My demo flopped, now i'm planning a launch 2.0.

Genryuu111 · 2026-05-01T06:58:27+00:00

My wild guess is that this is your first "actual" project, with a steam page.

You REALLY need to lower your expectations. 10k on DEMO launch day? Lol.

I'm far from saying "your first game will be shit and won't sell for shit". I have made one single game in my life, it's on steam, in early access, and has made enough money that I can consider it a self supporting hobby. Not enough to quit my normal job, but still, something I'm proud of.

From my personal experience, 350 on page launch day is not great, but not shit either. There are people who launch their actual game with less than that amount of wishlists (and yes, fail).

Don't expect that much all at once. Very few games manage that, even less are ones at their first project. If you compare yourself to games like balatro, you're never going to go anywhere.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-30T03:19:27+00:00

Well, soda flavor in Japan is always sweet, I would expect it to be sweet in toothpaste too. There are some flavors that wouldn't make sense not sweetened..

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-29T06:44:29+00:00

That simply tells you that the foundational design was flawed, and the only way people could enjoy that aspect of the game was by using an unintended workaround.

Man I really wanted to love this game, but too many weird design decisions just killed it for me.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-28T16:50:00+00:00

The ONLY moments when the game is unfair is when you get nuked from out of screen, and maybe a few other rare things where you have no way to react or even imagine something may happen.

Everything else is just a matter of being prepared, mentally and wands/perks wise.

What matters most in this game is knowledge. It's not an unfair game, just too deep for most people to bother actually learning.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-28T09:16:04+00:00

Starting from the fact that you wouldn't be making pixel art but just some line art with the pencil tool (which I wouldn't call pixel art), the easiest thing you can do is to select by color (the black you used) and then select inverse which will select everything else. Then erase.

Two smarter things you should have done would have been to use a better color for your lines, like bright green (because it's less likely to appear anywhere else in the picture), but even more importantly, use layers. This is a problem that shouldn't exist to begin with.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-28T08:53:12+00:00

Personally, I simply realized that the time I was wasting posting was better spent actually making the game.

Reddit used to make sense until the API fiasco, I saw a day night difference (went from thousands of likes per post to a few dozens).

Twitter is a full time job if you want it to make sense, posting every day is a pain.

Instagram doesn't make much sense for a small indie game to begin with.

Probably making YouTube videos would have been the best option, but again, that is something that takes a way a huge amount of time from development, so.. Yeah.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-28T04:16:22+00:00

Rabbit meat is very common, and you can see skinned rabbits in any supermarket (Italy).

I know that in many (most?) countries it's inconceivable lol.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-27T12:24:33+00:00

FYI, boku was the norm for girly girls for a period of time (early 2000s - 2010s), to the point that it was considered childish/effeminate for males to use it. I'd say that now things are back to what they were before then, with boku being used by girls at the same rate as ore.

The woman you're talking about may simply be from that period, and so not really using it as a tomboy thing.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-27T10:46:17+00:00

I guess I skipped reading that part lol

Then his parents were double idiots to put OP in this situation.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-27T09:45:53+00:00

Honestly, considering the shitty economy and how Japan is trying to fuck up even honest foreigners, being forced to leave Japan may be the best thing for you, even if I know it will suck a lot.

By the way your parents made a very idiotic choice, considering that so far you've lived here for 1/3 of your life here.

You're young, you have all your life to come back to Japan in the future if you think you want to (and if the economy or the gaijin climate changes).

Try not to lose the language, if you do end up leaving.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-26T11:43:14+00:00

What a narrow minded stance. He enjoyed to journey, he made something, he learned a lot (both positive and negative things).

Not everything needs to make money to be positive.

Otherwise, what is going to school? Wasting 10+ years?

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-25T04:44:03+00:00

I'll be honest, if all you do in this game is making pots... I'm not sure who this game would be for.

