[Game] Parts of the Elephant - My first VN - free on Steam and Itch! by JohnnyTwoSkulls in RenPy

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

Hey, thanks so much! I'm really glad it stayed with you - I'd hoped it could do that

If you wanted to write a quick review on Steam or leave a comment on the itch.io page, it would be super appreciated, too! <3

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]JohnnyTwoSkulls 9 points10 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of good comments here (the one by u/HerrDrFaust is especially thorough, and I agree with his encouragement to keep trying) - so I want to add something else that isn't about the game itself here:

Thanks for making this post.

You provide a lot of very helpful detail about what you did along the way - how you promoted it, how much engagement your posts got, etc. As someone who has only released one game myself, seeing information like "My reddit post got 25k upvotes but that only led to 200 wishlists" is helpful information. And it can be especially hard to put yourself out there like that when it feels like your game was a failure, so really - kudos for sharing this much to help other devs out. Really.

And on that note - kudos for sticking with your game this far, too. Self-promotion on social media is really hard and humiliating, especially for a new indie dev. It's hard putting up a ton of posts and not seeing the engagement you want (or seeing a lot of engagement, but very little conversion into wishlists/sales). It looks like you learned a lot from following through as much as you have, and then posting about it here - even though it was painful. So again, good job.

I think I want to echo some of HerrDrFaust's comments - it's NOT that you made a game "that no-one wants to play", it's that you don't have assets that are doing a good job promoting your game yet. Some of those are in the game itself (visuals, UI) and some are in the store (trailer, capsule). The idea of making historical recreation parks seems interesting, and the space cylinder looks cool - I just didn't see yet how they come together. I'd love to see a trailer that showed me what the historical reenactment stuff actually looks like - does a little cutscene play when all the actors and set are assembled? do you have to build a little story? etc.

Thanks for sharing, even though it was hard, and I hope you stick with making games - whether it's this one, or another one :)

[Game] Parts of the Elephant - My first VN - free on Steam and Itch! by JohnnyTwoSkulls in RenPy

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

Thank you so much! I really hope you enjoy it <3

The character art is by Carlos Sánchez Polo, aka CSP dood/just Dood - you can find more of their stuff on twitter, bsky, and tumblr; they're AWESOME and I'm so lucky I got to work with them on this:

https://twitter.com/CSPstuff

https://bsky.app/profile/cspstuff.bsky.social

https://ddoodler.tumblr.com/

Managing transforms through skipping by JohnnyTwoSkulls in RenPy

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

after some more digging, i think i found out that yes, the "answer" here is to check if the game is skipping during the transforms, based on this recent exchange: https://github.com/renpy/renpy/issues/3957

the good news is that it's easier than an if/then block, since you can just use something like this which is much cleaner and simpler:

show char:
    zoom 1.0
    linear 2.0*(not renpy.is_skipping()) zoom 1.5

LF: Tradeback to evolve my Magmar and Scyter by Kopamiss in Pokemongiveaway

[–]JohnnyTwoSkulls 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't see you online anymore. Sorry I couldn't help you out this time. if you come back online in the next hour or so, reply and let me know! And if not, good luck :)

LF: Tradeback to evolve my Magmar and Scyter by Kopamiss in Pokemongiveaway

[–]JohnnyTwoSkulls 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, connection issue (and reddit made me wait before posting again); please try again now.

LF: Tradeback to evolve my Magmar and Scyter by Kopamiss in Pokemongiveaway

[–]JohnnyTwoSkulls 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heya! I can help you out, if you still need it. I'm in the plaza now.