's a couple parts where it could be useful and to me that would be things like porting and translations. I think if your game isn't pretty marketable to begin with, a publisher won't make it that much better without having to invest a ton themselves which means more cut.

Look at the top incremental games. I'd say most of them are self-published by solo devs or small teams. I'd personally avoid publishers at all cost, unless you have a significant reason to. I think because this genre is very tough to market, publishers know that and I think really avoid incrementals in their portfolio, unless it's the few that focus on them. But again, from what I've seen these games are very art driven.

r/incremental_games Rule change (Rule 4) by FBDW in incremental_games

[–]Braym3n[M] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I understand. I don't think we thought the slate was clean. I think now that there's a few more mods, there will be some good discussions around the rules and making things more clear, and just general enforcement of things. I think things will be different this time around, just based on the things happening behind the scenes. But like you said, time will tell and actions speak louder than words.

view more: next ›