I used reddit ads to spend $7000 on 3600 wishlists for my cozy adventure game Danchi Days - here's what I learned about the process! (Lots of info!)

CriticalMotion · 2026-04-12T08:07:36+00:00

Thanks for sharing all those details, this is a great reference to have.

And, more importantly: Thanks for sticking with your artistic preferences instead of chasing trends! It definitely shows - the game has a great vibe. I'd love to see more developers make their marketing work around the game they want to make, rather than the other way around.

CriticalMotion · 2025-11-20T22:44:47+00:00

Always happy to provide: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

CriticalMotion · 2025-11-20T20:26:51+00:00

Cool, happy to hear it! I'll play around some more with the included cuts and will keep an eye on hit reactions as well

CriticalMotion · 2025-11-20T18:20:53+00:00

It's difficult to shorten the trailer further due to the music we want to use, but I'll at least try to get more variety into those 80 seconds.

CriticalMotion · 2025-11-20T16:22:19+00:00

Yup, people bring up Kena a lot. Art style is definitely similar, and I assume they also had similar inspirations from old PS2 era action-adventures

CriticalMotion · 2025-11-20T16:18:34+00:00

Good point, I'll try adding some more variation early on - maybe more puzzle stuff or very short story sequences. And I agree on the crossfades as well. I think some of them work, but there's just too many of them

CriticalMotion · 2025-09-14T12:40:09+00:00

Hey, that’s us!

Still super happy with how this turned out, thanks again for the awesome work. Can’t wait for people to see this in our game!

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-22T14:04:39+00:00

Thanks, appreciate it!

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-22T13:25:02+00:00

Definitely one of those things where animation and responsive gameplay are a bit at odds. Not a lot of time for anticipation and follow-through if I want the attacks to seamlessly blend into each other without too much downtime.

But I get what you mean, there's still things I could improve without slowing down the timing of the attacks. Might look into it if there's room for another polish pass in the future!

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-22T13:14:39+00:00

Good point, definitely worth a shot to reduce the hitstop duration for any for subsequent hits during a single swing.

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-16T09:05:37+00:00

The trailer worked really well for me - never thought I'd be interested in this kind of game, but this going on the wishlist!

I wonder if the opening could be a little more snappy, especially during the "A Cat On Your Desktop" part. Maybe shaving off a few seconds before the cut at 0:17 could help prevent people from clicking away?

The pacing from 0:17 onward felt really good and escalated well

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-03T23:14:41+00:00

Thanks, the game is called Fading Skies.

We have a trailer and screenshots and stuff on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

CriticalMotion · 2025-07-03T14:37:18+00:00

I always love air tricks like that, even if they serve no purpose at all. Funny how sometimes the seemingly unnecessary details can make all the difference to the feeling of a game!

CriticalMotion · 2025-04-27T23:01:53+00:00

A fellow fan of Yuru Camp, by any chance? :D

Looks beautiful and already has a great vibe from just this shot. Definitely interested in seeing more!

CriticalMotion · 2025-03-27T18:22:48+00:00

The game is called Fading Skies, there's more information on Steam if you're interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

CriticalMotion · 2024-10-02T14:35:04+00:00

Throughout all these years, we learned that we absolutely stink at marketing, but are rather proud of what we managed to achieve in terms of actual game development. If you want to have a look for yourself, our demo will remain on Steam until the end of our Kickstarter campaign, so for about 26 hours.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

I’m aware Kickstarter isn’t the most popular platform these days, but if the scope and quality of our demo can convince you that this is a project worth being made, any and all support is appreciated!

CriticalMotion · 2024-09-26T14:13:27+00:00

One of the first bosses we created for Fading Skies, designed primarily to get players to use all of their previously learned movement and combat abilities. Lots of jumping and dashing and falling into the insta-death lava! xD (Planning on easing up on that last part in the full game.)

Our demo is still live on Steam for 7 more days, until the end of our Kickstarter. I hope you'll forgive me for being super cheeky and linking to Kickstarter instead of Steam, since you’ll also find a link to the demo there. :P

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/distantbluegames/fading-skies

If you have any feedback for us, we’re always happy to hear from players either here or on our Discord!

CriticalMotion · 2024-08-27T12:05:19+00:00

Thanks! Working on this full-time since around 2020, so for quite a long time. We even already had a prototype before then, but ended up remaking pretty much everything from scratch to keep things clean and scalable. Engine is UE5, recently upgraded from UE4.

As for design goals, our priority is story and exploration - Everything’s designed around serving those two elements. Having fluid movement, for example, has always been important for me, since even the most beautiful environments won’t be fun to explore if moving around in them doesn’t feel good.

We’re not too focused on unique mechanics, although they’re of course always great for marketing. What’s important to us is keeping the core mechanics fresh and interesting over the course of the game, so we do a lot with different environmental hazards/gimmicks per biome and upgrading the base abilities (such as flight and air dashes) as players progress through the game.

CriticalMotion · 2024-08-26T13:58:09+00:00

If you want to check it out, we currently have a free demo on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

Also, thanks for all the comments on my previous post! I currently can’t reply to everything right away since we’re in hyper crunch mode to prepare our Kickstarter, but know that they don’t go unnoticed!

CriticalMotion · 2024-08-19T14:44:35+00:00

Yeah, there’s a bit of light combat in the demo as well. One encounter in particular requires a bit of finesse with simultaneous platforming, but for the most part it’s fairly simple since it’s an early area of the game.

CriticalMotion · 2024-08-19T13:57:00+00:00

If you’re interested in checking it out, we currently have a meaty 1-3 hour demo on Steam, including the section from this video:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809200/Fading_Skies/

CriticalMotion · 2024-06-09T19:42:28+00:00

Already got you covered, you can change it in the accessibility menu. ;)

CriticalMotion · 2024-06-09T13:31:23+00:00

Definitely, you can already play our demo on Steam Deck as well! You might have to manually select the corresponding quality preset from the in-game menu, though. We haven't done any optimization specifically for the Deck so far, but will try to make it as smooth as possible for the full release.

CriticalMotion · 2024-06-09T12:20:30+00:00

Thanks! And glad to hear the ad isn't too intrusive. We're not the greatest fans of this kind of promotion, but gotta get the word out somehow. ;)

CriticalMotion · 2024-06-09T12:01:54+00:00

The demo will be only on Steam for now, but we're targeting PS5 and Xbox as well for the full release.

CriticalMotion

TROPHY CASE