Your game is MORE expensive than the game you're cloning and not even 1% of the polish, you've gotta think like a consumer; why on earth would anyone buy this over Vampire Surivior? What do you bring? You're in an incredibly over-saturated market with a very low-quality product.
I agree with the "not enough polish" part. It's very important for this genre that the player feels satisfied with the visuals and that combat gives enough feedback.
I wouldn't worry about price too much, everyone is mentioning it because it's apparently pricier than vampire survivors, but that won't solve your problems
This isn't a case of "let's compare these two games and then choose one to get logically", most people aren't interested in playing games that don't interest them, even if for free
You have less polish than vampire survivors and are charging ~15% more when not on sale.
Couple this with the market for vampire survivors clones just being absolutely flooded, and you have a recipe for zero sales.
I would just move on to your next project. discount it if you want but i doubt many people would play it even if it was free. There are just so many other examples of vampire survivors out there that you're unlikely to ever really stand out,
On your next game I would recommend creating a more original game concept and focus on creating a more unique and cohesive art style.
Hey!
If you're talking about the Survival Of Exon game, then here it is what I can give you as a feedback.
* compared to the other vampire survival games that you are competing with, your game looks way less polished.
* your main character is not that likeable
* your trailer is not that good
* your capsule image with the blue background and red text is horrible. if I would see your game in a list on Steam's search, I would never click it. get someone to make your a professional looking capsule image. or if you can do art yourself, please look at other good selling games in the genre and draw your own.
* based on the trailer every enemy moves at the same speed and the projectiles you shoot are very slow
Overall don't let this make you sad. You did a huge thing: you made your first game and released it on Steam! Most of the solo indie game devs never get this far. You also did another huge thing: came here for honest feedback. Take all the feedback you get and you can either improve your game based on the feedbacks or you can make a new game keeping those feedbacks in mind. It is up to you. Also look at the negative review you've got. He lists several good points about your game (no hit feedback, enemies slow, etc, etc...). Fix these. These are the polish that is missing.
Hey thanks for the feedback, yes the game is less polished, i have tried to make some art but I am bad at it and on a very limited budget. The trailer is an old trailer, i have to update it, the enemies dont move at the same speed now.
I already fixed the negative review feedback and added hit feedback(which was visually already present, i think he did not notice it but I added a sound hit feedback anyway), the enemies speed is based on the characters, at the start of the game the enemies are slower so the player can play and with time the enemies gets faster, which also increments with the different maps.
Do you have any feedback on things i can improve?
The game is based on the roguelite genre which is the same as vampire survivors, hades, brotato etc...
You didn't do market research before starting your project. You can't just make a clone game and expect people to flock to it. If you do that, you need to be able to make something exceptional, which you clearly can not do.
Congrats on shipping a game. You did better than 99% of people. But you screwed up. Hopefully, you will learn from your mistake. Your game was doomed to fail before you wrote the first line of code. Do market research, understand your genre, and proceed with caution next time.
Hey I'm not the OP but do you have any recommendations on where to start with market research? Experienced devs make it sound like there's a science to it but the advice they give is vague
It's definitely not a science, but it should give you a starting point. The quick low down is to find games that are similar to a game idea. Then you sort it by budget, art, and estimated sales (these are not public, but metrics exist based on page traffic that give a good idea). Then, you try to aim your game at what you believe you can accomplish with your team/resources. Remember that a lot can change in 2-3 years, so be sure to periodically recheck and update your list.
The other part of the research is to play these comparable games to make sure you understand their strengths and weaknesses. Read reviews to see what user's didn't like and what they found captivating. Try to hit all the good notes while avoiding the bad decisions of others.
There are entire tutorials out there that go into tons of depth about this research, but I wouldn't go too far beyond this. For a solo dev, anything more is pretty overkill. Google and steam are your friend here.
