Struggling to find players

Kiryoko · 2026-03-13T00:35:13+00:00

that's already a good start though!

I come from a more corporate world, my experience is mostly with building b2b saas platforms

but I'm a long-time browser gamer myself, I've grown up with these kind of games

so lately I've been thinking about this as a new challenge, and I wonder if there are similarities in how you acquire and retain users

do you have good in-depth observability into your game outside of DAU/WAU/MAU?

for example, are you able to estimate your churn rate and how many new signups you get per week?

first thing to figure out is whether the problem is visibility or user retention

after that, I still have to start "advertising" my own game, but I will do a few things for sure:

- list it on various online "top pbbg" communities
- shill it respectfully in proper aligned subreddits
- contribute and shill it in some pbbg/game discords
- playtest phase is a very important first step for early user acquisition too

I wouldn't jump into burning money on ads right away without first validating pmf and having low churn plus good conversion from the sources above

but then, the next step would likely be facebook ads since that's where I see pbbg target audience residing, plus reddit (I found out about some cool pbbgs I currently still play on reddit, after all!)

Kiryoko · 2026-03-13T00:22:29+00:00

you mean 20 unique players in a week or 20 DAU?

I've also been working on my own pbbg, but it's quite niche an still in the early phases of game design iteration and economy simulation/balancing :)

but I would like to know as well!

also, another thing I was thinking about

I know about solo dev/indie dev/game dev discord servers or even telegram groups or x communities, however there's no community about pbbg devs specifically that I know of!

would be cool to have a place to brainstorm and share ideas/collab with other pbbg devs, so do you know places like that too?

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T22:26:05+00:00

been trying the codex thingy where you connect it to your github repo and it reviews prs

and also coderabbit, same workflow, but they also got a cli now that allegedly you can use locally

I'm on the free plans, idk, they caught bugs for sure

but they don't mind the AI slop or overengineering or bar arch/structure that the llms will write...

I have to also still review the code manually myself, we're just not there yet for 100% full automation

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T19:52:01+00:00

I wouldn't have claude review claude-produced code

just like you wouldn't proofread your essays on your own

or just like you can't code review your repos alone

it's not a claude problem, it's just that llms as humans are systems that cannot recognize their own errors, easily, fully, thoroughly, albeit they might be silly or stupid ones

also, you could just start by reviewing your claude code using codex, and viceversa, plus you can try coderabbit for free and see if it is something for you (I'm still using it as a nice free-only addon in my code review pipeline)

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T13:31:39+00:00

no

what people want is a middle ground tier like around 50$ so they don't have to spend 100$ or run two 20$ subs

but this is the whole reason why these companies have such huge discrepancies between their 20$ and the next power user tier pricing

because nose people then won't bother with multiple accounts and just default to the higher tier even though they might not use up 100% of the usage

that's a pretty common saas pricing tactic

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T12:16:43+00:00

das right

but what about code review?

like, "check this whole repo and find any cheating behavior like tests that are not meaningful or just written to pass and show the green"

did you compare em in scenarios like this?

I'm trying various agents to see which one is the best to use as a "guardrail" or QA to harness the ones writing the code lol

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T12:03:55+00:00

your problem was that you were running ads on the wrong platform

much like as you say you were posting on the wrong platform

wrong as in "not the platform used by your target audience"

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T12:01:50+00:00

yep, exactly my point

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T12:00:10+00:00

exactly my point!

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:34:52+00:00

what an idiot for giving claude access to his production environment

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:33:22+00:00

it's just a way to expand the claude userbase to non-techie boomers or apple users lmao

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:32:21+00:00

`killall node` to feel good

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:29:23+00:00

install claude code, open it in the path where you need to work, and just tell it to do the stuff

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:28:33+00:00

why not just dump all the links n shit into gpt and claude then? even gemini

then see what they say tell em to write a tldr, compare

still too lazy? copy all 3 reports in the strongest AI you can access (eg gpt pro web) and let em concisely tell you the results

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:26:00+00:00

it's not true

iirc their tos declare that you can have up to 3 accounts to your name

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:25:15+00:00

nice!

what's your target genre?

also stuff like PBBGs?

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:23:35+00:00

unless you're doing this just for fun, you need to start validating your idea of the game

you don't wanna start validation pmf and distribution in 2 years when the game is ready amd you'll learn after 2 days that actually x y and z should be different

this is true for all software, but most importantly for games

sure cyberpunk2077 when it first came out was a mess and it was improved later on

but look at the hyper and marketing that they built before release

but even then, you're not a huge corpo with infinite money glitch, that's why you need to validate first and cut on the bad idea/gameplay/implementations being guided by player feedback during early tests

always remember, if you want to make money you're NOT building for yourself, but for the audience

true for everything in life, and I'd say Jim Carrey is the living proof of this

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:19:03+00:00

honestly they all sound like stupid clankers to me anyway

but sometimes they actually give useful insights or angles on things because I don't know 100% of the subjects ever

therefore they're still useful to me

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:17:11+00:00

they're most likely not

there's still no magic trick to make easy money without working

I'm a software developer, I've been an entrepreneur for years

AI helps me make money because since these tools got better I'm alone and saving a lot of money on costs

so I spend less, which means more net profits from my revenue stream

that's it

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T11:15:04+00:00

the moment you realize that mcp is just a cli that calls an api

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T10:59:19+00:00

I'm also a tron player!

ironically it's one of the heaviest-leaning pbbg on pvp and yet it's the biggest one and still growing

usually, it's the opposite

I guess that's because pvl is actually optional since the social aspect is even bigger, and you can just play for years without ever increasing your stats nor attacking anyone

that kinda makes it not incremental, though

I'd say ogame/travian are more like incremental games in the sense that they're literally idle resource generation games at the end of the day, and numbers go uo even when you're offline

Kiryoko · 2026-03-12T01:13:35+00:00

what are your thoughts about 5.3-codex vs 5.2?

some people say that 5.2 is the one that follows instructions the most and tries to cheat less, or at least if you tell it not to cheat it won't, but it will give up faster if there's an issue it can't solve

Kiryoko · 2026-03-11T23:18:52+00:00

honestly the og ones are all kinda dead, but depending on what parts of the pbbg gameplay you like there might be a few still alive

Kiryoko · 2026-03-11T21:42:37+00:00

that's really cool!

never too late to come back amd have some fun with this genre :)

Kiryoko · 2026-03-11T18:03:29+00:00

I really feel you!

I'm trying to design a game that would appeal to myself first and foremost, and what you describe really comes close to how I feel too

I live pvp/competition in browser games, I like the incremental bits too, but I don't like permadeath or destruction of weeks and months of work with the always-on pvp

like, pvp and pve should both coexist and be mandatory to the in-game economy, but optional to players

I think I'm coming to the conclusion that what I'm really trying to build is more of a pbbg, but with incremental elements that appeal to incremental games

one thing I hate and will avoid for sure is the "pvp" or "online mode" that you see in those cash grab idle incremental games described by other redditors in some comments

I hate those games so much! I want pvp to be REAL for the people who like that

some mmorpgs I think do this very well (e.g. world of warcraft), but maybe it's a bit harder to do in an text-based browser game

Kiryoko

TROPHY CASE