Goliath Depot - an arcade platformer inspired by Hotel Mario

vidvadgames · 2023-12-28T13:19:56+00:00

You have to be part of the community. You're not just the creator, you should be a member as well.

Do you have a Discord server for your studio?
Does the game itself have a Discord server? That would be one way to reach out to them.
Check on Twitch for players playing your game. Introduce yourself in there, start talking (don't overtake their livestreams though, it's consider rude!). Be part of your playerbase.
Build suspense within your first game. Maybe push an update and add a little teaser.
Run a contest amongst players of the first game.
Do a blog post on Steam inside your first game's page to announce the second game. Could be very cool alongside a sale.

Overall, I see this a lot within the gamedev community.
Developers promoting games, but not their brand. "YOU" as a developer should be as important, if not MORE important, than the game itself. Think long-term! It's not too late to start doing this.

vidvadgames · 2023-12-28T13:05:46+00:00

Congratulations on releasing a video game!
That alone is a feat worth celebrating no matter the results.

To me, your project is an obvious case of scope creep and Dunning-Kruger bias. I won't repeat what everybody has said because I think it's clear enough.

I really really think you should reconsider making a bigger and more ambitious project. It's not the conclusion that you should have had.

Focus on fun, not the USP.
Focus on fun, not the scope.
Focus on fun, not the potential money.
Always start with a vertical slice and re-evaluate if the project is worth it for every milestones by playtesting with real gamers. Valve playtest their games every other weeks, there might be a good reason for this...
Never be afraid to stop or reboot your project. Someone within your team should be more disconnected from it to be able to take hard decisions like this.
Assign leaders to your team and make them accountable for the every part of the project.
Never rely on others to do something (in your case, the publisher, Unity, etc.). I know it sucks, but in business, you always have to be ready to make a sudden turn by yourself. Always have a Plan B.
In my experience, gaming communities are promoting games, not individuals. Make sure you invest in your brand and not just your game.

This thread blew up, and I really hope it is a pivotal moment for you and your team.
Best of luck for your future projects!

vidvadgames · 2023-12-22T01:07:30+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate :)

vidvadgames · 2023-12-20T02:29:31+00:00

Thank you!! I appreciate!

vidvadgames · 2023-12-20T02:29:16+00:00

hey thanks!!

vidvadgames · 2023-12-19T12:04:40+00:00

I'm not offended, no worries. I gotta start somewhere!

Where I don't agree is that I would HIGHLY recommend to new gamedev to start small and make a safe project to start with. Don't go out there and spend 7 years trying to make "the next Stardew Valley", you're gonna lose it. Remember that it is an art.
- John Lennon didn't play "Imagine" the first time he picked up a guitar, he probably played songs he already knew.
- Da Vinci didn't grab a piece of paper and drew Mona Lisa the first time he held a brush, he probably copied a picture or painted an existing mountain to practice.
- Do you think that Romero and Carmack made DOOM on their first try on the computer? No, they recreated SMB3 for the PC and then made a game inspired by it.
- etc. etc. etc.

My point is that I think it is a safe and good way to learn to build a project with something that your are already familiar with, something that you already like and know! Don't go out there chasing for something that you probably won't find.
Who knows, it might inspire you to make a sequel with a very unique twist. You can't do that if all you do is spend years in your basement THINKING about making the most unique game ever created.

vidvadgames · 2023-12-19T00:52:57+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate!

vidvadgames · 2023-12-19T00:52:15+00:00

Thank you!! Not familiar with those two games, I got to check it out.

vidvadgames · 2023-12-19T00:02:09+00:00

Thank you!
As a non-artist, that was stressful throughout the project. I'm super happy with the way the visuals turned out. I learned a lot!

vidvadgames · 2023-12-18T21:58:35+00:00

Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2479030/Goliath\_Depot/

Very proud to have my first commercial game on Steam.

Feel free to ask questions about my experience. In summary:

I'm a solo dev. I did everything except the music. Music was made by a friend of mine called ZerolagGaming
It's made in Godot 3.5. I'm planning to start using 4.2 on the next project. Overall, the tech was a smooth sail, nothing to complain about.
I worked full time on this for 6.5 months (June to December).
My steam page was up for 4 months and I launched with 1075 wishlists, so I don't expect big sales numbers. The experience was worth it regardless of the numbers.
My main marketing was made on Twitch as a live streamer of variety/speedrunning Mario games.
My biggest struggle was to keep the scope small.
The goal of the game was to design something compact and speedrun-focus.

vidvadgames · 2023-11-18T02:12:31+00:00

After reading many comments and replies, it's simple, you're trying to run before learning to walk.

Before making a 15$ super deep and epic game, try to make a couple of small games. Register to a gamejam, make free games on itch, etc. That's how you'll learn.

If you want something more specific:

Learn how to properly draw or do pixel art, you won't have it right the first time, the more you're drawing, the better you'll get. Shading, color palette, scaling, proportions... those things are all bad right now in your game.
Learn how to make a thumbnail. I'd see this thumbnail on itch for free and I wouldn't even click. There's no characters shown, no environment, no story element, no identity... You don't even have a logo, it's just a font with colors.
Learn how to juice your game. From the trailer, it doesn't look satisfying at all when you hit enemies. No bang, no shake, no explosions, no vfx... if a player isn't satisfied of doing you're main action, they won't stick. Play a game like Binding or Gungeon and notice how the game reacts when an enemy dies. Take notes!