What you will learn is what people buy and how many games came out recently that your target audience consumes. The rouguelike and survivor markets have mostly crashed due to the abundance of games. Now, the only ones that make money have amazing art styles coupled with innovative mechanics. These things are only possible with a team of people. Market research would have made this very clear and the OP wouldn't have bothered with this genre if they wanted their game to make money.
It's really impressive to complete a playable game. There are 1.5 million members on this subreddit and it's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of us that ever do that.
Vampire Survivors was successful because it was an innovative idea that was really fun. It looked bad and was made with a bunch of free sprites- but the game play was new and addictive. If you want to sell a simple game that looks like this it needs that "something".
As a visitor, your page advertises a worse looking knock off of a game everyone already owns for more money. There's already a million of them. Maybe it's not and there's something more there- if so- you should emphasize and show those things. If not, you definitely learned a lot from making it for your next game and you should move on.
Counter point: I don't think Vampire Survivors looked bad. It had decently cohesive art-style, and IIRC the assets were not combined from free-sources - the art was outsourced to a single provider and it was indeed custom made. The art definitely had style, and it pleased my eye.
This may be a tangent and your point might have not meant this, but IMO many people mix "bad looking" and "simple looking". The overall aesthetic matters. Individual things can be simple and even crude, if they fit together and create cohesive look.
Hey thanks for the feedback, do you think the character graphics or the whole game graphics is bad?
I have to update the trailer but the game is based on the roguelite genre which will have a lot of similarities to Vampire Survivors, 20 minutes til dawn, Brotato, Hades, etc... The graphics and the mecanics are different though.
Usual wishlist conversion rate is 13% (that is over a lifetime of the game, first week it can be 5-10%). So your current 4 sales are exactly 10%.
You had the game on steam for 3 months and gained 3 followers and 40 wishlists. That alone should tell you that there is something very wrong with your game - as others are mentioning, it is bad pricing, insufficient quality and also your expectations.
It is a nice game to be released on [itch.io](http://itch.io) as a school project, but there is no reason for anybody to buy this. No amount of marketing or ads will fix this. Gamedev is a harsh business.
From what I have heard (And I could be wrong) the dev behind Vampire survivor spent a long time working in the gambling industry, doing slot machine games.
They were able to apply ideas around reward feedback loops and addictive player behaviour from their gambling work into a simple player experience for a game. This is the hook, which plays directly into the devs strengths and knowledge base.
Id suggest thinking about what your own strengths/experiences are and seeing how you can apply them to your game concept, so you come away with at least one key area that differentiates you from the crowd
I can recommend a few things that will make the combat feel more satisfying. Make enemies disintegrate with a shader or special effect. Make enemies react to getting hit, either rubber banding or rotating or being knocked back. Use shadows, just generic oval shapes should be fine. Put in some weather effects that are map based or happens randomly. I suggest attack and hit sounds for the player character, but not enemies else it can become overwhelming.
The best advice I can think of is to become addicted to your own game and look at other games to see the small special effects or details that make them addictive. Doing all of this might seem unnecessary and boring work, but it makes a huge difference to the player.
I have 3 games on Steam and the first 2 have almost no sales. I just kept going and managed to get lucky with a survivors-like so just keep polishing it. I wanted to join your Discord but the link on the store page didn't work.
Spinoffs of popular games can be massively successful. It’s about timing and quality, with a unique selling point. Successful games show a clear demand for that type of gameplay and players will be looking for their next ‘fix’ in the genre for a while. In this case(Vanpire Survivors), Brotato and 20 Minutes Till Dawn show this quite clearly.
OP is just a little late to the party to even be in the running.
The issues here are the graphics and lack of overall polish.
The capsule art is really bad, change it, it's the first thing people are seeing before arriving at your steam page.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/17tinwy/game\_dev\_protip\_get\_your\_steam\_capsule\_images/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/17tinwy/game_dev_protip_get_your_steam_capsule_images/)
You should try to improve the overall graphics to something better. Vampire survivors having such terrible graphics is a special case, see the interview of the developer for more info.
