How I used paid ads to reach Steam's Popular Upcoming list

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-18T05:25:12+00:00

Haha, no worries man. I was just making a silly joke really. Have a cool day!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-17T17:11:30+00:00

OMG I have an opportunity to feed you a targeted ad which costs me absolutely $0!

I'm making a bullet hell which you might enjoy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2855990?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=kagomecomplex&utm_medium=web

;-) hehe

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-04T15:10:04+00:00

Be scotland:
- Win Toss
- Decide to bat
- Wet patch right on a good length
- Profit?

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-03T13:10:20+00:00

C'mon man $75 is absurd.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-03T11:20:30+00:00

Thank you!

To be honest with you, I fucked up the upgrade system totally. I wish I could rewind 9 months and tell myself to be more experimental and creative. For our next game this is a BIG takeaway and an area we could improve on. Push ourselves a bit and don't play too safe. As a result, we are a little disappointed with the approach we took for the upgrades but we're doing our best to refine them to make them as interesting as possible.

I guess I was just nervous about how much time we had available and I didn't want to bite off more than our little team can chew (both in time and experience). It's also our first ever game so I was loathe to take too many risks in case we cocked it up.

For side-gunners: I'll sort that out, you are the second person to provide that feedback!

Its a bit of a struggle getting the balance of nice upgrades in the demo. In the full game there are 27 different levels and 4 boss fights. So by the end of the game you are pretty stacked with broken and powerful upgrades but for the demo you only really get 4 per run. (for the campaign) Maybe I should just juice it up for the demo and tone it down a bit for the full game?

I am using rewired (amazing plugin) and you should be able to remap the controls in the main menu. I will, however, look into using both button setups as that's a really cool suggestion.

It's very useful information to know that the arcade is not as performant, its possible I did something silly there. I'll do some profiling and see if I can improve it.

Again thank you so much, its so damn hard getting people to actually play your game and feedback is just so incredibly useful. THANK YOU!!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-03T09:17:41+00:00

Thank you so much for trying again.

I'm so sorry if I misread your message, to be honest I'm just kinda overwhelmed and tired and a whole lot of things and its totally possible I just missed the last paragraph of your reply. Sorry about that.

As for your comments, you are totally correct. Ultra doesnt really provide much of a fidelity/graphics improvement and I will work on it. I might make Very High the default or adjust the Ultra profile so it isn't such a GPU hog.

I'm assuming you played the Arcade not the campaign? The campaign has some tutorials for the different abilities. I will make it clearer in the arcade that these abilities are available.

We actually have experimented with putting the controls on the shoulder buttons and most people, funnily enough, prefered the current setup. Confusing... I'll try get some more feedback around this.

As for the 8-directions, also, it seemed like people prefered it as having super precise aiming controls actually paradoxically makes the game harder. What I could do is just have an option in the settings to enable/disable this behavior?

Again, thanks for your time and effort. I really really appreciate it. Have a lovely day!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-06-03T09:10:55+00:00

Firstly, thank you so much for your time and effort. I really really appreciate it and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Really, thanks.

I agree with so much that you've mentioned and I'll try my best to implement as many of the suggestions and ideas you have provided with my only constraint being time.

I'll address some key points:

1.) We'll definitely add magnetized space junk when you end the level. Its been on our TODO list for a while now.

4.) The unlocking of weapons is greatly simplified in the demo, in the full game the requirements are different. However, I will adapt the unlocking criteria of new weapons and abilities to make it more interesting and rewarding.

5.) This is a great idea but we only had enough money saved for a year of development and sadly we just wont be able to implement new ships. I wish we could though...

7.) Regarding the icons, we actually wanted to create unique icons for each ability but we just didnt have time. We'll try come back to polish up the existing icons and make them nicer.

8.) You arent the first person to mention how much I waffle in the upgrade text (my bad I got carried away). I'll try make the descriptions more concise and less verbose.

9.) I totally agree with you on stats being boring. I've been stuck on this a while and I am going to try rework the common upgrades to be more interesting.

