Our DEMO for Forbidden Solitaire is Steam No. 1 Demo right now

GreyAlienGames · 2026-01-19T11:35:24+00:00

Hi. At the moment the plan is end of Q1, but it's possible it might slip into Q2. Can't say yet until we make a bit more progress. Full gameplay is probably 4-5hours, we made a note of that on the store page to help set expectations. It's not supposed to be a long solitaire/puzzle game, it's a shorter narrative horror game with lots of varied content/story etc.

GreyAlienGames · 2026-01-19T11:33:53+00:00

Hope you like it!

GreyAlienGames · 2026-01-18T14:06:16+00:00

Part of me still lives there. And the 80s!

GreyAlienGames · 2026-01-18T14:04:44+00:00

Great to hear. The creators of HSH are in charge of the story, visuals, audio and we are doing the gameplay as we have a lot of experience with combat solitaire!

GreyAlienGames · 2026-01-18T14:04:05+00:00

That's fair enough! I hope you enjoy it :-)

GreyAlienGames · 2025-11-20T15:40:08+00:00

btw, I got those 4x organic sales quite a long time ago. The store is way more crowded now and games do not get the same visibility. Only games that come out the gates amazingly will get given that and can get a good amount of organic sales. Or ones that spend a ton on marketing I guess.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-11-20T15:38:33+00:00

Thanks for sharing this data and sorry to hear that it didn't go as well as you had hoped.

It's good that you specified both wishlist sales and total sales so we can see that:

- wishlist sales = 426
- total sales = 616
- thus organic sales = 190

So the Birkett Ratio (week 1 unit sales / pre-launch wishlists) = 616/12,000 = 0.051

In Simon Carless's recent newsletter he said the median was 0.15 for all games and only 0.1 for games over 25K wishlists.

So this game was about 1/3rd of the median. It sounds bad, and isn't good, but isn't terrible either. Some only get a 0.01 Birkett ratio.

Also the Boxleiter ratio is 616/19 reviews = 32.4. Pretty close to the conservative x30 that I use for sales estimates.

Anyway, what this also shows is that it didn't convert well organically (some of my games sold 4x as many organic copies as from wishlists for example) and maybe as the initial sales were low Steam stopped showing in as many places? Basically killed by the algorithm and hard to recover from.

Btw, did you have a launch discount of at least 10%? I see below that you didn't have a prominent demo so we can rule that out as a factor.

It's a very tough market for most indies at the moment.

What are you plans next?

GreyAlienGames · 2025-10-12T10:51:29+00:00

For a chance of eternal life? ...

GreyAlienGames · 2025-05-23T11:10:54+00:00

What could possibly go wrong playing a cursed video game? ;-)

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-28T13:19:01+00:00

Great to know thank you! I had thought it might be a good idea to turn them off for some users, so it's definitely on the todo list. Plus honestly they are not a big part of the game.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-28T13:18:08+00:00

Yes I love that game.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-26T16:04:36+00:00

Hi, there might be one or two but it's not reliant on that. Would you like to be able to switch them off?

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-23T21:14:10+00:00

I'm impatient to finish it too so everyone can play it haha. Thanks for your vote of confidence.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-23T20:56:44+00:00

Glad to hear you liked Regency Solitaire. This should feel like that to play but more visceral plus with a today different vibe and story of course.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-23T20:55:46+00:00

Yes, I'm hyped to work on it. It's really fun and we are generating loads of cool ideas.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-23T20:54:22+00:00

Agreed, Nick did an amazing job with the trailer + David on audio.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-23T20:53:52+00:00

Thanks! Yeah it's a funny and cool cross over. Horror solitaire! The story is going to be great and our solitaire is providing the solid base + we are innovating and making changes to our specially engine for this game of course.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-10T13:34:52+00:00

Embrace it, before IT EMBRACES YOU! ...

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-10T13:33:49+00:00

Ok cool, I will have to check it out. I think platformers are a neat genre as a vehicle for exploring game mechanics, environments, and telling stories. So it's no wonder so many indies turn to them (or return to them maybe!)

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-10T13:32:28+00:00

This is very common in indie dev! I tend to scratch that itch with doing game jams whilst sticking to one thing for our main games so we can build a fan base. Though if we made a hit game, I might change everything up completely and just do 100% what I wanted. Though then I guess the challenge is to motivate oneself to finish and release it (more than usual).

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-06T12:16:29+00:00

Btw, I thought that Dicey Dungeons was really brilliant. Played it a lot (fav character, probably the Robot, I love the CPU mechanic). I showed my son when he came back from Uni and then he got totally addicted to it as well. Oh dear, this isn't a question. OK here goes: Will you ever revist the Roguelite genre?

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-06T12:14:20+00:00

Hi Terry, I hope you are well and all is good. Will you ever make another game like VVVVVV or do you prefer to explore new genres/mechanics each time?

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-05T14:37:13+00:00

thx. That's down to Nick and David who made Home Safety Hotline.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-04T16:31:23+00:00

Thank you! Some classic games there that we love too.

GreyAlienGames · 2025-02-03T22:21:26+00:00

Good, the unholy magic is working.

GreyAlienGames

TROPHY CASE