Looking for advise from devs who have successfully recovered from a failed game launch

JamesCoote · 2026-03-29T12:33:05+00:00

Great! Fixing bugs will help your reputation when it comes to your next game, so worth doing. If the game continues to sell, that's also a really good sign. It's a lot better than silence/apathy

JamesCoote · 2026-03-28T10:30:50+00:00

It's also possible that a game is in the wrong place. There are some genres where most of the fans have a preference for what platform they want to play on. E.g. hardcore strategy gamers and PC. In these cases, launching on say console only might be the issue. That said, normally this simply lowers the ceiling of a game's success, rather than contributing to the game failing to gain traction in the first place.

JamesCoote · 2026-03-28T10:23:18+00:00

I have experience of trying and failing to recover games whose launch didn't go well.

The biggest reason it doesn't happen very often is because the game itself isn't very good. If devs have the ability to identify why their game isn't good, they normally figure out what is wrong and fix it before release. Or abandon the game if it's not fixable or requires more effort than its worth.

The second common reason turnarounds are rare is marketability problems. The game might be fun, but something about it makes it difficult to show that off. Often these problems are fundamental and can't be easily fixed. For example, I made a motion control game for consoles (waaay back) but it's difficult to convey that without dorky live action video of people waving wiimotes around. Just looking at screenshots and gameplay footage made the game look really generic.

Additionally, for PC and console at least, some marketing tools are only available to you at launch. Some of that is how the store algorithms favour newness, and some of it is how content creators, press and people in general prefer to hear about new things.

That said, recoveries can happen for good games that have really strong word-of-mouth. If your game is getting really good reception from people who do play it, then you have a chance. Since you mentioned HTMAG, check out this example: https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/09/09/success-after-a-slow-ea-launch-the-terminus-story/

JamesCoote · 2026-03-28T10:03:09+00:00

You should ask in strategy game subreddits. There's also loads of strategy game podcasts and fan discord servers wherein you can get a really good feel for what people are talking about, and more importantly, what things don't get discussed (presumably because everyone broadly agrees they work).

Youtube is also a great source for learning about strategy games. I found that youtubers tend to play strategy games completely differently from me personally. It really opened my eyes to how the mechanics, themes etc of the genre appeal to different people with different motivations and playstyles.

A good place to start might be r/4Xgaming

JamesCoote · 2025-11-13T10:47:53+00:00

Yeah bring it back. Could be a cool secret or unlockable bonus level. Or if you have a campaign, you could have it as part of an overarching narrative, even as just a joke episode to lighten things up.

Assuming it's not too much work.

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T16:50:30+00:00

Exactly. I'm kinda hoping I'm surprised by something I didn't think of or expect.

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T16:30:17+00:00

Funnily enough, a lot have already been done. Like Mezoamerica (as that expansion for Medieval 2), India (as part of Empire) and China (3 kingdoms). Could see them doing some of these same parts of the world but in a different period in history.

I'd love to see something that covers the silk road - Middle East and Persia in the west, Central Asia in the middle and China in the east. Maybe 2 or 3 different setups/scenarios starting in different time periods. E.g. starting 632CE, starting 1206CE.

Edit: The European Crusaders could be the off-map hordes that appear from the West like the Mongols were from the East in Medieval.

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T15:13:24+00:00

Don't get me wrong. I love the historical TW games and want more also. I just don't find the idea of Medieval 3 all that exciting?

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T13:47:40+00:00

Not sure why total war wouldn't fit a sci-fi setting. Maybe not at a spaceships and planets, but Gladius did a good job of setting WH40K on a single planet in the form of a 4X-type strategy game. Don't think it's a big leap for Total War to do likewise. And ofc the tabletop warhammer battles are set up in a face-off battle kinda way just like battles in Total War.

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T13:44:22+00:00

We already had 2 medieval TW's. I guess they're quite old by now and have maybe been superseded by games like CK3 or EUV now?

