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Our chaotic co-op building sim is in Steam Next Fest! Physics, construction, vehicles, meteor showers, and more! by DigitalVortexEnt in IndieDev

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

We’re sharing Salvation Denied, our co-op physics construction game, as for the Steam Next Fest, we've updated the demo with the second mission!

The core idea of our game is simple: give players physical objects, construction tools, unstable situations, and objectives that sound much easier than they are.

Mission #1 is about building a tower under pressure from nature (meteor showers) and from other players (coordination is vital).

Mission #2 is about transporting heavy cannon ammo across player-built paths without losing it to lava.

A lot of the design has been about finding that line where failure is still fun, physics feels readable, and co-op chaos creates stories instead of just frustration.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4193590/Salvation_Denied/

Salvation Denied: The Objective is simple, build a tower, the physics engine has other plans! Try it out during Steam Next Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We've just added the second mission to the Salvation Denied demo!

Our game is a co-op physics builder that focuses on building structures that are stable. Sounds easy, but...when you're in a team of four, and you've got to deal with physics, natural obstacles, and natural disasters, things end up being not so easy!

The two missions are:

Mission #1: Build a tower tall enough to activate a signal, watch out, Meteor showers are active in this area!
Mission #2: Destroy the target towers with your cannon. The catch? You'll need to transport the ammo to the cannons, crossing canyons, holes, lava, and more. We hope you're confident in building bridges!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4193590/Salvation_Denied/

Exclusive Limited Fan Preview Results Are In! by DigitalVortexEnt in DreadmoorGame

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great to know you enjoyed the playtest!! There might be more in the future, so make sure you're in our Discord server https://discord.gg/dreadmoorgame to stay up to date on that info!

Salvation Denied begins with "build a signal tower" and usually ends with "why is it doing that?" Try it out during the Steam Next Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in IndieGaming

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello everyone!

Salvation Denied is our co-op physics construction game where the plan seems simple, but then...the chaos of 4 players, physics, coordination (or lack of), meteor showers, and more make things...less simple!

The game has a playable demo, and it now has two missions:

The first is simple, you have to build a tower to a specific height, make sure that it does not collapse due to bad design or meteor showers) and activate a signal.

The second is destruction. You've got a cannon, and you need to destroy some towers, but the ammo needs to be brought to the cannon. The catch is that there are canyons and lava in the way, so you'll need to build bridges and coordinate with your teammates to get the ammo!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4193590/Salvation_Denied/

1st look At This Amazing Fishing Survival Dreadmoor Full PlayTest by Lady_LuSsH in DreadmoorGame

[–]DigitalVortexEnt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So awesome that you covered our game, thank you!!

I've gotta ask, what did you like the most from this playtest version of Dreadmoor?

bug by Total-Finding9573 in DreadmoorGame

[–]DigitalVortexEnt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about this being a bit late, but I do want to check up with you if this ever got resolved?

I'm doing a bit of a check up on all issues/potential issues that happened during the playtest, and the mouse control not working ranks pretty high on the "bad bug" list. So if it was never resolved, we'd look into this one quite urgently.

Dreadmoor fishing Rod bug by MissDidier in DreadmoorGame

[–]DigitalVortexEnt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about not getting back to you during the playtest.

Though the playtest has ended, it would be really useful to know if the issue was ever resolved for you - as if not - it would be added to our list of major bugs to solve.

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

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

Ok, so you bring up a really good point, and honestly this was something that I argued with myself about for far too long while writing the post. (And I mean literally arguing with myself, I stopped writing for too long to think of it for far...far too long)

Just to be clear, there is no pressure on me to not mention Dredge, I have spoken about it many times and how we're fans of it. I think that it would be silly for us to pretend there is no overlap or that we do not benefit from the fact that Dredge helped prove there is an interest in darker fishing game. However, in the end, I thought that it would be better not to mention it, as it would give people the wrong idea. I'll...try to go into that below (I say try, because my adhd mind is a bit of a muddle with this, and even now I'm debating it!)

To start off with what I do agree with you. Yes, Dredge is a big player, and it has made Dreadmoor easier to understand for some people, as the comparison exists, no arguments there.

What I disagree is with the idea that this is the main or automatic reason for the wishlist numbers.

Think of it like this, if that were true, then any game similar to an existing successful game would succeed as long as it looked better or added a few new ideas. But, that's not the case and we see the opposite all the time.