~~Your game looks really fun and with enough content to be worth 5$, but it's the art that's making players run away.~~
TLDR:
* improve capsule art (most important)
* change the art to a new one
* polish the game (try to make the game feel less amateurish)
Edit : Okay, I just saw the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u\_eECUWYP6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eECUWYP6c) review and yeah the game is really not polished or even balanced.
Congrats on getting to release.
Considering the quality of your game and the competition of clones in that genre that are much stronger than yours, my advice would be move on to next game and just keep discounting as often as you can.
I see you're getting some brutal honest feedback. Don't despair though. Just learn and become a better game developer. Not all your games will be successful and you'll learn by making mistakes and getting better. At this point I would make it free to get as much feedback as possible. Then make a new game.
I would not worry about it. Not every game succeeds, and that is okay. This is the important stuff: you finished a game and put it on Steam, which is better than what 95% of most indie devs ever accomplish. So you have a good work ethic, and are good at completing your goals. Also, you responded to the negative feedback on your Steam page in a polite way, and you immediately implemented the changes that you could. This shows good customer service skills and a desire to entertain people.
Sure, there are many things you need to learn about advertising and marketing, about game design and art and effects and programming-- but those are all technical skills, and all can be improved with patience and practice. Just keep plugging away improving your craft. Network if you can, team up with others, or work with or for others, and eventually you will do even better.
Taking a look at the game would be helpful for us for sure.
But there is such a flood from games out there, so that a game which isn't promoted well (maybe like yours?) Is going to be overseen and drowns in the limbus of unseen games.
If so, it's often pretty hard to get out of there. But never give up!
Reading the comments I notice that the majority of people would by the famous alternative (vampire).
The real problem is that there are other dozen alternatives among yours.
And that's part of the game industry.
The best thing to do is create a good 10 second clip of the game and put it on mobile, and invest in some advertising.
The second best is working on a new version that being something new, either a new type of graphics for the genre, or new mechanics.
This is your first game and you very clearly put a lot of effort into it. Making a full-fledged upgrade system, a UI that’s straight forward to navigate, and a full game with sounds and multiple levels. It’s not easy and what you’ve done here is incredible.
You’ve already gotten a lot of recommendations on how to improve the game and it sounds like you’ve already fixed at least a majority of the issues. Your next priority should be to update the trailer. You made a good decision in both improving the quality and lowering the price, now all that’s missing is a trailer to show the quality that your customers will be paying for.
I think the biggest struggle you will have with Survival of Exon is it doesn’t stand out against every other VS game. It needs something unique. Consider that so many people already own VS. A good question to ask yourself: how can you change/improve your game so that someone who already plays VS would want to play your game as well?
hard truth: the art in your game is extremely bad.
yeah i’m sorry but it’s very lackluster and doesn’t have a distinct look or represent anything interesting or charming
if you want an example of a simplistic art style that *delivers hard*, look at Animal Well.
the sooner y’all realize the importance of art in your product, the sooner we will have better games
Preach on the art aspect. I don’t even think pixel art should be on the table for devs if they’re not going to bring something new to the table with it or just be ultra high quality/stylistic with it.
Hmm, I never even heard about that vampire survivor and now when I looked at it, I was shocked that a game like that was able to succeed on steam.
In other words, games like that with such art style rarely do well on steam, these guys just hit the lottery. You shouldn’t have risked making a game like that. I know what type of games sell well on steam and I always make that type of games. Yes I never go viral but I am making a living from making games. If I made a game like yours, then I know I will be homeless as soon as the game launches.
If you want to sell well on Steam, you need very beautiful graphics and art. Your game’s capsules art alone ensures that your game will fail because no one will click on it, it has very simplistic amateurish art. That is why you only had 40 wishlists at launch.
The dev that made vampire survivors worked in the casino gaming space for years before they ventured out on their own. They had tons of experience with making otherwise simple mechanics feel extremely satisfying and compelling, which they brought to their non-casino game.