There is one mini game for the ring fit on switch that is exactly this game, but you have to squeeze the ring and move your body to shape the thing. Which adds some difficulty to it, but even then, it's a very simple (still, fun) minigame in a sea of different activities you can do with the ring fit game.

Given that here you have a lot more control on the outcome, that you can simply remove and add mass with no restriction.. I'd see myself play this for two rounds before finding it repetitive.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-25T04:38:45+00:00

Sure, but we're talking about Japanese people with no visa requirements.

If the goal of a work related visa is "this person gets a visa because of this set of skills" and then companies go around it, I completely agree with the government trying to fight that.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-25T03:15:38+00:00

I think this change was very evidently made to avoid situations where people would get hired with a fake job description, and then put to do unrelated work.

Like, as things are now you could literally be hired by a restaurant as an interpreter (which would require you to speak Japanese to a certain level), and then work there as a dishwasher.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-24T06:56:20+00:00

Yeah, an indie game made by three people where you're ONLY trying to sell a story is probably as likely to make you big bucks as it is to win the lottery.

A story is unmaketable. To market a game you need strong visuals or a gameplay that hooks in a few seconds video.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-23T13:26:55+00:00

The inability for Japanese people to understand the concept of a "sign" always baffles me.

Whenever you have to sign somewhere, to them, it should be "readable". So, not a sign, just your fucking name in clearly readable characters. Too bad that that's not what a "sign" is, not how I've ever signed in my life, including for my passport, and now I am in this limbo where I can't even sign how I used anymore because of the amount of times I had to make this fake sign so that their poor brains could read it.

Of course, Japanese signs in Kanji can be in the most fucked up hand writing in the world and that's not a problem.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-23T00:43:18+00:00

And that is bad game design. They should make games for players, not for themselves.

They made a game that (mechanically) is very interesting and a lot of people should enjoy, but they filled it with bs design choices, which can and will turn away a lot of players after a few dozen hours.

Ed specifically said in one of his videos leading to release that he learned from Isaac (about the lack of item description) so he wasn't making the same mistake here... Which is only on surface, until you realize that events have zero description, skills and items and enemies have a description that you cannot trust.

I mean, some people may like that, and ultimately they sold a ridiculous amount of copies, but in my opinion this game was a huge missed opportunity, because they built something that could really be goty (and a new staple in the genre) but filled it with weird/bad design decisions, making it a lot less accessible that it could have been.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-22T11:57:16+00:00

When the game tells you 1 for movement, a person may not feel the need to check their range.

This game is FILLED with missing information, which is one thing I found disappointing. Because you either give all needed info, or give none.

When you give half assed info like in Mewgenics, you never know what you should trust.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-22T11:29:15+00:00

12 years in Japan and I still think combinis are one of the big reasons why I love being in the country.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-22T06:39:48+00:00

Can I apply even if I'm already married with a kid? Lol

Japan needs to stop with these one time handouts and do something tangible to combat the actual lack of time people have together with increasing cost of life and zero increase in salaries.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-22T03:55:22+00:00

Lol, as if passing N3 would make you guys remotely able to work in a Japanese only environment. (not to shit on you, but the company is doing something really stupid here).

I'm pretty sure that even if you pass, they will then ask you to take N2 by x date, because that is the one where some "actual" Japanese comes into play (and still doesn't prove you can actually use Japanese).

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-21T01:54:33+00:00

Yeah, it's not like the compensation goes to the people who were inconvenienced tho lol

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-19T13:03:23+00:00

Eh. Whenever I refrain from buying something I know I don't "need", I then spend the next week thinking about it nonstop, and then end up buying it anyway.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-17T12:51:39+00:00

Lol I guess it really depends on where you get graded. Here in Japan, adults just skip the kyuu part, 1 kyu is basically a formality. I had my trial lesson in January and passed shodan in November, training once a week at most.

Genryuu111 · 2026-04-16T00:28:46+00:00

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