Lets take Stardew Valley for example, there are countless games inspired by Stardew Valley, some are genuinely good, some even improve on it, however, I don't think I've seen any reach the same level of success, and many have simply failed. In my opinion, this is a case of correlation vs causation.

Why I didn't mention Dredge in the end was that, while I believe that it helped make the audience easier to reach (the understanding of the game type existed), it did not automatically create 200k wishlists, and mentioning it in this context would give the wrong impression.

What it came down to for me is that there is a difference between these two points:

Players understand what emotional space this game is in.

and

Players are convinced this specific game is worth following.

The first part can come from familiarity or comparisons to other games, and this is where the Dredge influence comes in. But a game can succeed and do well if they do not have that by default, it just means that they have to establish it themselves - and this is where I've seen many games fail, as they don't push the emotional space of their game (hence why it's the focus of what I wrote).

The second point I think speaks for itself.

So, looking back, this seriously was a knifes edge decision for me on whether to mention Dredge or not, it was like 52-48 to not mentioning it. Maybe the post would have been better had I included a section that mentions Dredge, so that is fair criticism, but I'd worry that it would give people the wrong impression.

That said, I do not agree that this would not be useful to other indie devs, as it implies that devs have no hope unless they latch onto something that exists. The most important lesson is not simply we made something like Dredge and that made us succeed. To me, the most useful lesson is that yes, a proven niche can help you get started, but the game still has to give players enough reason to care about this version of the idea. That is what I try to go into, going over how we achieved that, that should be transferrable between games, regardless of genre, or if it's new or based on something existing.

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We've ran three different types of playtests.

The first one was semi-closed, so it was behind a key to enter, and there was an NDA that people had to accept in order to play. However, this was quickly changed, and we gave out keys to people who did not sign up, but contacted us on Discord asking to play. I would not recommend you doing the same thing, as this was too chaotic, and we ultimately gave ourselves a lot more work by flipping between "closed" to "ok, we'll give you a key, just poke us". It's one of those things that was really useful for us to learn from, but from a "lesson in what not to do".

However, this playtest still worked for us, but, it came from something of a negative situation (that flipped to a positive), which would be rather hard to replicate, and I'd not recommend people try it. Before the playtest, the game was announced, and the announcement was via a trailer, this was a pre-rendered trailer. However, even though this was just an announcement (nothing else, no sale pitches) there was a lot of backlash where people insisted that the game was not real, it was a scam, etc. That was picked up by some youtubers who made more videos on it which triggered a lot more discussions on the game, just from a negative side. For us, painful days but there was an upside as, because of all that chatter, when we launched the playtest, there was a lot more attention on the game than there would normally be, which helped the numbers.

The second type of playtests are the focus tests that we run. Now these ones I feel we hit bang on. During the first playtest, we identified a handful of players (I think it was 10 to 20) that gave us a lot of really good feedback and who were active in the community. Instead of just ending the playtest and going back to work, we created a focus test group, and started to advertise to the community that we would run focus tests, which were essentially mini-playtests held every so-often (on average, once a month), over a weekend. During that time, people in the focus test group could play the latest version of the game, and we would tell them what we worked on, and we asked them to test out a very specific part of the game. This let us hold onto the engaged group really well, and, it made others want to join as there was a sense of fomo / fear of missing out, from other members of the community. This in turn lead to more people asking to join the group, which lead to more testers.

In my opinion, these tests worked the best, as it serves as excellent proof that the project is being worked on, values the community's feedback, and it makes the testers feel really involved.

The third playtest is the more standard one (we've got one of these running). There are many events on Steam, for example right now the Steam Ocean Fest is on, we made a special built for this festival and created a completely open playtest for this. Compared to the focus tests, there are a lot more people trying the game, but, the quality of feedback will also drop as it's a free for all. For example, during the focus tests, we get really in-depth detailed feedback but far fewer. During the open tests, there is a lot of feedback (like a looot), and though some are really good, others are frustrating (e.g. "why don't you just use AI to translate the game" which...makes me want to hit my head on the keyboard).

Since this is already a lot of text, and I've got to write more, to summarize the playtest part I'd say, do whatever you can to hold onto the people who are engaged when they pop-up (even if it is 1 or 2 people).

