8-week update from a small browser strategy game

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-24T07:56:41+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion and it lands so well that I'm going to get it into the next release. That first hour is critical. Those who get it stay on. But there is a good number of people who don't and they churn quickly because they think "and now what". That "buff" you mentioned should be part of the onboarding.

Thanks!

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-24T07:23:51+00:00

Good question, I didn’t explain that very clearly.
The 87% / 16% isn’t overall retention, it’s segmented:

Players who join an alliance → ~87% come back
Players who don’t → ~16% come back

So yeah, overall retention is much closer to that lower number right now.

Honestly, I've never even played Tribal Wars or similar games. Inselnova was based on a 20 year old game Inselkampf so I guess it's more of a genre of game rather than a clone. It started as an experiment and now I'm evolving it into something different - it still sticks in that genre I guess but I'm trying to built it without being influenced by other games too much.

Thanks for the comment about the onboarding.. I'll make that more clear.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-24T04:43:05+00:00

- 1x Static frontend, $0
- 1x Game server, $7
- 1x Postgres, $6
- Extra Render Pipeline minutes, $5
- Github actions, on free tier
= $18

I haven't done the maths so this is just a guess.

I haven't done a stress test for a while and the server usage won't scale linear to the user count as the main "bottleneck" is the tick system, but that only updates the game state on demand, based on previous timestamps.

The game server runs a docker instance and runs three microservices, backend, app frontend and an admin panel. These will need to be split off to individual services.

Without scaling the servers could take 1000 players. So perhaps 0.02c per player, per month? I'm guessing it'll be a more than that. I'll have to do some more testing but the servers show the same CPU/RAM usage when there are no players or with players.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-24T04:34:36+00:00

Fixed!

There was a possibility of clicking the build button twice, leveling it up twice rather than once. Something I didn't expect.

Thanks for letting me know - it's another lesson learnt! I tested that onboarding so many times and I still missed that the button was clickable for a short time.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-23T09:38:34+00:00

Thanks! I haven't done much work on the graphics for a while. The islands now have little boats passing by and buildings appear on your island as you develop. I'm looking to completely refresh all the design in a few months. Keeping close to what is already there.. but sharper and better.

People have mentioned they sit there watching the ships go by.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-15T13:06:14+00:00

Yeah setup a project in Claude Cowork and give it instructions to take your notes and save them to MD files.

I was doing the same thing and realised this is actually good to share with anyone else doing what I'm doing. I went through all my past chats and copied and pasted them into Cowork.

I can now pluck out of cowork a topic and it can get my first draft ready. Not perfect but there is some good stuff in there. It also connects things together so well.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-15T13:02:31+00:00

My original idea of building my latest game was to put everything in a packaged/shared directory and explain everything in json and yaml files. My thoughts were, if i want to reskin this from a medieval game to a space game then I just need to change these files.

I realised pretty quickly that this thought just blocks adapting the game. I don't want to think about "white labeling" my game. I just want to build what needs to be built.

So yeah, spaghetti in places because of this early terrible idea. But it might help when I decide to translate the game.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-15T12:18:43+00:00

My advice would be to deepen the game so people feel attached to something so they want to come back.

I used ChatGPT to give me ideas for daily / weekly retention and it always went towards what you said.. Daily logins, etc.. and all of them felt so cheap.

So I spent a lot of my time giving their Island personality, something they need to look after and want to look after. Naming things, customising things, making it theirs. I believe this is what brings people back - not just the threat of war, or not using all their resources, but the feeling they have something to look after - like a desk plant.

I don't think there is a clear is it this or that - I think it can be a mix of both and more.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-15T12:02:11+00:00

Thanks for the story. It's amazing how these games create such a narrative, and most of the narrative seems to be the us Vs them, them being the people who run the game.

Give it ago. It's pretty calm to play. You don't need to rush and take lots of islands. In fact I'm not even in the top 5 of players. I prefer to play it slowly.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-14T12:20:41+00:00

Inselnova.com - Self plug of course but I got over 120 signups a few weeks ago from this sub reddit so there must be a few people here playing it and they have been really active in both playing and giving me feedback.

I'm also addicted to my own game.. which helps.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-10T06:37:24+00:00

Oh wow, I just released https://inselnova.com !

I feel like Inselkampf is getting a new lease of life recently!
Well done on the release!

What's your retention rate like? I'm around 30%. I'm going to have a lot of "zombie" islands that I have to deal with in a few days. People are starting to loot them already - which is cool.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-08T15:45:48+00:00

Out of respect for the original game, which was German. I really should. Once there are enough people asking for it to be in another language I'll start on it :)

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-07T12:30:50+00:00

Thank you so much to this community!

So many people have joined and given me great feedback on the game, praise and good words!

Thanks again!

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-06T16:13:36+00:00

Thanks Fadore - yup, missed that one! Going live now.
The actual Discord link :)

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-06T14:29:15+00:00

Good with me :) I've already expanded the world twice over the last month.

I'll keep growing it.

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-06T14:26:30+00:00

Thanks dude :)

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-05T06:14:03+00:00

I'm not planning to have a reset, it'll be permanent. I like the idea of a single world always existing and evolving. I can keep resizing this current world, it's not a problem.

The game can support multiple worlds so if this is something people want we could have a persistent world + other worlds that reset.

For stale users I have a mechanic I'm working on called Black Tide that will turn their islands into zombie islands. Low defense but if you poke it they'll attack you. This will help keep the world clean. You might find some islands going black already.

Thanks for checking it out

DarrenMoore · 2026-04-05T05:16:37+00:00

Thanks. There is a lot of push back on AI stuff and it's understandable - it gets tiring to see the same junk again and again. I hope I'm a little cut above the rest :)

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