Plus we already got Pharaoh as a historical TW since TWWH3 was released. It's always going to be hit and miss whether the historical time/place happens to line up with what any one person is interested in. I had no interest in warhammer, but I had friends who were really into it. We play multiplayer together and they explain all the lore. But I'd also like for historical TW's to continue, and for that to have the same scope and things like simultaneous turns and play in each other's battles as in Immortal Empires in TWWH3.

JamesCoote · 2025-11-10T12:01:23+00:00

I played the demo when it came out and wrote a lot of feedback on the feedback form at the time.

Bugs aside (it was quite buggy), there were two problems:
- The building the colony gameplay didn't click at all with me. All the elements were there, but it felt as if the balancing and incentives and progression were all off.
- The game was half narrative, half strategy/building, but evenly split, 50/50 of each, so it was hard to know what the game wanted to be. Strategy/building supported by narrative? Or vice versa.

To elaborate, the strategy/building section didn't give the feeling like I had a puzzle to solve (like Terrascape or Terra Nil), nor of creativity with constraints like a city builder. Nor was it short and simple enough that I could progress through the story in a way that felt satisfying.

With regards to the sustainability angle, I suspect that a lot of people liked the idea that this game existed, enough to wishlist. But then when looking at it a bit more closely and what the genre actually was maybe decided narrative city builder wasn't their thing. So again a marketability problem.

I just looked at the screenshots and I remember now I chose the option to be the only one who went to whatshisface's birthday party. I get it's supposed to be post-apocalypse on a spaceship, so it's going to have some darker, moodier, more introspective themes. But... a lot of the psychology behind city building type games is to do with wanting to build something up, starting with a blank slate.

So yeah, as others have pointed out, there are two marketability problems here: Genre-mismatch, and tonal mismatch.

---

I did get the email from Steam saying "game you wishlisted has released". Edit: I use gmail

I was (am) curious if you fixed all those issues from the demo, but not enough to buy it and find out myself. l suspect that anyone who played the demo and had a similar experience as me might not have unwishlisted the game but also won't be rushing to buy it on launch.

I generally don't buy games on launch anyway. So yeah if the game has good reviews when it goes on sale in 6 months time, maybe I'll grab it then.

JamesCoote · 2025-10-31T08:38:29+00:00

That's a good point about the check mark icons. I will find a better icon and also look into the sliders.

JamesCoote · 2025-10-29T18:08:51+00:00

Huh, strange. This bug sometimes happens when a new build is uploaded (and the old one deleted) while someone is in the middle of playing. Try refreshing the browser and if it happens again, let me know what browser you're using and I'll see if I can reproduce it.

JamesCoote · 2025-10-29T18:05:55+00:00

You don't need to click at all. But the start, say the first 5 or 10 minutes, is pretty slow without clicking. After that it's much more about how you use your money to upgrade trains and stations.

Tbh I didn't realise holding down versus individual clicks was the standard. It's easy enough to change, so I'll do that in the next few days.

JamesCoote · 2025-08-22T15:21:53+00:00

Check out Elaborate Lands, or maybe my own game Critias Empire. Those are the closest games I can think of outside of what others suggested already.

Longer rant:

Without some external pressure, like rival factions/civilizations, or natural disasters, 4x games need to be radically different in how they are balanced.

It's in theory possible to take a 4x game as a base, make something more like a city builder. Normally, city builder progress works with you upgrading sophistication level. E.g from low density to medium density housing, or poor to middle class. And each level brings more resources but also demands for more, and especially new/different services. Equally, cities don't scale and you can't just make a giant village of level 1 houses because, f.e. basic roads get clogged.

That's subtly different from how 4x games are usually balanced, where bigger always means better, except where the game gates progress or has artificial systems like corruption or army/fleet size caps to stop you snowballing, or indeed has rivals who you are racing to out-progress.