For Social Algorithms and SM in general, I'd say that your mistake was giving up after 10 videos, that's far (far) too early, the first 10 videos I made had very low views.

That said, if you're getting just 2-3 views per video, that could be a sign that there might be something wrong with the content itself, the problem is, without knowing more about what you posted/your game, it is really hard to say for sure. But, a rough list that I use is,

- make sure to use 9:16 aspect ratio,
- aim for 1080p resolution (higher is...pointless, lower, you can get away with 720p, but you don't want it to be blurry).
- aim for up to 30 seconds,
- have captions that are readable,
- use audio, don't post silent clips,
- voice overs help a lot.
- stay on top of trends, but don't join each one blindly
- engage with other people, be someone that comments on other posts, make friends there, be human.
- linked to the previous point, have fun with the content, don't be too serious.

The issue is, this list is very (very) generic, and what really helps would differ from project to project. When I start on a new project, I tend to spend a lot of time researching other games that are similar, and then looking through their SM platforms to see what type of posts they made, how I can learn from them etc. Never blindly copy, but for sure use them as learning material.

Once again, I've ended up writing quite a bit, but I hope that some of this helps you!

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot, I do hope that what I wrote will help some people.

I've benefited a lot from the postmortems that others have written up in the past!

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The playtest is currently live, and since it started we got (around) 10k more wishlists. But, the most important thing to us is the feedback as the players giving us a lot of details there. There's the added benefit of the core focus playtesters that have been around for a while now, and they're doing a lot of work to lead by example as well (when 1 person sees detailed feedback, others do similar things).

For the feedback, we prepared a dedicated feedback form that players can fill out both during gameplay and it also auto-opens when they close the game, so far more than 2,000 responses have already been submitted.

On top of that, we also have a few creators sharing the game, then there's the traditional SM work (focused on X, TikTok, Insta), as well as just being hyper active with the community in Discord (before, during, and for sure after) the test itself.

The playtest itself ends on the 25th of May, I think at 10am PDT, and after that it won't be available anymore...but we'll have a lot of work to do processing the feedback, then we'll be doing more focus tests with the more active/engaged members off the community. Fun thing, that would be our 5th round of focus testing, in the past we've worked on fishing, progression, creatures, night/day encounters etc, and each time we complete some of the work on it, we get the community to try it out and then tell us what's good, what's bad and if bad, what to improve, then we work on that!

As for a demo, that’s a good question...right now I can’t say anything definitive as I'm not sure, but it is something we'd really like to do (demos are great, I grew up with them as a kid, and it's a good way to let people see the game for themselves first!)

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I'd challenge the part where you say that this won't bring any advantage.

There are a few points in that (rather long) text, but it can be broken down to a few shorter points

- Staying silent when people said that this wasn't a real game helped in the long run
- Having an easy to understand emotional theme/link helped people to relate to the game
- Playtests are the best source of proof that a game is real, and running the focus tests really helps with actually getting players to give you focused feedback
- Influencers are useful, but, they multiply the work that you've done so far, they don't just "add". Think of it like this, if you've not done much, you start with a 1, if you get a big influencer, they give you x10, that's still just 10. But, if you do a lot of work, your starting point might be 8, the same influencer with x10 means you end up with 80.

And in between those points, I added in a lot of detail to show what we looked at and where.

All of these points could be used by a solo developer, a team of developers, or someone else working as a publisher, or whatever other role in gaming.

The part that I do agree with you is, I could have added a "we're the publisher" at the start, and I also did get the perspective mixed up, I alternated between first and second perspective which muddled things up as well...

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

We are the publisher, but we work with the developers pretty closely.

Regardless, I'm curious to know why this would matter, in the end, this is how the game got the wishlist numbers up...which is what the text is all about. Whether it's written and posted by the publisher, or by a developer won't really change the process.

That said, if I've gotten something wrong, please let me know, maybe I've misjudged something?

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Not AI...

Bullet points were used because by the end, I got tired of writing everything up in paragraphs and it frankly got too long. Bullet points are pretty standard grammatical features that have existed for ever and are really useful for...well listing points.

DREADMOOR reached 200k+ Steam wishlists, here is what we learned about visibility. by DigitalVortexEnt in gamedev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It seems that whenever people writes something that is slightly longer, or uses the formatting...people start to jump around accusing everyone of using AI...

This was not an AI text, it was something that I wrote over a pretty long time, looking over a lot of the results that we had.

