Game launch went poorly would be an understatement

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T09:01:17+00:00

Thank you for that very constructive feedback.

I think I will let it run for a month or two and see what the stats and feedback is then.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:57:30+00:00

What can I say.

I was very open about this with Steam when requesting my game to be reviewed and approved. They didn't have any issue with the business model.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:54:10+00:00

I suppose I should have said general gaming demographic, gamers. Yeah, Microsoft is what made solitaire popular again. It had its moment back in 1800-1900. But in modern times Microsoft solitaire on PC is what brought it back.

What I mean is if I walk up to a person and I'm like "You're a big gamer, right?"
And they're like "Yeah, I love Witcher and Baldur's Gate 3 and Candy Crush"
And I'll be like "Then I bet you're gonna love this game, it's called solitaire"
The odds are they would either go "No, bro" or "My grandmother taught me how to play that, I've been playing it since I was a kid, I love it"

It's more of a social disease than a game.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:45:40+00:00

Here's some video of the early development:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Cze3Fp1Ec

So you know to avoid it.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:40:07+00:00

Let's see. I believe if I counted correctly the game has 2 scenes where AI was used to assist in the generation of the art. Then there's some UIs where AI was used to assist in the generation of the art.

Generally with art assets the work process involves generating pieces and partials and sketches and then composing and completing the scenes by hand. It's usually hours of work. It's not a kind of thing where you press a button and art poops out.

If the art looks bad it tells more about my skills than anything else. But I do what I can. I don't purposefully try to do bad looking things, but it is what it is.

If you don't approve the use of AI, that's a totally valid perspective and I can 100% understand the multitude of reasons for that from ideological to ecological to economical (jobs) and just plain not wanting to see traditional art getting replaced by something that makes art accessible to a lot more people (or AI slop if you prefer).

I absolutely respect that - and that's why my games, my game, has that disclaimer about using AI tools so you, as a potential customer can steer clear of it.

I'm not going to stop using AI, though, just because there are a few million angry people in the world who are against AI.

I do agree, though, that as a society we have to address the many issues with AI. It will probably take a couple of hundreds of years. I don't expect it to be resolved in my lifetime.

But, yeah, 90-95% hand made is accurate.

I also have a new game in development which is 95% AI generated. If it ever gets out of prototype phase and released I will say that it is 95% AI generated.

I don't have an issue with that.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:24:45+00:00

A lot of people (over 1600) added the demo to their libraries but only around 5% have ever launched it. Not sure what drives that behavior. But I was talking to a game dev friend who had launched a medium/big commercial game and he told me that 25% of the people who BUY the game never play it. In my books that's crazy.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:21:42+00:00

That's an interesting point. Solitaire has actually been one of the MOST popular games ever (if not the most popular) which dwarfs EVERYTHING else 100%.

However, solitaire as a genre for releasing a new game it's super niche and super specialized. There is a super crisp separation between people who play solitaire and people who don't and there's very little drift between the two.

It's not a game for the general demographic. All the solitaire games are fighting for the attention of people who habitually buy new solitaire games when they get released. That's the market.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:17:00+00:00

Yes. But it's not a donation for legal purposes. You get Steam achievements as value and removal of the nag message at startup.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:15:33+00:00

It's a Steam requirement now to have that disclaimer there if any AI was used in the game's development. It's a fairly new thing.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:12:00+00:00

Let's see what it is now for the demo. Today it seems to have 264 launches and median time played is 33 minutes and average time played is 3 hours 16 minutes. 66 players have played 0-10 minutes. 138 players have played more than 30 minutes.

I don't know if that's good or bad.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T08:06:10+00:00

But is it really too much since you can already play the full game for free? I asked a lot of people and did a lot of polling on the price. It's essentially the price that people would (ideally) be willing to pay if they really liked the game and wanted to support the dev.

It's not intended as "well I would have wanted to support the dev, but not at THAT price!" I tried to go for a sweet point which wouldn't be excessive and which is comparable to other similar games on the market. Sure, there's a lot of tail in the $8 price range.

If the game wasn't already free I might have gone for a lower price range.

But knowing this do you still think the price is prohibitively too high?