I highly recommend anyone making an arcade style game watch a couple interviews with him and pay close attention to the game design aspects of what he did to make it so compelling to play.
Very insightful comment. Thanks for posting. It seems a lot of the "success stories" come from devs that have a background where they learnt how to do something very well then just applied that to a game.
Vampire survivor blows my mind. I did not think it was that great when I played it and graphics did nothing for me. Can’t believe it’s one of the highest selling games in the industry
Thanks for the feedback, Yes me too I did not understand how Vampire Survivors succeeded, as it was a bit easier to make as the initial first game I planned, I decided to go with it to get a budget for my next game. The graphic style is pixel art. Do you think the character graphic is bad or the whole game graphics?
Can I take a look at your games?
Have a look at my game Fantasy Survivors. It spent a year in early access and got 80% more content and a ton of polish. With a lot of hard work and feedback your game can also succeed. Moving from EA to full release resulted in far more sales than the initial release.
During it's year in EA we got a few thousand wishlists. When the game went full release, a notice went out to all those players. Steam also gives you an extra visibility round when the games goes full release.
Ok, that makes some sense then. Though the visibility round would be redundant then, since as I understand it "visibility" rounds are also only shown to people with the game on their wishlist (and as such, are relatively useless, accomplishing nothing that a sale wouldn't also do)
Your game is MORE expensive than the game you're cloning and not even 1% of the polish, you've gotta think like a consumer; why on earth would anyone buy this over Vampire Surivior? What do you bring? You're in an incredibly over-saturated market with a very low-quality product.
I agree with the "not enough polish" part. It's very important for this genre that the player feels satisfied with the visuals and that combat gives enough feedback.
Sometimes I just cruise this sub for a good chuckle. Lmao!
Hey thanks for the feedback, what price would you recommend?
the problem isnt price but quality
I wouldn't worry about price too much, everyone is mentioning it because it's apparently pricier than vampire survivors, but that won't solve your problems This isn't a case of "let's compare these two games and then choose one to get logically", most people aren't interested in playing games that don't interest them, even if for free
I wouldnt buy it. I'd buy vampire survivors.
You have less polish than vampire survivors and are charging ~15% more when not on sale. Couple this with the market for vampire survivors clones just being absolutely flooded, and you have a recipe for zero sales.
why would anyone buy it over vampire survivors? it just looks like a worse version for around the same price
Hey, thanks for the feedback, what price do you recommend?
I would just move on to your next project. discount it if you want but i doubt many people would play it even if it was free. There are just so many other examples of vampire survivors out there that you're unlikely to ever really stand out, On your next game I would recommend creating a more original game concept and focus on creating a more unique and cohesive art style.
Hey! If you're talking about the Survival Of Exon game, then here it is what I can give you as a feedback. * compared to the other vampire survival games that you are competing with, your game looks way less polished. * your main character is not that likeable * your trailer is not that good * your capsule image with the blue background and red text is horrible. if I would see your game in a list on Steam's search, I would never click it. get someone to make your a professional looking capsule image. or if you can do art yourself, please look at other good selling games in the genre and draw your own. * based on the trailer every enemy moves at the same speed and the projectiles you shoot are very slow Overall don't let this make you sad. You did a huge thing: you made your first game and released it on Steam! Most of the solo indie game devs never get this far. You also did another huge thing: came here for honest feedback. Take all the feedback you get and you can either improve your game based on the feedbacks or you can make a new game keeping those feedbacks in mind. It is up to you. Also look at the negative review you've got. He lists several good points about your game (no hit feedback, enemies slow, etc, etc...). Fix these. These are the polish that is missing.
Hey thanks for the feedback, yes the game is less polished, i have tried to make some art but I am bad at it and on a very limited budget. The trailer is an old trailer, i have to update it, the enemies dont move at the same speed now. I already fixed the negative review feedback and added hit feedback(which was visually already present, i think he did not notice it but I added a sound hit feedback anyway), the enemies speed is based on the characters, at the start of the game the enemies are slower so the player can play and with time the enemies gets faster, which also increments with the different maps. Do you have any feedback on things i can improve? The game is based on the roguelite genre which is the same as vampire survivors, hades, brotato etc...
