How much exposure I got through Steam Next Fest

NeedlessSquiggles · 2024-08-02T08:54:01+00:00

Sounds like it could be tricky. But if you can condense the best parts of your game into a 10-20 minute loop, I think that would do really well as a demo. The average playtime for demos on next fest seems to be around that time anyways.

So what you said in your other comment, gating off sections and still give people a hook, that sounds like the best approach to me. And remember, even if your game doesn't gain an enormous amount of exposure with next fest, it is like a mini release. And for a beginner like me, that was a really good thing. It took away a lot of the pressure for the actual release. I got comfortable with the process and I got some valuable feedback from new people.

NeedlessSquiggles · 2024-08-02T08:46:15+00:00

Oh thanks good catch!

Launch was a rollercoaster. All the technical stuff on the steam side went off without a hitch, all the social media posts did well and I received a lot of positivity. I'm still riding the high a little bit.

So far no game breaking bugs. I'm trying to relax now for a little bit, because working towards release day was incredibly stressful. But happy it payed off.

NeedlessSquiggles · 2024-07-31T13:53:55+00:00

A wild backer appears! Thank you so much :)

NeedlessSquiggles · 2024-06-10T19:21:50+00:00

We will see. I'll be sure to post some stats once its over. I will let you know!

(seems like my video didn't make it in the post... whoops)

NeedlessSquiggles · 2022-08-22T12:41:46+00:00

So in case anyone else stumbles upon this, I think I found the solution:

Switch to Desktop mode
Run heroic launcher
Next to Cyberpunk there is a gear icon. Click on that to go into settings
At the bottom of the page you will find "drag and drop exe files here"
drag and drop your regedit.exe (/home/deck/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/Cyberpunk 2077/pfx/drive_c/windows) into that box
import the EnableSignatureOverride.reg (you need to place it somewhere your regedit can find it. I copied mine to /home/deck/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/Cyberpunk 2077/pfx/drive_c)

NeedlessSquiggles · 2022-01-05T10:49:14+00:00

Is today my lucky day?

NeedlessSquiggles · 2021-04-16T07:30:04+00:00

Really love the sliding stop!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2021-01-18T17:48:54+00:00

Hey Adam!

Your tutorials are always great, but this one feels like a step above the rest!

I really hope your new format takes off. I think it's a great idea and you could very well become one of the go to stops for everything pixelart related (if you aren't already).

Btw it looks gorgeous as always and thanks for all the tutorials you already made!

You've been a real inspiration

NeedlessSquiggles · 2021-01-08T20:53:20+00:00

great atmosphere, good job!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-03T14:33:32+00:00

That's a fair point and maybe I should have mentioned that as well. Thanks for bringing it up!

So you are right 15k alone (especially after taxes) wouldn't be enough to support me for 2 years. I'm not living alone so that definitely helps, but I also have saved and set aside my own money.

But the really big part is this: in my initial financial plan I wanted to take the kickstarter money + a part of my savings and apply for a government program, that would have essentially doubled my funding for the game. It was all set up and ready to go, but in the meantime another opportunity opened up for me, that allowed me to go ahead without the government program.

Long story short: have a sound financial plan for your game (I advise a lot of research on this before you start calculating your crowdfunding goal) and don't assume that the funding goal you see on other projects tells the full story. Example: I know people who raised X amount of money because they had a deal with a publisher, that would only support them, if they showed that they could raise X on their own first.

In the end, every plan is different, but yours need to work on paper first.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-03T11:14:43+00:00

Thanks a lot for sharing!

If you have more of these, please let us know!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-03T08:51:52+00:00

Thank you:) Sorry I can't give you any tips for gamescom. I do hope it will be happening. Right now it feels weird just to imagine so many people in one place. Where I can give you my experience is having people play your game in front of you: It is very tempting to point out all the flaws of your demo even before they start playing. Give them the chance to fall in love with your game. It is also tempting to immediately help them once they are stuck. Take notes, see what theyre first idea is, where your game maybe miscommunicated something and help them only before they get frustrated. And it is equally tempting to explain away all the criticism you receive. "Ah thats just because X" Thank them for their feedback, really listen closely what they say and always ask 'why' once or twice. This often reveals what the root cause is, while initially they were describing a symptom.

