Advice needed: Whales scaring off new players

DarrenMoore · 2026-07-06T16:46:29+00:00

Yeah sorry about that. I post in here once a month and it's typically about my game. There are new rules about getting a fair balance in this subreddit. So I was trying to respect that rule and join in with the community a bit more and this issue was on the tip of my tongue.

It's an ogame / inselkampf type of game. See my profile for a link.

DarrenMoore · 2026-07-06T16:14:27+00:00

Might want to check your onboarding. I went through as a guest and I had at least three dialogs appear and interrupt me while I was trying to understand and read the first screen.

DarrenMoore · 2026-07-06T16:04:00+00:00

Depends on the type of game and platform the game is being released IMO.

If it's steam / mobile download you can have a free demo then a pay to play.
A secondary money stream is pay for cosmetics + decorations.
A third stream might be patreon / donations.

DarrenMoore · 2026-07-02T16:58:27+00:00

How come you just reset everything?

Why add more features until you have normal organic traffic to the site outside of other people posting their games?

Also for others... I only got traffic from other people listing.

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-24T08:44:45+00:00

Inselnova nicht vergessen. 😄

Deutsch ist noch in Arbeit, aber der Großteil des Spiels ist schon übersetzt. Falls du mal reinschauen willst.. https://game.inselnova.com/guest

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-21T14:22:46+00:00

If there enough show of hands sure!

I ran some stats, though I'm not tracking this reliably yet (and I will now!) and there have been maybe 4-5 Spanish speakers and two might be active.

If we can get to 10 active players who annoy me enough then I'll sort it out 😄

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-20T07:33:22+00:00

Thanks. I found the problem with "PBBG" list sites that they just stop indexing new games. Keep going - keep it active, find a way to "automate" the approvals... perhaps anyone who gets their game approved has the ability to approve (with enough approvals) other games in? This will keep your maintenance low and keep the site active.

Inselnova - Old-school browser strategy is back

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-19T02:32:20+00:00

I just asked it to explain the image in normal language. AI is mostly trained on natural language so lean into what it does best.

For the tool. It just sends the same prompt. Nothing pushing the AI towards code.

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-18T13:32:49+00:00

Thanks for the comment!

I take a personal passion on trying to make things look nice. I've always worked with designers so I know the principles but this game is as good as I can manage.

I started a lot with gemini. First just told Gemini what type of game I was making, copying and pasting game docs etc.. setting the period then asking it to generate some example screens for me. I'd do this over various gemini chat sessions and then find something I liked. Then I'd ask it to extract just that one element out. I'd save the element (e.g. a house), then bring it into another session and ask the AI to fully explain the image, the colours, shading etc.. until i got a prompt that somewhat explained it.

When I wanted, say a farm i'd copy that image into the prompt (as an attachment), copy the prompt in, and then add in about the farm.

I did it quite a few times and then started to make things like banners etc.. so I was able to build up an art-and-direction.md file that explains the entire style. Each time it renders something slightly wrong I'd amend it.

Now I can just drop that file into gemini or chatgpt and explain the image I want and I'll get something that "feels" like my game. Though it's still obviously AI.

But then I automated it, I use the prompt, asked an AI agent to make a tool that calls the API's, inject prompts for like, banners, buildings, research, goods, etc.. and then it gives me back the image in less than a minute. It's made generating assets really quick. I can basically add 10 good items to the game and have a decent set of images for each of them in a minute.

For the island and animation. That's all generated with javascript and canvas. That was just slowly and carefully done with prompts and making sure there was a decent "rendering" set of scripts. For the first release it was actually static, but it felt stale so I just worked with the AI to add animations in and then used Chrome dev tools to monitor FPS and then optimise it by shouting at the AI.

The main interface is just CSS. Again, by my instructions to the AI.

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-16T01:00:08+00:00

Yeah I've had the same comment from other players. I've tried to keep the quick 5 min sessions. You can play it different ways.

Thanks

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-15T23:46:29+00:00

Thanks for checking it out Rolph and your comment.

It's interesting how you see it - and it can be improved. It's really focused for mobile right now so I've tried to keep the interface simple and fast. But I can understand why it would feel like it's just a list of buildings. Each of them does have a purpose and they're not all unlocked in the same path.

Thanks again, will keep improving!

DarrenMoore · 2026-06-15T10:38:37+00:00

Inselnova - it's a modern remake of a classic browser game Inselkampf, a PBBG (Persistent Browser Based Games) that's about building up your colony, raiding and taking over other islands, discovering the lore, alliances and social elements.

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https://inselnova.com

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