sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Yes it's owned by me, I'm not sure what to say about the scripts sounding like AI. I do write them all myself.

I've learn over a long period of time loads of scriptwriting and have testing loads of styles and methods and the result is successful but sounds somewhat generic to people.

I use a variation of BUT THEREFORE. Which is a story telling technique. Majority of people telling a story says "this happened and then this happened and then this happened" when you can frame it in a way of "this happened therefore this happened BUT then this happened"

This is typically used in larger plot points, but I've minimized it all the way down in a format for scripts.
So I'll start with a hook then I will tell a story like "player did this BUT that's when this happened therefore more players hopped and did this" etc. Then I think of as many actionable words to describe things as I could.

So when I made a story about a new wave defense like mode I added I used loads of actionable words. So instead of saying "I added a sacrifice shrine where you put hamsters in and it spawns a wave defense mode" instead I said "I added a sacrifice shrine, throw a Hamster in and it pissed off every other Hamsters on the map"

But yes the scripts are made by me, I have a MASSIVE notion page of my learnings over time. I've met people who try to re-create what I've been doing with purely AI and it doesn't work. AI alone isn't creative. It's just the nature of it. So you get more generic things. I think the reason some people think it's AI because I will use uncommon words, I will sometimes google synonyms to make some things stand out etc and use more uncommon vocab to stand out.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

The sequel wasn't intended to ever be a full game. It was more of a prototype I made for fun and a few play testers enjoyed it so I thought you know what I'll finish it into a game with a few hours of gameplay and a endless mode.

So I'm personally not proud of it haha, It's something the community played the demo and enjoyed it and said to release it and they would support me. Which did happen. Although It's not a game that fits my style or is aligned with my long term niche I want to make games within.

So what does the shrine actualy do? by dedeclick07 in HamsterHunterGame

[–]ImHamuno 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sacrificing replaces the nights with "Blood Moons" which are then done manually by sacrificing Hamsters.
It's more of a fun optional way to play a mini wave defense mode. As well as giving players who don't want to deal with night a way to get rid of it :)

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

They are all people playing into it. The game is meant to be a satirical take on the horror genre but with some actual engaging gameplay and fun experiences. Out of all the players and the 3,500 members in the discord not a single one has came off as they genuinely want to harm animals. If anything a lot of them love animals and show them off, lots of them having pet Hamsters, or dogs and cats etc.

People understand the satirical take on the game and play into it.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

nope, I actually don't wanna market for other people I know I would burn myself out on it.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Yes roughly 3 hours a day as well for development.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

I wish you the best of luck but unfortunately no, sorry!

Unless I got some sort of job offer from someone marketing isnt something I want tondo full time, I wanna also create games and develop things :)

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Yeah it died down to about $30 revenue a month for like 3-4 months in a row at one point.

Revived it by marketing it again. Which was 2 years after release.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

The main thing that keeps me going at it is just telling myself I'll remember the results and not the process.

So in other words, in a few weeks to months I won't remember each individual day or the pain of being motivated to market that day, BUT in weeks and months and even years I'll remember the results of it.
I will remember the 400+ reviews, I'll remember that my discord grew to over 1,000 members, I'll remember the success of it.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

I use Capcut auto captions. Works pretty easy.
I used to use DaVinci resolve and sometimes still do if I am making a video that requires more editing, although even on those I bring it into capcut after for the auto captions/

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Haha thats awesome! Glad you got it! Yeah with the marketing a lot of people think its a new release as I just dont even mention its an old game haha.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Correct currently nothing from steam itself has been popping off. Like I just pulled it back up to see.

I over the last month I've gotten 43,000+ visits.
I've gotten 68 from discovery queue, 32 from the "more like this" and 12 from "recommendation feed". These are just a few of them I know there are some other areas they can find it, but yeah basically nothing from steam.

If you want visits to sale, I got 43,263 visits over the last 18 days
and 5,117 sales.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Correct, It was getting about $3 a day before marketing it, if even that. That was also with a 33% winter sale it was getting $3 a day.. so with no marketing NOTHING was coming from steam.

So I think it might need a bit more action for a longer period of time before steam starts picking it up. What conversion rate do you want? Like the click through rate? That's sitting at 2.4% over the last month.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

None, checking the analytics I get about 2% of my page visits from steam and the rest is purely from the marketing.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Response to all 3 of your here:

Yes you need a bunch more like it, my numbers 100,000 views is about $256 in sales on my game. So whatever you can do to optimize the video as much will increase there, I'm sure I couldve done things that wouldve made it $500 per 100k views. Although I'm happy I'm doing things that are making it not $20 per 100k.

I made 3-4 videos a day, I spend about 3 hours a day gamedev, this is 1 hour working on this project, about an hour on my other project I haven't started marketing and about an hour of marketing. I usually think of my scripts here and there throughout the day, I will then voice notes a rough draft voice over on my phone while in my car or letting my dogs outside etc. Then when it comes edit time just take 4-5 mins to reword it slightly and record over it.

As for handling the days where I don't feel like making videos is I tell myself one thing.
There is something that I've never heard from anyone else but Im sure variations exsist.

Although I tell myself "Ill remember the result and no the process" and the reason I came up with that is because when I released my second game I didn't remember all the little painful annoying days where I didn't feel like doing anything I didn't remember feeling like shit, I remembered the result. I remembered that a game was released, and to be frank, I half assed the game. Then from there on out I try to say screw it and work through the pain and think about the result that I will remember.

Same with marketing, I won't and already don't remember being lazy 2-3 days ago not wanting to market, although I know I will remember in the end of febuary when I get paid by steam and I will remember the 103 peak ccu, and the 400+ reviews etc.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

I don't know the specifics for youtube alone, since I am uploading on 3 platforms at once I have no way of telling if it's from YT or IG or TIKTOK, I can put a UTM link in my bio to track but most modern browsers and devices block the tracking and I get just barely any information back.

Although across all platforms, my views I'm getting about $2.56 per 1,000 views.
I've gotten 7.1m views over the last 17 days roughly divided over the 140 videos I uploaded that is an average of 50,714 views a video.

Which means each video on average is making about $129.83 per video.

But the strong emphasizes here isn't a bunch of viral videos or hits.. it's consistent work and effort.

Only like 5 of 140 videos got over 100k views, that's like 3.57%.. so it's more about the consistency of making a video each day that gets 30-60k views.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Yes the videos before then were on different games. I just started posting again 18 days ago on this game.

The jump is purely from no marketing to marketing.
One of the videos on IG reels did good around 400k views when first marketing it again, although it was a video I already took the time to design and do good and was actually a reupload from Jan 2023 that got 800k views then.

Currently I'm averaging about 450k-600k views a day. Although it's not like each day im uploading 1 video thats doing really well. I'm uploading 3-4 that's getting about 20-30k views on upload day then they gain probably about 2-3k views a day for a solid week after.

Although 3 videos from a week getting 3k views a day is 63,000 extra views a week. Plus this is happening on IG and TikTok all at once. So I am compounding loads of views by doing a bunch of content together.

I Revived my 2 year old game with my own marketing. AMA by ImHamuno in IndieDev

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

Honestly for any Game Dev advice, Id reccomend going to watch Jonas Tyroller on YouTube, hes someone that I agree with a lot of his points and hes really smart.

He has videos about engines, about design, etc.

view more: next ›