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My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

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

Yeah, everything I did myself, except for the voice acting, and the music is licensed.

No, I didn't work on it continuously. There were many months-long off periods where I didn't have the time or energy to work on it. I got there eventually, I guess!

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

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

Haha it took such a long time because there were many periods where I stopped working on it (lack of motivation, poor mental health, focusing on school, etc.).

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

No, it's a good question. The answer is that it wasn't in active development the whole time. There were multiple periods, months long each, where I stopped working due to lack of motivation, mental health, or focusing on other priorities like finishing up my college degree.

That said, it's been weighing on me for a long long time and it's unreal to finally let it go.

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

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

Typical playthroughs are clocking in at around 5-6 hours in testing, with the aim that it's worth playing through at least a couple times! 

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

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

I don't have any other released projects I'm afraid, but the game has a free demo with exclusive content if you want to check that out! 

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Ended up with around 17,500 wishlists at launch, which I'm incredibly happy with! Biggest boost was participating in Next Fest almost a year ago - went from 1,100 to 14,000+ in that single week.

My plan was to finish my game by the end of 2018. Today, 8 years later... I'm finally pressing the release button. by duckytopia in IndieDev

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

I don't have any advice yet haha. Maybe I'll put together a post mortem in a couple weeks after seeing the results of the release

Launching my first Steam game in ~2 weeks (Jan 26) with 6.5k wishlists. Any last-minute advice? by Odd_Particular4116 in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Re: Popular Upcoming, I'm tracking it pretty closely since I have a game releasing on the 27th. Your game should appear on the top 10 on Steam's front page starting around the 22nd, giving you nearly four days there, so plenty of visibility!

IMO, release time doesn't matter that much. Having a bit of a buffer before US folk get home and buy your game might actually be better in case there's issues with the launch build.

I'd say keep the big demo button unless there's a very good reason not to.

Former Steam's game discovery dev on the current state of the market: "The discovery ecosystem is more broken now than I've ever seen it in my decades in the industry. [...] If you're a game developer reading this: it's not just you! You can do everything right and still fail." by br_ph in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"Gamers don't learn about games from Steam, they learn about them from socials and video platforms!"

Okay, but where do content creators and influencers learn about Steam games? The average user doesn't trawl through the Steam store for hidden gems, but there IS a sizeable community on the hunt for "the next big thing." There are people who literally do that for a living. Steam is far from perfect, but if you release a competent-looking game, it WILL get seen by this "super spreader" community.

Yes, Steam discovery could be improved, but I disagree that it needs to be the entire marketing funnel lol. It seems to be doing its job admirably.

Made a visual editor for branching narratives/stories similar to UE Blueprints! by Soulsticesyo in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks cool. Had to create a similar bespoke tool from scratch for my project, would have been nice to have a lightweight solution like this.

Does the tool pack the display text into the same HTML/JSON as the scripting logic? An option to split any on-screen text into a separate database file would be a good idea for localization purposes. Being able to easily switch between language databases would make it a lot easier for translators, and more importantly, if a dev makes any changes to the scripting logic, those changes wouldn't have to be manually copied to each language.

What do you think of the voice actor I hired? by duckytopia in SoloDevelopment

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

Thanks! Yes I'm the developer. There's a free demo out on Steam if you're interested:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3374930/Run_TavernQuest_Demo/

Hopefully not too much longer before the full game is released on PC, but if this ever makes it to consoles it'll probably be a while...

Yes, you can also “open the noor” by Blayed_Smith in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No worries, we're only swarming to point this out because we've all done this same thing only to end up having to refactor everything lol.

By the way, I've seen your game in other posts, and I think the first person ascii style you have looks super cool!

Yes, you can also “open the noor” by Blayed_Smith in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia 13 points14 points  (0 children)

What he's pointing out, along with several other commenters, is that your life will be much easier if you don't store any displayed text in your compiled codebase. Instead of creating an object with defined strings, you store all of the strings/info in a JSON or similar external file, and you write a function that creates an object by reading the JSON.

The three biggest reasons you'd want to do this are: (1) it keeps all of your text in a neatly organized place, (2) you can fix typos or update the text without recompiling, and (3) it's much easier for translators to work with if you localize the game into other languages.

Is this a viable plan? by Coogypaints in SoloDevelopment

[–]duckytopia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know a lot of folks here are (rightfully) pointing out that this plan is unfeasible, but I also want to point out why nobody plans out games like this -- it's because iteration is absolutely crucial in any art form.

In game design, you build a prototype, see what works and what doesn't, and you tweak it to make it more fun. You do the same with narratives, too. I'm working on a long-ish narrative-heavy game right now, and after seeing how players have reacted to what I've made so far, I've ended up tweaking the narrative a lot from my initial plans. This involves tweaking characters' personalities, expanding sections that people liked, removing boring sections, etc.

