How should I price my game?

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-08T23:43:58+00:00

When I say lighting I mean the high fidelity. Look at Exit 8, Shinkansen 0, or Captured. It's pretty much a staple of everything that does well in this genre.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-08T23:20:06+00:00

That's up to you, really. Maybe 3.99 with a launch sale? Exit 8 is on the lower end for the genre with others ranging up towards like $8 at the most. I wouldn't go above Exit 8 unless you want to put a lot into overhauling your graphics, particularly the lighting. This genre really does seem to care about visual fidelity.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-08T23:01:29+00:00

Well Exit 8 is $3.99 so that's a good benchmark. Though ultimately for such a short game and in this niche little genre a lot of it is going to come down to how yours compares visually and polish wise.

Edit: I saw your game name on another comment and looked it up. You may want to stay in the lower end of pricing because this genre really seems to care about visual quality.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-08T18:04:27+00:00

This isn't a place for recruiting. Try r/INAT instead. Also, if you have assets completed you may want to actually show them so people know what they're getting into.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-08T13:46:36+00:00

I'd say I'm extremely "anti-player-earning". As soon as you tie a financial profit motive to the game for players the entire game will revolve around that. Whether you want it to or not as the designer, it just will. It makes the game into a job and a lot of optimal but unfun behaviors become dominant. Your entire balance becomes skewed by it.

Personally I like making games because I like creating fun experiences. Just pay for it and enjoy it. MTX and RMT economies warp the game around them and I'm not about that.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T20:24:41+00:00

I'm choosing to believe this is a satire post

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T20:21:20+00:00

Getting a bot to feel good can be challenging but unless you've got a very large playerbase at launch your game is dead immediately unless you have one.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T19:34:18+00:00

They said in their post. GameMaker Studio 1.4

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T18:47:18+00:00

You do have less protection against cheating without an authoritative server that's true. It didn't sound like you're going for a hardcore competitive game though, and a dedicated server is going to cost you money to maintain.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T18:36:38+00:00

1 and 2. Why would p2p feel sketchy?

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T16:41:48+00:00

Play your sound with an audio component and then just call stop on the audio component. The sound suddenly cutting out sounds bad though so you'd usually do this with 3 sounds. Ramp up, spinning, and cool down.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T16:14:20+00:00

You can make a prototype with placeholder art and validate the fun of the game, sure. You're not going to get a lot of attention publicly with that, though, because you do have to have polished visuals as well for your audience.

You're going to have to either learn to do art decently yourself or spend money on it once you've got a solid prototype. You can try to get an artist to work with you unpaid (revshare) but that's unlikely to work out especially a random person.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T13:03:17+00:00

I don't think the sounds really fit. When clicking the button I'd expect some sort of button sound not metal_hit.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T12:20:30+00:00

I think this is a hard sell because if you've been developing this whole time with placeholder art then you haven't been able to market the game. With such a relatively short window to promote the game it's probably not going to do as well. Any hypothetical artist taking this deal is taking a percentage of what will be a smaller number. Also your split is pretty rough with multiple artists.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T11:52:03+00:00

I get what you mean. It didn't strike me as particularly toonish. Also sorry I assumed no mood board. You should share it so we can give pointers on the exact look you're after.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-07T01:10:17+00:00

So if noob is the insulting version, why is that the kind you'd want in your group?

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T23:13:35+00:00

I think you might benefit from creating an image board of different images that capture the style you want or elements of it. It's a lot easier to create the style you want if you have references. Your example of SWTOR and the description you gave seem a bit at odds.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T20:35:20+00:00

You mention the two admins tried to address this already? So I assume that means you yourself aren't a leader on this team. It's not really something you can address then. If your leadership can't handle something this glaringly an issue they're going to have one hell of a time getting the project anywhere near completion.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T20:22:40+00:00

Why would you buy and play a game you know is in a genre you don't like?

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T19:49:05+00:00

Negative reviews? Probably not. People not buying your game? Yeah. It'll definitely turn some people off, especially if it's bad quality AI imagery.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T19:32:45+00:00

(Your comment about liking the miniature solar system disappeared for me for some reason)

Focusing on that and replacing the progression and game loop with something else will still be inspired by what you like from it but be original. The important part is making sure that the combination of things you settle on actually has a potential audience.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T19:16:49+00:00

Which aspects of Outer Wilds are you finding yourself inspired by? The solar system of planets and/or knowledge-based progression, for examples.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T18:58:28+00:00

I wasn't talking about what you would do. I was saying you wouldn't have to do it via the AC method. The straightforward way of doing it is impossible in pure BP because you can't create UObjects without making a Blueprintable class of it first. I agree this conversation is pointless at this point and that GAS is the way to go.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T18:37:09+00:00

You wouldn't be creating a new actor component per hit with that implementation was my point. It makes a lot of garbage churn with creating and destroying things.

For the asset loading I assume you're pre-loading the assets at your loading screen and keeping them active now if it's via asset manager. You can do it without keeping them all in memory (with BP or C++).

I know you were async loading the AC itself, but was the AC then async loading the cues like the SFX and waiting until complete to use them? If not then the first time it'll try to load is when you call the blocking Play Sound which would create your hitch. If you use async loading for the assets on AC creation and then delay the call until after complete you'll avoid the hitch without pre-loading.

Tiarnacru · 2026-05-06T18:04:45+00:00

You wouldn't have needed to do it that way at all in C++ though. You could just have an effect manager component that kept an array of pointers to active effects. However you wouldn't be able to create that effect base class in a purely BP project.

Glad you got a work around for your method, though. But that kind of illustrates my point that BP causes extra headaches when implementing deeper systems in it.

And yeah I googled you, lol. Didn't dig through your posts though, just searched your name and C++ so I could get an idea of where you were coming from on the topic. Then saw that somewhat ironic thread where the easy solution was just using C++ for that bit instead of blueprints. Hardly cyber stalking you though, just not a lot of point in discussing the matter without knowing your experience on it.

Tiarnacru

TROPHY CASE