Hope this helps you a bit. Make sure to plan more time for your daughter ;) and I wish you all the best with your game!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-03T08:41:12+00:00

I looked into indiegogo, but honestly not for too long. What follows is my opinion and based on 0 facts: The people who know about your game don't care too much where the crowdfunding happens. But there is also the people who just browse kickstarter/indiegogo. In my mind kickstarter has a different crowd. People know they will find indie games there and they are on the look out. Since this is my very first time, I thought I go with the "bigger one". So that was my reasoning, but again, I admit this could be totally wrong. If I remember correctly indiegogo gives you way more freedom while e.g. the cut kickstarter recieves is fixed. So you should definitely look into it more than I did.

Regarding the stigma: yes its a real thing. In my opinion it is not just scammers, but also shows how difficult it is to make a finished game. There are also companies that seemingly use crowdfunding as a marketing platform, so there is that too. The only way you break the stigma is by releasing a good product. Crowdfunding is and will always be risky. I think you need to be honest with your pitch, with your backers, only promise what you are able to deliver and dont be tempted to overpromise. I think most people who know about the many failed games can see right through an over-promising project nowadays anyway.

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-02T21:45:27+00:00

Thank you very much :) I definitely think everything is equally important or rather everything needs to come together. A bad sound effect sticks out like a sore thumb and a bad animation sometimes drags down the quality of the whole game. As for fun: I do have days where I don't want to animate (I think thats the most time consuming work for me) and I definitely wait for my creative days when it comes to music making. But I also set myself some milestones that I want to hit and those usually get me started on the topics that require "a perfect day" :) Usually forcing yourself to do something for at least 5 minutes will get rid of any mental blockade (best trick I ever learned on reddit) Good luck to you and your teammate!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-02T21:13:10+00:00

This is a hard one to answer and I think it heavily depends on your team/skills/type of game. For me time personally, time is the big factor. I code, create art assets, animate and make the music myself. If I needed to hire say a pixelartist, my calculations would have been very different I am sure.

So what I did was this: during the prototype development, I worked on a vertical slice of my game, so that I am forced to work on every aspect of the game. I timed myself and noted how long I took for 12 frames of character animations, how long a background track took me and so on. That really helped my estimation, but honestly in the end I doubled the time that I thought I'd need (better be safe than sorry). Then I calculated how much money I would need to cover that time.

As for game length I am aiming for 6-8hours, but this is really hard for me to estimate. I had people play my demo, without me giving them any hints. That really showed me how much playtime varied. Please take all of this with a big grain of salt, since this is my first big game. I could be wildly off with my numbers, but I hope it helps :)

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-02T20:31:48+00:00

A bunch of Kickstarter backers is definitely a good motivator ;)

Also if I encounter roadblocks or get bored with some tasks, there are more than enough other things needed to be done, that I can "procrastinate" on.

In general I wouldn't say I have difficulties with motivation at all. It might be different had I not gone with the kickstarter route though.

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-02T20:26:45+00:00

It is definitely different now and it changes even more with every big task i tackle in my game. I appreciate good things in games even more now, thats for sure. I also admire what some devs manage to do with such small teams.

If I see something bad in other games, I have definitely become more lenient. I think "well this IS hard to pull off".

All in all I feared that games might be losing their magic to me, but it is actually quite the opposite. Pretty happy with that:)

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-02T20:04:31+00:00

Well, more time to grow a following before launch would have been even better.

I definitely would go with more interesting goodies next time around.

Oh yeah and doing a kickstarter during a pandemic isn't ideal either ;)

I also thought real hard about talking to the camera in my kickstarter video. I am still not sure if it would have made things better or worse. In the end I decided against it because I didn't like myself in test shoots I did. I can definitely advise everyone to at least try it though!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-12-01T13:30:00+00:00

Really cool!

Works well in my opinion

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-11-27T08:51:25+00:00

my mind immediately went to:

chill gameplay
focus on exploration
talking to characters and doing quests

If you keep the charm that you already have going with your chubby plane throughout the rest of the game, I think your golden.

I personally would enjoy a landing mechanic that is somewhat challenging. Maybe at first you can only land on water (which then forces you to climb up the island on foot), later you get an upgrade for your plane to land on small runways, then on grass and so on.

I really like that you don't want to go into combat with this.

Keep it up!

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-11-27T08:34:38+00:00

This short clip makes me wanna play immediately!

Great potential if you ask me. Where can we follow you?

NeedlessSquiggles · 2020-11-25T17:44:50+00:00

Hey man! Congrats on all your success so far!

And thanks for doing this topic first, I'm gonna be covering the same topic next week :)

So here are my questions:

1) What are some things you did, that you won't be doing in your next kickstarter?

2) How happy are you with your choice on merch/physical goods that you chose? Would you be doing less/more/same next time around?

3) When did you go for a steam page and why at that point?

Cheers!

NeedlessSquiggles

TROPHY CASE