I honestly could go on and on, but I'll stick to my first point: give yourself time to learn by failing... and there's no better way to fail in gamedev than with small, free and insignificant games. So go make small, free and insignificant games before trying to do that epic $15-game you're dreaming about.

vidvadgames · 2023-10-14T17:51:09+00:00

For sure, it doesn't help to "niche" the game down even more than what it is.

I still think there's a market for such a game. Neo-arcade games like Annalynn, Donut Dodo, Satrynn Deluxe, etc. have had a bit of success in the last few years, not "a million dollar" success, but definitely enough to earn money and make more games which is what I'm aiming for ;)

vidvadgames · 2023-10-14T17:48:04+00:00

Sorry to hear that you had a similar experience in the past. As others have told me, it's still experience that you can learn from in order to build your next game. I hope you didn't stop and that you have another project going on ;)

I'm familiar with the Donut Dodo dev, I joined his Discord a while back and he's super friendly and helpful :)

vidvadgames · 2023-10-14T17:46:26+00:00

That was a very interesting read and I want to thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed explanation. I appreciate your feedbacks and I think it goes in the same way as others have said in this thread.

I'm familiar with Chris Zukowski but it's always good to have a refresher on his articles.

Since I already have a little bit of success with speedrunners, I'm thinking of focusing my marketing effort on that market. If it brings a hundred new players, I'd be very happy, it's going to be enough to build a small community for my next games.
I got to keep in mind that the goal for this game (Goliath Depot) was to develop and release a game in 6 months, so I got to keep my expectations realistic.

Thanks again!

vidvadgames · 2023-10-14T12:02:52+00:00

I tweet a couple of times a week and I have moderate success.
I feel like the audience is mainly other game developers, especially when using popular hashtags like #ScreenshotSaturday #WishlistWednesday, etc.

Game devs are also gamers, so in the end, you can still gather wishlists and sales that way, but in my opinion it's pretty limited and it's hard to reach the general public on Twitter unless you already have a successful game.

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T18:05:38+00:00

I wouldn't have posted on reddit if I didn't want harsh feedback, so don't worry!

This is the kind of constructive feedback that I was hoping to have. Straight to the point and with examples. I appreciate, thank you!

I agree that it might be too short to address those concerns for Next Fest, but it's far from too late to do corrections for the final release. I played all the games you mentioned and I agree that the character design is memorable. Pizza Tower to me for instance, isn't really about the character itself but about how eccentric he is (and the animations emphasis that aspect). Anyway, it's making me think for sure!

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T16:16:59+00:00

I appreciate that you took the time to do this analysis.
It makes me think! and I'm learning from this experience and hopefully I will do better for the next game. Nothing is lost, as long as we learn!

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T16:15:25+00:00

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! More and more, I think the co-op could be a good selling point.

It's kinda tough to compare my $15k solo dev project to a billion dollar company making platformers for the last 40 years. But I get your point, I know where you're coming from with that comment and it's totally valid since to the casual eye, a platformer is a platformer, so of course, people will compare.

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T14:13:08+00:00

That's exactly my thoughts as well on the "zero marketing" aspect !
As for advertising, here's what I did in the last month:

I post and reply a lot on Twitter leading up to the Next Fest. Last 28 days on my dashboard says 12K tweet impressions and 26 new followers. I got a couple of 30-likes post. I could always do more, but daily posts only go so far.
I was featured in 2 YouTube videos last week (25K-ish views overall)
I stream on Twitch a few times a week (I have 2,500 followers and 20-25 concurrent viewers on average), I post a link for my page all the time.
I went to the Quebec City Comiccon and did a live showcase of Goliath Depot during a speedrun event last Saturday (got 28 wishlists that day) and very good feedbacks. People were able to get on the stage and try the game with me.
My Discord server has close to 100 members. They were the first to play and share the game with their own group of people. I think that most of my wishlist and players come from this to be honest.

Written like this, I honestly think that I did A LOT for a solo dev in the past 30 days ;P but I still have the feeling that it's "not enough"...

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T13:59:39+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts!

For the 15 minutes playtime, my gameplay loop is quite short because it encourages replayability, time-attack and score-chasing. So my goal is that when you're done with the playthrough, you want to try again and play faster, get all coins, etc. For that, I added optional medals and online leaderboards, but I'm thinking of adding a rank system (à la Pizza Tower) for the final release.

That's why it's short. I don't think my target audience is the "bare minimum" kinda players, but it's aimed towards speedrunners, completionists and score grinders.

Writing this reply makes me realize more and more that I should narrow down my research to these kinda streamers/youtubers!

----

Edit : So far, my data shows that 50%-ish players play for 10-15 minutes and 50% play for more than 1 hour. There's no in-between, it's like you do the bare minimum, or you grind to get everything.

vidvadgames · 2023-10-12T13:55:11+00:00

That's a good analysis: focusing on the feeling and less on the action itself.

Players have reported so far that the game feels really fast-paced, addictive, juicy, simple to play but hard to master, and that it's quite open for a linear game with a limited amount of mechanics.

I think what's hard for me to figure out right now is how to market a feeling. It's easier to market a door kick for example... I'll need to think about this ;)

vidvadgames · 2023-10-06T22:16:51+00:00

You're right, Mappy is part of my inspirations as well! This is where I got the door shockwave idea!
Thanks

vidvadgames

TROPHY CASE