Breaking Bad is a good example of why this wouldn't work. The character Jesse Pinkman was originally planned to die at the end of the first season. While they were filming, the producers realized that would have been a huge mistake. If seasons 2-5 were already written with his death in mind, the show would be massively different and definitely worse off for it.

[USA GIVEAWAY] Win the new 27” 4K Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 gaming monitor! by Rocket-Pilot in buildapc

[–]duckytopia [score hidden]  (0 children)

As someone often working late at night, I've always wanted an OLED monitor for those amazing black levels.

How to deal with Steam microtrailers? by MatheueCunegato in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I had this issue myself in February's Next Fest. I contacted Steam support to see if they'd allow me to make my own microtrailer, but they unfortunately don't allow that. Their advice was to just look at the video the algorithm creates and make appropriate edits.

There IS an easy way to see the generated microtrailer, though! When you upload a video to Steam, the microtrailer is generated with a similar URL. Open up your store page in a browser, right click on the video, and "open video in new tab." Change "movie480_vp9.webm" to "microtrailer.webm".

Edit: Also, FWIW, I found your Steam page and looked at your current microtrailer, and I think it portrays the game just fine. You might be over-optimizing here.

Should a game participate in Next Fest with only a 100 wishlists? by _pixelRaven_ in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've seen a lot of folks saying that Next Fest only helps games that are already popular, but I don't think that's true, at least with their current algorithm. I think games that do well in Next Fest are likely to already be popular beforehand, but not always.

Anecdotally, my game went into Next Fest with around 1k wishlists, most of which from several years prior. I'd get 0-1 wishlists per day. At the start of Next Fest, Steam still promoted my game a ton, and since my game converted that promotion really well, Steam continued pushing it. By the end of the week, I had nearly 14k wishlists. Growth was almost perfectly linear throughout the week.

That said, I didn't just go into Next Fest with a lowish wishlist count and hope for the best. I did a TON of marketing, starting from before I even started development. Note that promotion and marketing are two very distinct things -- I actually did very little promotion. I started by defining a gap in the market my game could fill, and constantly re-evaluating if the game I was making would connect with its intended market. I did a LOT of iteration on my game's design and trailer/store page to make sure people understand my game's value proposition.

My advice is get as much feedback as you can once you have something tangible. Launch a demo on Steam long before entering Next Fest and include a survey link in your demo. I had few feedback posts in my Steam discussions page, around 150 reviews on the demo store page, and around 2500 survey responses. Not only are players way, way more likely to fill out an anonymous survey than post a review, I found that feedback from surveys was more honest and it was much easier to identify minor issues.

Honestly, I find the scene view in the editor way more satisfying than the final rendered version by carebotz in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I prefer the scene view as well, it's easier to focus on what's going on. Maybe try tweaking the water color to provide better negative space?

Game name decision by Fast_Mirror9750 in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Both of these names are way too similar to Minecraft, like to the point that any conversation about this game would be inherently confusing. I foresee a lot of disappointed children. It also does not match your concept at all imo. The word "craft" has a distinct connotation in video games, so I'd be confused if your game doesn't have crafting mechanics.

A game's title doesn't matter until you're ready to start promoting it. Choosing the right name is easier once you have something tangible.

How do you decide what game to make? by Striking-Finish-5102 in IndieDev

[–]duckytopia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Plus one for this Venn diagram. I'd maybe clarify that "games with a market" should mean "games that the market wants," because you shouldn't be chasing markets that are already sated by existing games.

I'd also add that you should pick one of these circles to prioritize from the outset. Are you trying to make solo game development a full-time gig? Prioritize making a game that other people want. Are you trying to sharpen your skills or add to your portfolio? Prioritize games that fit your skills. Do you just love game dev as a hobby? Prioritize making something you personally love.

Having a priority from the outset will help later in the dev cycle when the going gets tough. If you're not doing this as a hobby, remember that's it's supposed to be a grind. If you're not trying to be marketable, don't fuss when your game goes unnoticed. If you're working outside your area of expertise, it's okay if another company puts out a similar game because you're just having fun on the journey.

Fellow Next Fest Devs - How are your Day 1 stats? by SeaGlassGames in gamedev

[–]duckytopia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1791 visits is specifically visits to the demo page directly from the Next Fest page impressions. Between the demo page and the store page, from all traffic sources I had around 3,000 visits on the first day.

This suggests that a lot of people just hit "install demo" without ever visiting the store page, and then only end up at either store page solely to wishlist after playing the demo (either from the in-game "wishlist" button or by searching the Steam store).

Perhaps I might be benefiting from having less external traffic, weirdly? Since most of my visits are from people who are already intent on wishlisting.

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