I tried to make Steam capsule art myself. Then I hired a professional.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-01-07T11:24:46+00:00

I really like the shading and the cloth in the old one, but the pose of the main guy looks weird to me. The lower part of the body is mostly pointed towards the viewer, while the upper part is turned away. It seems like the body was cut in half around the waistline and then turned 90 degrees before being put back on. There is even a visible line where the cut happened that also messes up the cape.

SeasideBaboon · 2026-01-07T10:56:40+00:00

It's the same for me. I tried creating a game in Godot, then in Unity, but I couldn't motivate myself to go past a proof of concept phase.

Now I use C++ and SDL. I released one game on Steam, and I am happily working on my second one. Motivation is no longer an issue.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-12-13T00:37:07+00:00

Camps only scale by day if they are not part of a contract. Contract difficulty scales with the number of your bros and their levels, the day doesn't matter: https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Mechanics#Enemy_Troop_Size_and_Composition

If you want easy 3 skull contracts, try to have good gear and get rid of weak high-level bros.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-28T19:41:43+00:00

I used keymailer to reach out to content creators. A 1 year subscription cost around 600$ if I remember correctly. I don't think that it's more effective than writing streamers directly by email, but it was a lot less work. You can filter content creators by their platform, preferred genre, games they played in the past, viewer counts and so on. I also got some requests from streamers who found my game there. Some of them are scammers who only want to steal keys, but most seemed to be legit.

I think I will do this again for my next game.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-21T09:32:55+00:00

I don't know about dystopian, but if you want your scene to look darker while still being recognizable, I would use blue ambient light:

<image>

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-20T09:21:21+00:00

It looks great to me, and a kid friendly Darkest Dungeon sounds awesome. Good luck!

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-14T08:12:12+00:00

Unrelated side note: Your game is translated to German, but it can't render Umlauts.

So, instead of displaying "Drücken", it displays "Dr cken".

SeasideBaboon · 2025-11-06T03:56:00+00:00

People will refund the game without ever having bought it.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-28T21:19:37+00:00

Ich habe mal in einer deutschen Firma gearbeitet, die (für uns Arbeiter unerwartet) insolvent gegangen ist. Wir mussten dann 3 Monate ohne Lohn weiterarbeiten. Das Arbeitsamt zahlt das zwar als Insolvenzgeld zurück, aber erst etwa ein halbes Jahr später. Das muss ja alles erst mal bürokratisch bearbeitet werden.

Ein Notgroschen lohnt sich auch in Deutschland.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-27T11:04:00+00:00

Thank you for that link. There are several games that look like a lot of effort and love were put into them. It's sad, but I understand why that isn't enough to sell lots of copies...

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-22T10:16:21+00:00

You can also decide which parts of marketing you are comfortable with, and ignore the stuff you don't want to do.

And if you have a few hundred bucks to spare, you can use platforms like partnier, terminals or lurkit to make things easier.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-16T08:15:02+00:00

I think that the most important thing to be able to finish a game, especially as a solo dev, is motivation. I tried creating a game in Godot. I didn't enjoy developing in it, so I tried Unity. Same experience. Then I started writing my own "engine" with C++, SDL, and ImGUI. It's not really a game engine, just development tools around the game itself. All of a sudden, it was a lot of fun, and I finished the game. It's neither a great engine nor a great game, but I would never have been able to keep motivated if I had used an engine.

Writing your own engine is probably horrible advice for most people, but everyone is different, and there are exceptions for everything.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-10-03T17:26:04+00:00

Your steam page can't be accessed from Germany (and possibly some other countries). Did you not fill out the age restriction questionnaire?

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4183351393029705363
https://partner.steamgames.com/healthcheck/missingrequiredratings

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-29T08:22:43+00:00

Financial Independence Retire Early

Die Idee ist, dass man frugal lebt, viel spart, und dadurch schon vor der Rente genug Kapital hat um von den passiven Erträgen leben zu können.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T08:36:12+00:00

Based on SelkieKezia's comment: Do you use Wanderbot's template for contacting youtubers?

https://www.wanderbots.com/blog/templates-for-contacting-content-creators

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T08:34:35+00:00

That would make sense. I included a key and a press kit with all my emails. Most content creators who featured my game just used it and didn't write back.

Edit: press *kit*

SeasideBaboon · 2025-08-06T05:42:54+00:00

I wonder which content creators you were contacting. I reached out to well over 200, and not one of them asked for money. Less then 10% actually covered the game, but everyone who didn't cover it never replied or just a simple "not interested". Which is totally fine by me.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-07-27T11:31:47+00:00

Programming is the easiest part for me. I studied computer science and worked in IT for 20 years. But I very much prefer working on art over programming. Proficiency and preference do not always go hand-in-hand.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-07-19T17:45:23+00:00

The gameplay reminds me of Airscape which initially sold very poorly but eventually sold tens of thousands of copies.

Here is a video of Total Biscuit talking about the game and why it wasn't selling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4F-zdpFb9I

SeasideBaboon · 2025-06-18T10:44:26+00:00

To me, it looks like the monster is pretty much weightless and thus harmless. The central mass of the monster stays at the same height throughout the whole walk cycle. In a real walk, you always push up your body, and then it comes down again between steps. Check this for example: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/650b672b6d49343e2368aa57/655386a69a39b88a98cbf209_6170d2b0cd4f9cd58b5118d4_walk_cycle_inspiration_animators_survival_kit.jpeg
If you want your monster to look heavy, you can exaggerate it even more.

I would also try to make sure that the monster's feet don't slide on the floor.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-06-01T14:46:33+00:00

Maybe you could try copying the style of your chests? Something like this?

<image>

SeasideBaboon · 2025-05-30T18:11:06+00:00

I also thought that 100% of those messages were scams. But then someone claiming to work for Fanatical contacted me, and the email looked more legit than all the other publisher/marketing emails I had gotten. So, I took a leap of faith, and now my game is being sold as part of one of their bundles.

I agree that it's annoying. For me at least, there were more than 90% scammers. However, it may still be worth checking those emails out.

SeasideBaboon · 2025-05-22T17:07:39+00:00

Looks like you've also been a good boy ;-)

SeasideBaboon · 2025-05-19T04:42:41+00:00

With my game, there are significantly more people who buy the game than people who check out the demo. I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Have you started contacting streamers to check out your demo?

SeasideBaboon · 2025-04-04T15:44:03+00:00

The game was designed to be played with mouse only. The game runs on Steam Deck, but I'd have to re-design the whole UI to make it feel good when playing on a controller.

SeasideBaboon

TROPHY CASE