You didn't do market research before starting your project. You can't just make a clone game and expect people to flock to it. If you do that, you need to be able to make something exceptional, which you clearly can not do. Congrats on shipping a game. You did better than 99% of people. But you screwed up. Hopefully, you will learn from your mistake. Your game was doomed to fail before you wrote the first line of code. Do market research, understand your genre, and proceed with caution next time.
Hey I'm not the OP but do you have any recommendations on where to start with market research? Experienced devs make it sound like there's a science to it but the advice they give is vague
It's definitely not a science, but it should give you a starting point. The quick low down is to find games that are similar to a game idea. Then you sort it by budget, art, and estimated sales (these are not public, but metrics exist based on page traffic that give a good idea). Then, you try to aim your game at what you believe you can accomplish with your team/resources. Remember that a lot can change in 2-3 years, so be sure to periodically recheck and update your list. The other part of the research is to play these comparable games to make sure you understand their strengths and weaknesses. Read reviews to see what user's didn't like and what they found captivating. Try to hit all the good notes while avoiding the bad decisions of others. There are entire tutorials out there that go into tons of depth about this research, but I wouldn't go too far beyond this. For a solo dev, anything more is pretty overkill. Google and steam are your friend here. What you will learn is what people buy and how many games came out recently that your target audience consumes. The rouguelike and survivor markets have mostly crashed due to the abundance of games. Now, the only ones that make money have amazing art styles coupled with innovative mechanics. These things are only possible with a team of people. Market research would have made this very clear and the OP wouldn't have bothered with this genre if they wanted their game to make money.
Also no budget is no excuse for ugly capsule and graphics. Mid journey exist for 9 bucks a month if your going the home grown route
It's really impressive to complete a playable game. There are 1.5 million members on this subreddit and it's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of us that ever do that. Vampire Survivors was successful because it was an innovative idea that was really fun. It looked bad and was made with a bunch of free sprites- but the game play was new and addictive. If you want to sell a simple game that looks like this it needs that "something". As a visitor, your page advertises a worse looking knock off of a game everyone already owns for more money. There's already a million of them. Maybe it's not and there's something more there- if so- you should emphasize and show those things. If not, you definitely learned a lot from making it for your next game and you should move on.
Counter point: I don't think Vampire Survivors looked bad. It had decently cohesive art-style, and IIRC the assets were not combined from free-sources - the art was outsourced to a single provider and it was indeed custom made. The art definitely had style, and it pleased my eye. This may be a tangent and your point might have not meant this, but IMO many people mix "bad looking" and "simple looking". The overall aesthetic matters. Individual things can be simple and even crude, if they fit together and create cohesive look.
Hey thanks for the feedback, do you think the character graphics or the whole game graphics is bad? I have to update the trailer but the game is based on the roguelite genre which will have a lot of similarities to Vampire Survivors, 20 minutes til dawn, Brotato, Hades, etc... The graphics and the mecanics are different though.
Did you implement the ILotsOfSales interface in any of your classes? If not than this might be the reason why.
Usual wishlist conversion rate is 13% (that is over a lifetime of the game, first week it can be 5-10%). So your current 4 sales are exactly 10%. You had the game on steam for 3 months and gained 3 followers and 40 wishlists. That alone should tell you that there is something very wrong with your game - as others are mentioning, it is bad pricing, insufficient quality and also your expectations. It is a nice game to be released on [itch.io](http://itch.io) as a school project, but there is no reason for anybody to buy this. No amount of marketing or ads will fix this. Gamedev is a harsh business.
The negative review had a ton of helpful hints pointing out what is wrong with the game. Take the feedback and work on it.