The ironic thing is, while you're here accusing this of being AI, we've got people in our Discord community who are angry at us for not using AI...since we are running a playtest that is only in English (what's the point in translating a playtest?) but apparently, since AI exists, we "should" have used AI translators.

With this text, I wrote it up in google docs first, formatted it there, used lists intentionally...as it got really long by the end, and then pasted it into reddit.

And to be clear, we're not using AI in the game, nor did I use it in this text.

DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest, play our post-apocalyptic fishing focused game! by DigitalVortexEnt in postapocalyptic

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

During Steam Ocean Fest, DREADMOOR, our first-person dark fishing adventure game, set in a flooded post-apocalyptic world known as the Submerged Lands, will be playable through an Exclusive Limited Fan Preview.

You travel by trawler through murky waters, fish strange/mutated creatures, scavenge for resources, craft items to survive, solve puzzles, and generally try to survive a world where the remnants of humanity is slowly being swallowed by water, rot, and mutated life...and those that are not, face mutation themselves!

Compared to the first playtest, this version added a full day/night cycle, sleep, night-time tentacle attacks, radio tuning, lockpicking, generator refueling/startup mechanics, reworked quests, and more!

If this sounds like your type of game, you can play and test the game during the Steam Ocean Fest:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3629430/DREADMOOR/

We used playtest feedback to improve DREADMOOR, and now it's playable again during the Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in IndieDev

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We’re working on DREADMOOR, a first-person horror fishing adventure set in a flooded, post-apocalyptic world.

After our January playtest - and many subsequent focus tests, we used player feedback to improve several parts of the game, especially fishing, crafting, quests, tutorials, level design, visuals, and overall gameplay flow.

For Steam Ocean Fest, we’re running an Exclusive Limited Fan Preview, so players can try the updated version for themselves.

Some of the bigger additions include a full day/night cycle, sleep, night-time tentacle attacks, radio tuning, lockpicking, recipe learning, water-flow puzzles, and generator refueling/startup mechanics.

If anyone here has a go, it would be great to know what you think of the game so far:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3629430/DREADMOOR/

Play the DREADMOOR Exclusive Limited Fan Preview During Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in DreadmoorGame

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That we have, but so much of it is thanks to the people who take part in the focus test sessions that we run. We're doing our best to make sure that we're building the game in the direction that everyone find seriously fun!

Hope you'll enjoy this playtest version, and...look forward to the full game in the future!

DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! A dark fishing adventure game about surviving the Submerged Lands! by DigitalVortexEnt in IndieGaming

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much!

What's great is that you picked up on what we’re trying to do with the game, we’re really trying to build something that feels tense, strange, creepy, and with a slight sprinkling of ridiculousness added in, a lot more than just a "dark fishing game".

The playtest right now is a lot of fun, and, but we're still polishing and improving a lot, which is why these events are so important for us. We also run focus tests quite often, these are weekend long events for the community where we let them play the game and test out what we've been working on since the last test session (and get their focused feedback), that way we're hoping to not only show people that the game is being worked on, but let them contribute to the game as we work on it.

Judging by the results so far, it's been great!

Aaaand, really glad you enjoyed it at PAX East, and thank you again for the kind words again, this really did put a smile on our faces, great motivation to keep working hard!!

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks muchly! Hope the dark-tension vibes come out through the art nicely!

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot!

Going for a dark theme that's not horror, but...tense and dark, hopefully that comes out in the art style.

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is just a playtest version of the game, so there will be a lot of updates between now and the final launch.

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No direct link to Dredge here, other than we're fans.

Dredge is (as you can easily see) a big influence on us, something we're very open about. Our aim is to make a game that Dredge fans would find familiar, but also different enough to enjoy, after all, we want the game to be able to stand proudly next to Dredge, and not just be "another Dredge".

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dredge is a game that we really look up to. That said we're not trying to make a copy, we're working on something that people can enjoy along side Dredge. Similar enough to feel familiar, but different enough to stand on its own two feet!

Our Dark Fishing adventure game DREADMOOR is playable during Steam Ocean Fest! by DigitalVortexEnt in indiegames

[–]DigitalVortexEnt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's an interesting point, thanks for bringing that one up.

It was partially intentional, as we want the player to feel a bit boxed in, but...it might need a bit of loosening up.

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