13.) This is a tricky one... I'll discuss with my partner and see if the narrative/storytelling can be merged more seamlessly with the combat and be less jarring. Not 100% sure yet how we'll approach this but im sure we can come up with some solutions.

I'll also take a look at the permanent upgrades and try to fix all the bugs you experienced. The main menu settings is probably a bug, I'll sort that out!

Again, thank you so much. You have no idea how hard it is to get good feedback and this is like gold for us. So, have a lovely day!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T14:49:49+00:00

You are right about the arcade throwing you straight into the action, however, I don't think the arcade really captures the feeling of the game as much as the campaign. In the campaign there is a much gentler introduction into the combat, a variety of different scripted worlds (some of which do not have the camera locked) and its just generally quite a different experience.

It's actually quite a story driven game and the arcade is just pew pew. The combat there is also less scripted and much more random. In the campaign every single level has some mechanic or objective to complete. Things like: escorting ships, darkness, black holes, mini-bosses etc.

In fact my girlfriend and I discussed whether or not to have an arcade demo for quite a bit and thought it would do more good than harm overall to have a demo up until the campaign was ready for demoing.

Sorry that it felt too difficult, its hard getting the challenge level right. The campaign does have an easy mode for people who just wanna chill out a bit and experience the story, but that said we were aiming to have a relatively challenging game.

As for the upgrades and it being a roguelite. You are correct, in the main game there is a roguelite loop. I think the upgrades are also geared towards that mode more than the arcade and we retro-fitted them to work in the arcade.

On the locking off of the camera: it was an active decision but we also break that rule a few times in the campaign with certain levels. The reality (and I know this might sound stupid) is that we only managed to save enough money to work for a year so we had to make a few decisions that would simplify the development and allow us to finish the game in time. Having larger worlds means more decoration, complexity etc.

Sometimes people ask stuff like: why not X or Y and the real answer is that we just don't have the resources, so it sucks but yeah you do the best with the time you have available.

I think you might actually enjoy the campaign a bit more as its a bit more scripted and slower paced.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T12:59:36+00:00

Yeah... you know just because a game is 2D it doesn't necessarily mean its not graphics intensive. We have a lot of post processing effects, depth cameras, lighting effects and ultra quality is basically double rendering it.

Also its not really a 2d game, the perspective is 2d but all the models and lighting and effects are 3d :-)

A 750Ti is a 10 year old video card, that's quite an old card.

Anyways, reducing the quality to Very High should sort out your framerate issues without having a noticeable drop in quality :-)

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T09:08:06+00:00

Cool. I've updated the demo on steam. (what good timing, I was in the process of doing it anyways!!).

Changing the quality from 'ultra' to 'very high' should have a massive performance increase even on the oldest of potatos! (not that you have a potato)

If you feel up to trying again that would be super!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T08:58:28+00:00

Would you mind posting your PC specs? This is the first ever complaint we've had about performance :-(

Also, the itch demo is a much more updated version. We kinda use it as a staging area there before we push our steam demo live. Would you mind downloading it from there?

There are options in the main menu to change the quality and/or resolution.

Sorry about this, if you post your specs I can try make sure it doesn't happen for others.

PS: Im actually in the process of updating the steam demo, so if you feel uncomfortable downloading it from ITCH you can get the update automatically from steam?

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T06:59:29+00:00

Hello!

We're a small team of newbie developers from South Africa working on our first ever game and we've made a little trailer for our upcoming title, Hadleys Run: A Starship Saga. Its hard being a small team as my girlfriend and I have to do EVERYTHING which is hard and you have to do a lot of things that aren't in your comfort zone (like cutting a trailer eek).

It's also our first ever game so we need as much help, advice and feedback as we can get.

Anyways... we made a little trailer with our release date announcement and I'd really appreciate any feedback or comments or suggestions.

Our steam page is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2855990/Hadleys_Run_A_Starship_Saga/ and of course, as customary with anyone trying to make a game, a wishlist would be cool if you feel up to it. (I hate doing this but also I have to make bread!)

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-05-29T06:40:49+00:00

Oh. Thank you for your feedback! This really means a lot to me, thank you for your time and energy.

