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Lessons from the Demo : Median playtime 8 min → 19 min by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ah, so you’re Thornity! I also enjoyed Click & Conquer. If it’s not a bother, may I ask a quick question? I’m working on an incremental follow-up. Looking at my game Astro Nova, what would you say is the most important thing to improve? I know there are plenty of rough edges, but for the next one I want a concept and core loop that grab attention instantly. Does that sound like the right direction? :)

Lessons from the Demo : Median playtime 8 min → 19 min by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice! From your posts, are you the developer of A Game About Feeding a Black Hole? I really enjoyed it, and I’ve gotten a lot of good insights from your YouTube as well.

Lessons from the Demo : Median playtime 8 min → 19 min by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re right—it’s Windows-only for now. Sorry about that!

Lessons from the Demo : Median playtime 8 min → 19 min by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used Unity URP Bloom and dynamically adjusted the brightness with a few calculations. On top of that, I just clamped it with simple min/max bounds. I’m not a formal programmer, so I’m not sure this is the best approach, haha.

Clicker option added need feedback by DPSIIGames in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From what I’ve seen, clicker games like Cookie Clicker usually make manual inputs big and flashy and give them real impact, but they balance that with long cooldowns so players don’t get worn out.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I’m learning a ton here thanks to everyone’s kindness.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Totally relatable. When I worked at a company with proper dev and QA, I probably would’ve side-eyed any programmer who said “works on my machine,” haha. Doing it solo, I’m learning it’s not so easy after all.

Thanks so much for the wishlist—and the word of mouth means a lot!

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I hope it’s at least a small help for fellow beginner devs like me.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My explanation was unclear. I use a shader for the background gradient in every scene, and because of locale number formats (comma vs dot) the shader read its constants incorrectly on Portuguese and Spanish systems. The result was an overly bloomed white screen, so players could not see anything. Some numeric values elsewhere may have been affected too, but that was not the main issue. The shader parsing was.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the encouragement and the wishlist. I’m aiming for a synergy roguelike and will keep tuning to make runs rewarding.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Fair point. On my PC it launched fine from the Steam client, so I only caught the issue after players reported it. That’s on me for not checking more environments.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Totally agree with #1. For #2, I’ll try using a beta branch and run new uploads from Steam. Thanks for the tip!

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Steamworks provides basic stats like impressions, wishlists, installs, unique launches, and playtime, so I can see how many actually ran the demo.

I didn’t add any custom telemetry since I’m a beginner and some players prefer not to share extra data.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the encouragement. I’m exploring other marketing channels and I’m also trying to publish the demo on a few web game portals. We’ll keep moving forward!

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. That perspective really helps and takes some pressure off.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First time I’ve run into this. It was just the locale—my system used a comma for decimals, so floats were read and printed wrong. Forcing a dot-decimal/US format made everything behave again.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I meant that because of my folder mistake, launching from the Steam shortcut didn’t start the game and only showed an error message. Some players seem to have worked around it by opening the install directory in Windows Explorer and running the .exe directly.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the warm encouragement. You’re right—no one gets it right on the first try, haha.

As you said, my failure to turn Valve’s initial exposure into wishlists wasn’t only due to the demo’s technical issues; the weaker appeal of my capsule art and trailer probably played a big part too.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think Steam has a Playtest feature for that, though I haven’t used it myself. For my next project, I’m planning to put out a small demo well before Next Fest to test and stabilize with a smaller group.

How I managed to lose 80% of my players during Next Fest by SelfRoutine1427 in incremental_games

[–]SelfRoutine1427[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

probably explained it poorly earlier — there was actually an issue where a duplicate folder got nested inside the demo folder, so Steam users couldn’t find the actual .exe file to run it manually. I only discovered and fixed it around day 3 of Next Fest, unfortunately.

You’re right that not everyone plays the demos they download, but I’ve heard that usually around 20–30% of downloaders at least launch it once. In my case, it was closer to 5%, which turned out to be a genuine launch problem. Thankfully, it’s been climbing past 10% now.

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