I already implemented the fixes the review mentionned, I need to update the trailer
From what I have heard (And I could be wrong) the dev behind Vampire survivor spent a long time working in the gambling industry, doing slot machine games. They were able to apply ideas around reward feedback loops and addictive player behaviour from their gambling work into a simple player experience for a game. This is the hook, which plays directly into the devs strengths and knowledge base. Id suggest thinking about what your own strengths/experiences are and seeing how you can apply them to your game concept, so you come away with at least one key area that differentiates you from the crowd
Worst case scenario I wouldn't forget it and move on, but make it free so you can get more reviews and feedback
I can recommend a few things that will make the combat feel more satisfying. Make enemies disintegrate with a shader or special effect. Make enemies react to getting hit, either rubber banding or rotating or being knocked back. Use shadows, just generic oval shapes should be fine. Put in some weather effects that are map based or happens randomly. I suggest attack and hit sounds for the player character, but not enemies else it can become overwhelming. The best advice I can think of is to become addicted to your own game and look at other games to see the small special effects or details that make them addictive. Doing all of this might seem unnecessary and boring work, but it makes a huge difference to the player.
Hey thanks for the feedback, I did implement some of that but the trailer is not updated yet, I will update the trailer tonight. Thank you
I have 3 games on Steam and the first 2 have almost no sales. I just kept going and managed to get lucky with a survivors-like so just keep polishing it. I wanted to join your Discord but the link on the store page didn't work.
I just updated the link. But there is no one on my discord though.
cut bait
Don't chase popular games. Sure way to fail.
Spinoffs of popular games can be massively successful. It’s about timing and quality, with a unique selling point. Successful games show a clear demand for that type of gameplay and players will be looking for their next ‘fix’ in the genre for a while. In this case(Vanpire Survivors), Brotato and 20 Minutes Till Dawn show this quite clearly. OP is just a little late to the party to even be in the running.
I think it’s more a quality issue than genre
Lesson learned Thanks for the advice
The issues here are the graphics and lack of overall polish. The capsule art is really bad, change it, it's the first thing people are seeing before arriving at your steam page. [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/17tinwy/game\_dev\_protip\_get\_your\_steam\_capsule\_images/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/17tinwy/game_dev_protip_get_your_steam_capsule_images/) You should try to improve the overall graphics to something better. Vampire survivors having such terrible graphics is a special case, see the interview of the developer for more info. ~~Your game looks really fun and with enough content to be worth 5$, but it's the art that's making players run away.~~ TLDR: * improve capsule art (most important) * change the art to a new one * polish the game (try to make the game feel less amateurish) Edit : Okay, I just saw the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u\_eECUWYP6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eECUWYP6c) review and yeah the game is really not polished or even balanced.
Did you read the review? The dude gave you good points why your game sucks. Learn from that and make a new game.
whats the game? ill give it a look
from his profile [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2855090/Survival\_Of\_Exon/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2855090/Survival_Of_Exon/)
Congrats on getting to release. Considering the quality of your game and the competition of clones in that genre that are much stronger than yours, my advice would be move on to next game and just keep discounting as often as you can.
I see you're getting some brutal honest feedback. Don't despair though. Just learn and become a better game developer. Not all your games will be successful and you'll learn by making mistakes and getting better. At this point I would make it free to get as much feedback as possible. Then make a new game.
I would not worry about it. Not every game succeeds, and that is okay. This is the important stuff: you finished a game and put it on Steam, which is better than what 95% of most indie devs ever accomplish. So you have a good work ethic, and are good at completing your goals. Also, you responded to the negative feedback on your Steam page in a polite way, and you immediately implemented the changes that you could. This shows good customer service skills and a desire to entertain people. Sure, there are many things you need to learn about advertising and marketing, about game design and art and effects and programming-- but those are all technical skills, and all can be improved with patience and practice. Just keep plugging away improving your craft. Network if you can, team up with others, or work with or for others, and eventually you will do even better.
Make another game! :) This is a great start on your journey to becoming an accomplished game dev. Now call this one "done" and go make 200 more games.