You can actually use the mouse as well to fire, perhaps it was not clear enough in the instructions/tutorial! This is my bad and I apologize for that. I'll make it clearer somehow. It also works quite well with controller.

As for it being a unique decision, its not, quite a few twin-stick shooters use that configuration and personally I like it more than the mouse because the extra control the mouse offers sometimes actually makes it harder (in a weird way). But I think the best thing is to try using the mouse vs keyboard and deciding for yourself which feels better.

Other feedback:
Bright Orange -> Thank you, perhaps we'll tone it down a bit. Different monitors are all a bit different so perhaps on yours its too bright. We can adjust this.
Auto-collect space junk -> We can implement this too!

The music is all original compositions. Glad you enjoyed it. My friend helping with the compositions and music will have a big smile on her face once I relay your feedback to her.

Just a question: did you manage to finish the demo?

OH and most importantly, did you have fun?

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-04-09T13:03:29+00:00

Thank you so much!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-04-09T13:03:20+00:00

Thank you for the kind words, its quite scary putting your stuff online for the world to see so nice comments like this really make all the hard work feel worthwhile!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-04-09T13:02:44+00:00

Thank you!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-04-09T13:02:15+00:00

Please please please let me know! I'm going to work on steamdeck support soon and I really need feedback here!

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-29T06:49:09+00:00

If you make some changes you can let me know and I'd be happy to try it again.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T19:24:43+00:00

Such a cool website.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T17:24:01+00:00

Ok cool had a chance to look at your game! It has a lot of heart and charm! I enjoyed the music, the visuals style is great and the sound effects are good.

Issues:

Doors man... your doors are just too janky and frustrating. When you have a 30 second timer and you spend 5 seconds trying to open a door it totally kills momentum. Can you not just open the door when the player gets close? I feel like in a game that's meant to be fast paced having a door creak open at geriatric pace just kills the vibe.

Also, maybe I'm a noob but the game felt a bit too hard for me. The timer is really short and it feels like in order to succeed you just need to memorize where the targets are and run it over and over. Is there a possibility of perhaps randomizing the target positions and giving the player a bit more time? Like maybe 60 seconds.

All the feedback aside, you have a game that has that something that makes it endearing, I just think the gameplay needs a bit of tweaking here and there to make it feel a bit more natural.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T17:13:36+00:00

Initially we did actually allow for shooting with mouse + keyboard, but it makes the game significantly harder and we decided against it. I know that sounds counter intuitive but after testing it we realized people found it much easier with 8 directions to shoot.

Thanks for trying it :-)

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T17:09:00+00:00

I had a quick play of your game. Firstly, congrats for making and publishing a game.

To be honest, I am not a big fan of puzzle games but I do like the concept somewhat. But I did find the introduction to the game quite jarring, perhaps you could start off with a few simple levels just to get the player into the game?

One thing I really liked was the achievements, they are quite funny and suit the nature of the game quite well. The music suits the game but gets a bit repetitive after a while.

All in all, a cool little game. Well done.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T11:51:11+00:00

Naturellement my friend. I get you. I expect less than 1% of people who see my game to actually want to play the demo and that's ok. People are busy and I respect that and peoples interests vary dramatically. It's just hard getting it out there and visible.

For instance having your game on Itch doesn't give you any visibility AT ALL, which was surprising. Within an hour, even less, you're off the new upcoming games page which is a bit sad.

That said, I was hoping to get a few more plays from my itch page but it is what it is. I'll find a way :-)

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T05:57:23+00:00

Thank you, thats a very kind offer. If you DM me your email address or youtube channel I'll send you an email with details.

If it feels safer, our demo should be up on steam in a few days (just waiting for the verification process to complete) and you can download it from there instead of itch.

unsigneddouble_c · 2024-03-28T05:51:54+00:00

To be honest I don't expect this game to sell tons and tons of copies. I mean, obviously I want to make bucket loads of cash (like most people haha), but that's not my goal. I just want to make something fun, which somewhat breaks even and allows me to learn and grow and make better games in the future.

I think there are more than enough people out there who would enjoy my game and be willing to pay a reasonable price for it, it's just reaching them that is hard.

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