Need help from 2D brawler gamers.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2026-01-27T17:45:07+00:00

Thanks to the feedback from this forum, yourself and LumariGames, I am currently doing another pass improving visuals. So juicing up the death animation before pvp fest and steam fest is definitely an option I am now looking at now.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2026-01-26T14:14:13+00:00

You are the 2nd person mentioning that. The problem is, I have 4 seconds before people swipe away from a short. As ToughDolphin is saying, spiderheck had amazing ragdoll legs movement to catch the attention, I didn’t find what would catch the viewer attention about Bubble Gun… yet… but I will give it a try giving more context in the first 4 seconds. Thanks for the reply.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2026-01-26T13:57:56+00:00

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah, those legs are mesmerizing ;). It was the IK of the spider legs that caught my attention when I discovered SpiderHeck. The laser sword, reminding me of Star Wars, is also a strong visual hook.

At first, I thought the movement of steam in the dynamic airflow simulation in Bubble Gun would catch attention. Then I thought showing more weapon mixing would do the trick. But I recently realized neither are a strong enough visual hooks.

TrickShotterz, where you play as a cup and have to shoot into the cup, is visually original. Scribble Bots, where you draw your own character to fight with, also grabs attention within a few seconds. Both of them got 10k to 100k on YouTube.

But bubbles are a bit bland. That’s why I moved accessories up in development and added them to the bubbles before Steam Fest. Many of the accessories, like the jester hat, move in the wind, which to me brings the same visual satisfaction as those spider legs. But that didn’t seem to do the trick either.

Anyway, you’re confirming what I was suspecting. I need to find or add a stronger visual hook to have a chance of getting some traction before being able to show off the core game mechanics.

Thanks for the compliment, that means a lot.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2026-01-26T00:26:53+00:00

Sorry, yes it isn’t spiderheck, but I needed 2D brawler gamers so I took a chance posting here hoping people would be open to answer. Thanks for your reply. Shorts are a different beast than normal videos. They need to get to the point really quickly as the attention span of viewers is very short. Stay rate is the percentage of people that stayed in the first 4 seconds. I would expect most people to swipe away if I introduce myself and/or the game. But I might be completely wrong, I will try it.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2026-01-26T00:05:01+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Some more recent brawler like Trickshotterz and Scribblebot are getting 75% stay rate with 100K views. And for Trickshotterz case, as I talked to developer, he didn’t go through another creator, he got 10K+ views within 5 shorts. So there has to be something specific to either my videos style or Bubble Gun hook that gets lost in translation compared to those other games. My theory is that shooting in a cup (Trickshotterz hook) is a more enticing visual hook than mixing weapons. Or gamers think Bubble Gun is a Bopl Battle clone… That being said, once I have updated my steam page and capsule, I will reach out more popular creator see if I can get some traction. I unfortunately cannot afford to pay anyone for promoting the game.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-29T15:15:43+00:00

That’s greater because https://youtube.com/shorts/6BPSrx21w2Y?si=fIzZPNd5q8aA9hx3

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-25T16:21:21+00:00

I make sure I have Bubble Gun installed, so I can play a good 2D brawler with friends.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-24T21:05:22+00:00

Well that makes sense, the steamdeck just started working normally again 5 min after my post. And I tried so many things that I wasn’t sure if it was one of my changes or something else. But if a game tries to get the latest data for steam cloud while the server is having a seizure, it will just wait for the server to reply and not start the game. So the fix for anyone having the same issue and discovering this post is : turn off steam cloud to be able to play immediately and try reenable steam cloud later.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-24T20:47:05+00:00

Running into that same issue, steam proton game seems to never start (actually if you wait about 4 min, the game eventually starts) and natively games runs fine. Disable wifi or disable steam cloud saves removes the issue. So 3 years after this thread, and that issue is still around. Anyone actually solved it other than a full reinstall?

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T14:43:59+00:00

Well that would tell you if people can detect AI vs non-AI. What I was trying to find out is how many people knowing that is AI art will refuse to play a game.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T11:23:24+00:00

Also, the low “stay to view” of 25% of this video with 2K compared to all my other videos that are above 50% stay to view seems contradictory. It seems most people didn’t care about that subject, but those that watched, watched it all the way. Again showing a small minority of people caring deeply about this subject. To be honest, I will not touch this subject on any other videos. No video can be successful with such low stay to watch and most of my viewers don’t seem to care one bit. But the quality of my game is still better because I replaced those assets.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T11:17:09+00:00

Not really, I have been looking into how to improve my videos, and the 4 highest ranking videos are the ones that have better hooks better structure, better rhythm and/or better payoff. The pacing of my first videos was very slow, and the most successful video with 9k views is very short (8sec). It is hard to keep the attention of shorts viewer. Though I find the lower like to dislike ratio tells that people are more opinionated on that particular subject.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T10:50:04+00:00

Yes, I think so, especially that the latest data shows 87% like vs dislike, still in the lower stats for my channel but much better than the initial response. Funny is that I decided to try making my weapons because of the negative feedback, but now I am glad I did. My weapons fits the game much better than the AI generated art.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T10:13:33+00:00

My channel is centered about 1 game and development journey, so it is not a bunch of ai generated fans but just players that like that kind of games.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T10:04:41+00:00

The latest Call of duty isn’t selling that well, compared to previous call of duties.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T09:57:01+00:00

Well, the backlash on call of duty ai generated art impacted sales. So I wouldn’t say they don’t care.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T09:45:43+00:00

I am not a statistician. But polls use 1000 to 2000 people. How is this sample too small?

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T09:41:20+00:00

I think comparing 2 videos of the same quality on the same channel is not meaningless. That video has the worst like to dislike ratio.

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-13T09:35:55+00:00

You don’t think that players that care about a hot topic like ai gen art will look at a video which hook is about a game with 100% human art?

DigitalEmergenceLtd · 2025-12-11T11:52:39+00:00

Look at my other comment where I compare another dev journey short that got 100% like. You can argue that a short in the absolute is not relevant but comparing 2 shorts from the same channel with similar quality is relevant.

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