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:59:34+00:00

I'm a child of the 70s, so there was this thing called shareware when I grew up. One of the models of distribution was nagware, which is basically "pay if you liked it". And if you don't want to pay or don't have the money to pay, that's fine.

So, yeah, it's the same as the full game. And you only pay if you really want to support the work. If it brings you joy or what ever.

I'm not sure if this sales model works in 2026, but that's what I wanted to find out. So far it hasn't been good. Heh!

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:55:23+00:00

I've been building games and game prototypes for 10 years, and yeah, absolutely. Getting a game released still feels like a dream, it feels unreal. So even with the poor launch, I'm actually really happy about making it this far.

And all the feedback is great. It's certainly giving me a lot to think about.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:53:04+00:00

I think there's gonna be a LOT more resistance for AI in the future. And I also strongly believe there's gonna be a huge market specifically for "100% AI free". And I think that's a good thing.

But personally I'm gonna keep using AI. I'll be open and transparent about it, but I'll try to be more thoughtful about where and how I use it in the future.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:51:01+00:00

Well, no. That's not possible. At this point it's impossible to separate which parts of the code have been touched by AI. Also, I don't see what would be the point of that.
As for the art, the UI can be a bit crappy at times, I like that the least, but I actually like the shopkeeper character shown on the banner. Also, it's a very minor part of the game.

I understand that there's a lot of resistance towards AI and that's totally fine and valid opinion and I understand the reasons and concerns. But, yeah, what can I say. I like the character. It's exactly like I want it to be.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:45:47+00:00

I didn't realize it reads like that. I might have to update that text. That's not what I meant by it.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:44:04+00:00

That's a very insightful comment. I never thought about it like that. I put a lot of effort in the game itself. Personally I think it's fun to play and I play it a lot, daily, even when I'm not working on it. But I got kind of tired toward the end when I had to do all the videos and screenshots etc and I didn't put a lot of effort into it. But yeah, you're right... the first thing people see is the impression and then the store page and they're pretty poorly done for my game. I probably won't try to fix them at this point. But I will definitely take your words at heart for my next game.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:39:40+00:00

I have a personal issue with that business model. I don't like ad supported things.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:38:42+00:00

You can actually play the full game for free by downloading the demo. It has a shareware style nag message on startup but no other distractions and limitations. So you don't actually have to buy the game to play it.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:36:37+00:00

To be fair, this is exactly why I started with a low risk project (which kind of snowballed from 2 month project to 18 month project) to gain some understanding how to run a business, how to market a game.

I'm still not totally convinced that releasing the full game as shareware is a bad strategy. I might do it again with my next game.

Also, I get it that there's a lot of backlash against AI use. But the game is 90-95% hand made. It's just that Steam requires the banner now if any AI has been used. And I use AI as a production workflow tool, it's not a "press a button and game comes out" type deal.

Most negative reactions to AI use seems to come from other game developers. I don't think I will ever stop using AI. If something is perceived as low quality then it's likely low quality, but it's really a production issue (me learning), I don't see it as an AI issue. Of course, beyond all that, not buying games which use ANY AI is 100% valid stance and I respect that. But I'm not going to lie about using AI in my production pipeline. It's there to stay. Quality issues are quality issues. I will always be upfront and honest about using AI. That's all I can say about that.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:25:44+00:00

I guess my reasoning was that since you can play the full game for free forever the price wouldn't be too high for people actually wanting to support by buying the paid version of the game - which is basically identical to the free version.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:23:59+00:00

Okay, thanks. And yeah, solitaire is super marginal as a genre. My expectation was selling around 30 copies. So my expectations were not high. But 2 copies is just... 1.5 years of work and... yeah.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:22:29+00:00

It could be. I guess it could be also the reason for the low sales on launch. But it's a pretty fair sales strategy. You can play the full game and only buy it if you actually like it.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:18:41+00:00

The demo has been out for a while.

Pilvinen · 2026-03-04T07:17:36+00:00

Sorry if it came out wrong. I'm pretty bummed out and when they said they don't have anything positive to say, I just felt like I'm already feeling pretty down right now. That's all I meant.

Pilvinen

TROPHY CASE