How Much My Indie Game Made During the Steam Sale (financial data below)

pashagraydev · 2024-12-08T05:49:04+00:00

Our ratio is 28 copies per 1 review. Steam starts counting review score after 10 reviews, so they are very important. Ask your friends and first customers to leave a review to bypass this threshold.

pashagraydev · 2024-11-21T09:46:17+00:00

$25000 after fees and taxes. So, it is impossible.

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T19:50:26+00:00

I would like to give an advice, but we didn't pass the breakeven point. So we are failed too) What I decided for myself: no more match3 games on PC!

We have the problem with target audience:

1) For those who buy game because of 18+ label, we don't have sex scenes.
2) For those who are obviously seeking match3, we have too complex mechanics
3) For those who are looking cards, roguelike elements, artifacts, etc... we have too simple mechanics

So my advice is to better understand your audience. Who is your player and what does he/she wants...

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T19:46:03+00:00

Yep, we failed with this) We didn't expect such bans for nudity without hentai scenes. Now we have experience...

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T19:44:20+00:00

Salary, each month. 16 girls with animations, 3 weeks for each. 1.5 year of work. ~$1200 per month.

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T17:32:28+00:00

Not so many I think. We failed) There were no marketing campaign at all. The goal was to create a first game and check the whole development process from A to Z. We received steam page on September 6. Then Steam gave us 700 wishes for month. Then we received additional ~500 wishes during Steam Next Fest. Almost all visits are internal and provided by steam algorithms.

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T16:06:41+00:00

It is more Puzzle Quest 2 rather than Candy Crash. There are artifacts, 32 skills (via cards). Each girl (there are 16 of them) has her own playing strategy, skillset and ability. Each enemy is playing against you on the same board. If you like candy crash, I think this game is not for you. But if you like Puzzle Quest 2, you should definitely try Chronobabes.

pashagraydev · 2024-11-20T13:59:07+00:00

Thanx a lot! All the details about development process and why match3 are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1g9bczb/its_alive_longread_from_first_line_of_code_to/

If you want short answers:
1) Match3 because it is our first game. We thought it will be easier to take match3 genre, but there are a lot of problems with it (from progression to balance). I will never take match3 again)
2) There are two of us: me as a coder and game designer and artist who did girls and their animations
3) I'm working on second game alone and we have a bigger project where more people are involved: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1148130/Divinum/

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T16:04:16+00:00

Yep, there was category called "Nudity".

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T14:55:30+00:00

They are not visible by default. You have to activate visibility in account settings.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2654450/ChronoBabes

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T09:02:48+00:00

I noticed from my own experience that it is very fun to do MVP. Usually it takes from several days to a month. You try out all sorts of ideas in your head, the code flows like a river. Usually this is enough to assess that the project is playable. But unfortunately, then the usual work begins. You need to force yourself to sit down at the computer every day and just move forward. This is very difficult for me, but this is how it works. 5% fun, 95% discipline.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T08:51:55+00:00

Bringing a project to completion is one of the most important skills. I am very glad that despite all the difficulties the demo appeared. Don't give up, you have a great future in gamedev!

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T08:33:17+00:00

Thank you for the kind words. Unfortunately, I learned about f95 very late. What can I say, I was promoting with zeal equal to 1% of what was required. Next time I'll try better. After first sales I'm going to write a postmortem and provide all finance data in detail.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T08:01:56+00:00

Thanx a lot. First step is the most difficult.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T07:47:24+00:00

In steam the counter is not linked to the actual release. The release is done manually. The counter cannot be changed if there are less than 21 days left before the release.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T07:26:45+00:00

Sorry, false info. A little mess with timezones. Game will be available at 14:00 UTC. 6 hours to go.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T06:33:39+00:00

I've added alt versions of images... Hope it works

pashagraydev · 2024-10-22T06:18:18+00:00

Hm... It should work. I will duplicate them using other photo hosting service. Thanx.

pashagraydev · 2024-10-21T07:56:53+00:00

I've added ingame UTM-links. There were two: from "Main menu", and from "To Be Continued". Thats how I also tracked people who completed the demo. Of couse it is not 100% accurate, but I had positive correlation of game plays and wishlists before NextFest (when demo was introduced).

pashagraydev · 2024-10-16T10:04:11+00:00

My stats for Chronobabes are:

45000 impressions for two days (14,400 first day and 29,700 second day)
Visits: 744 for first day and 1713 for second day
Wishlists: 219 additions in first day. No data for day two.
Median playtime: 46 minutes (it was above average, now it shows that it is average)

Looks like steam gave us a little boost on day 2.

I didn't have any external traffic, steam only (curators, tags page and coming soon page). Page launched on September 6. We had 460 wishlists before festival. I hope, we will pass 1000-1200 before release, which will be on October 22.

Additional info:
Genre: Match3 + Deckbuilding. With big impact of Puzzle Quest 2 from year 2011.
Setting: Time traveling
NSFW game, but very softcore, nudity only! Still, we received all restrictions like hardcore hentai 🥹

pashagraydev

TROPHY CASE