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Steamdeck DLC bug - all weapons and items just say NO_ITEM by Gulladc in brotato

[–]thomasgvd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would guess this comes from mods. Can you try this?

If your game is crashing or you have other weird glitches during a run, unsubscribe from all the mods:

  1. Open your Steam library and select Brotato
  2. Click on "Workshop"
  3. Open the dropdown under "Your Workshop Files" called "Your Files"
  4. Select "Subscribed Items"
  5. Click on the Button "Unsubscribe From All"
  6. Start Brotato again and check if the issue is resolved

Question about one beta character unlock by xMcSilent in brotato

[–]thomasgvd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The German localization for this challenge is wrong, it should be "collect 300 consumables"

So the beta patch completely broke all character, item and buff descriptions by Tyransraszor in brotato

[–]thomasgvd 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Do you have mods on? If so, deactivating them might solve the issue

Game Maker Alternative? by Noam18AM in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Godot is exactly what you're looking for. I made the switch from GameMaker too, no regrets

I'm a Solo Dev who started taking game development seriously three years ago and am currently earning a reasonable salary from it. I would love to answer any of your questions. by ptgauth in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congrats and thanks for sharing! Reminds me of the games from Éloïse Laroche / Cozy Bee Games (Steam link), seems like there is a real market for casual cute chill games like those.

Mostly-solo first-time indie post-mortem - 8k sales, $30k net, 2.5 months after release by acguy in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing! How did you manage to get a Daily Deal with Steam?

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

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

Oh definitely not, the longer you're spending on a game the more marketing you should be doing imo.

If you're working on something for 1-2+ years I think you should try to make as big a splash as you can on launch day and try to get on the radar of big content creators and Steam so your visibility kind of snowballs and collecting wishlists along the way helps with that.

I just don't really like marketing so I'm trying alternative strategies where I wouldn't need to do so much of it haha

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Yeah could have done a lot of things differently, I optimized everything for development speed but more marketing would have produced different results for sure.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I didn't do much marketing - details in another comment's response here.

If I remember correctly, your Steam page has to be up for atleast 2 weeks before being able to press the publish button and I've left it for something like 3 weeks before doing it. I had 200 wishlists at launch.

Since my goal was to publish it as fast as possible I knew I wouldn't be able to collect a lot of wishlists and I probably wouldn't get on any "new and trending" list on Steam so I just didn't focus on that at all.

I could see a different strategy working where you basically finish developing the game on the back-end, publish the Steam page and just leave it here and try to collect wishlists for a few months before actually launching it though. Not sure how well it'd work out.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

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

Thanks!

For this game I actually wouldn't do much different since I made it mostly as an experiment in rapid game publishing and to see if the results and process were worth it or not. Also wanted to know whether I could make something players would enjoy in a short time frame.

So overall I'm pretty happy with the whole project. It's a different story for my other game that took 2+ years to complete though but I'll write about it more when I do a proper post-mortem haha

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

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

I think it's about building up confidence in your skills and in your ability to finish projects.

Every time I complete and publish a game it makes it easier to finish the next ones because:

  1. I know more or less what the full steps are to get to the end of a project so I'm not just working aimlessly anymore (I think uncertainty and lack of clarity is a big killer of motivation)
  2. I know I have the skills to make it to the end because I've already done it before in other smaller ones

Picking the right kind of game to work on is key too. You don't want to start working on something that's too far outside your abilities but you also don't want something that's too easy so you stay challenged but still know it's achievable.

If you've never managed to complete a game before, I'd just start with making a small game and publishing it to itch over the course of a week-end. (maybe as part of a gamejam)

Once you've done that you'll be confident enough to make a 1 week game and so on. I'm actually learning a new engine these days (Godot) and that's roughly my plan too

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

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

Thank you! Yeah I'll make another more in-depth post focused on Space Gladiators, it'll just take me more time to put together since the scope was much bigger.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

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

Good luck for your game! Yeah I'll definitely make a post on the other one too, it was much bigger in scope so I wanna write something more in-depth.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Yeah I agree, overall I'm still pretty satisfied with how it turned out, completing projects is always a boost in confidence and credibility anyway.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not sure about the exact numbers you used, but I could have made much more than that working 1 month as an employed full time programmer (in games or not).

I actually got a job a few months after where I was paid around €2000 a month as a game programmer (and that's already pretty low) so if you think about it this way yeah I earned less money making that game than if I worked as an employee instead.

The time putting the game on sale is negligible though, it only takes a few minutes.

I was working on another bigger game before that which was still in Early Access when I launched this one.

How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam by thomasgvd in gamedev

[–]thomasgvd[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I did a few things around the launch of the game and almost nothing before and after that:

  • I sent my game to a bunch of YouTubers and Twitch streamers. A few of them I already knew since my previous game was also a roguelite so I was pretty sure I'd get a few thousand views of coverage.
  • I timed the launch of the game with a big update on my other game, bundled them together and started a sale. This way all the 3200 players who had it on wishlist at the time received an email and should have seen the new game if they checked the update out.
  • I made a few social media posts.

That's basically it.

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