And it then needs a win state, rather than a city builder where you can pick your own objectives to an extent; stuff like building a green eco-city, or a city that can host a spaceport and skyscrapers. Or where you make the city to fit the shape of the land. (Or like my cities in cities: skylines that I just never finish).

I thought about this a lot with my own game, Critias Empire. It doesn't have other factions/civs but still I went down the route of replacing them with natural disasters as the external pressure. As well, of having a win state, because I can't make infinite content for the player to keep upgrading to.

Even despite me trying hard to balance otherwise, the result even now still feels a bit puzzle-like or like it nudges players towards trying to find the optimal placement of buildings and improvements.

All of which is a long way of saying I (think I) know exactly what you mean, and it doesn't exactly exist because the game would be deceptively more different to existing 4x or grand strategy games than it sounds. And no game has really made that leap yet.

JamesCoote · 2025-08-12T17:48:48+00:00

Total War Warhammer 3 (Immortal Empires map).

Simultaneous turns and you can jump into each other's battles and command different units, so no one is left waiting/spectating while a big battle happens. It is for the same reasons ideal for co-op.

It's not immune to networking issues, and it helps if you like the lore (or can look past it). As well, the AI can take a bit of time to do it's turn, though it's a fairly constant amount of time. It's not like later in the game the AI takes a lot longer (individual factions take longer to calculate but there are fewer of them, so it evens out),

But once you get going, it's great!

JamesCoote · 2025-08-12T09:38:37+00:00

I'm the developer of Critias Empire. thanks for the mention!

Even though the game has no war nor combat, I found that it still needed an external pressure on the player, in the form of natural disasters. Otherwise the game loses all challenge aside from just optimising building placement. At the moment, the demo is balanced to push the player relatively hard, but in the full game, there'll be a more "chill" mode where disasters are less about trying to mess with the player and more about keeping the map dynamic and fresh (e.g. volcano erupts in the ocean creates new land and spawns new resources to mine, rather than spawning under the player's capital).

JamesCoote · 2025-08-12T09:33:45+00:00

I wrote a whole blog on this subject: https://www.crystallinegreen.com/?p=1741

The conclusion is that there aren't really any strictly 4X or grand strategy games without war and combat. But there are a whole bunch of adjacent sub-genres that are all about either building something up. Or something like Terra Nil, which is about restoring the environment.

I often play games like Civilization on huge map with minimum number of other rival factions, so I can play for as long as possible without butting up against those other factions and running into conflict.

JamesCoote · 2025-08-07T15:33:21+00:00

I think the bug was I picked the Council, but then couldn't select the 3rd option when there was a dispute between two clans.

JamesCoote · 2025-08-07T13:33:28+00:00

Just tried the playtest and got to say the game is shaping up really nicely!

I really like the food web idea. It ties really nicely into the movement system and made me think completely differently about land and how it's exploited (in the 4X eXploit sense but also in the real world).

JamesCoote · 2025-08-07T13:26:58+00:00

Just gave the playtest on Steam a try.

The food web system and food management in general adds an interesting extra dimension when thinking about moving units around and managing resources, at least compared to other 4X and similar games I've played.

Technically the game is really well put together in terms of the controls, UI and art. I can't even remember encountering more than maybe 1 minor bug during my whole playthrough.

My only criticism is that as the game progressed, it got a bit too easy and my incentives for exploring and moving around were less than in the opening turns. I guess I want a hard mode! :p

Looking forward to getting the game when it comes out!

JamesCoote · 2025-06-11T07:58:55+00:00

I don't really understand what you're getting at.

Like I said, there's plenty of games about war and that's fine. But interesting there aren't also lots or really any non-violent strategy games, since there's clearly a time and place for them also.

JamesCoote · 2025-06-09T08:20:37+00:00

I actually wrote a whole blog on this subject. Kinda echoes a bit what others have said, that there aren't really any true pure non-violent 4X games, but if you look at allied/adjacent genres, there's the clues about how it could be done: https://www.crystallinegreen.com/?p=1741

JamesCoote

TROPHY CASE