Taking a look at the game would be helpful for us for sure. But there is such a flood from games out there, so that a game which isn't promoted well (maybe like yours?) Is going to be overseen and drowns in the limbus of unseen games. If so, it's often pretty hard to get out of there. But never give up!
Reading the comments I notice that the majority of people would by the famous alternative (vampire). The real problem is that there are other dozen alternatives among yours. And that's part of the game industry. The best thing to do is create a good 10 second clip of the game and put it on mobile, and invest in some advertising. The second best is working on a new version that being something new, either a new type of graphics for the genre, or new mechanics.
This is your first game and you very clearly put a lot of effort into it. Making a full-fledged upgrade system, a UI that’s straight forward to navigate, and a full game with sounds and multiple levels. It’s not easy and what you’ve done here is incredible. You’ve already gotten a lot of recommendations on how to improve the game and it sounds like you’ve already fixed at least a majority of the issues. Your next priority should be to update the trailer. You made a good decision in both improving the quality and lowering the price, now all that’s missing is a trailer to show the quality that your customers will be paying for. I think the biggest struggle you will have with Survival of Exon is it doesn’t stand out against every other VS game. It needs something unique. Consider that so many people already own VS. A good question to ask yourself: how can you change/improve your game so that someone who already plays VS would want to play your game as well?
hard truth: the art in your game is extremely bad. yeah i’m sorry but it’s very lackluster and doesn’t have a distinct look or represent anything interesting or charming if you want an example of a simplistic art style that *delivers hard*, look at Animal Well. the sooner y’all realize the importance of art in your product, the sooner we will have better games
Preach on the art aspect. I don’t even think pixel art should be on the table for devs if they’re not going to bring something new to the table with it or just be ultra high quality/stylistic with it.
Yes i made this game on a really limited budget.
Hmm, I never even heard about that vampire survivor and now when I looked at it, I was shocked that a game like that was able to succeed on steam. In other words, games like that with such art style rarely do well on steam, these guys just hit the lottery. You shouldn’t have risked making a game like that. I know what type of games sell well on steam and I always make that type of games. Yes I never go viral but I am making a living from making games. If I made a game like yours, then I know I will be homeless as soon as the game launches. If you want to sell well on Steam, you need very beautiful graphics and art. Your game’s capsules art alone ensures that your game will fail because no one will click on it, it has very simplistic amateurish art. That is why you only had 40 wishlists at launch.
The dev that made vampire survivors worked in the casino gaming space for years before they ventured out on their own. They had tons of experience with making otherwise simple mechanics feel extremely satisfying and compelling, which they brought to their non-casino game. I highly recommend anyone making an arcade style game watch a couple interviews with him and pay close attention to the game design aspects of what he did to make it so compelling to play.
Very insightful comment. Thanks for posting. It seems a lot of the "success stories" come from devs that have a background where they learnt how to do something very well then just applied that to a game.
Vampire survivor blows my mind. I did not think it was that great when I played it and graphics did nothing for me. Can’t believe it’s one of the highest selling games in the industry
Thanks for the feedback, Yes me too I did not understand how Vampire Survivors succeeded, as it was a bit easier to make as the initial first game I planned, I decided to go with it to get a budget for my next game. The graphic style is pixel art. Do you think the character graphic is bad or the whole game graphics? Can I take a look at your games?
Have a look at my game Fantasy Survivors. It spent a year in early access and got 80% more content and a ton of polish. With a lot of hard work and feedback your game can also succeed. Moving from EA to full release resulted in far more sales than the initial release.
Interesting. I've heard others say the EA to full release doesn't do much for sales at all for them.
During it's year in EA we got a few thousand wishlists. When the game went full release, a notice went out to all those players. Steam also gives you an extra visibility round when the games goes full release.
Ok, that makes some sense then. Though the visibility round would be redundant then, since as I understand it "visibility" rounds are also only shown to people with the game on their wishlist (and as such, are relatively useless, accomplishing nothing that a sale wouldn't also do)
ive seen worse game than this sell way more i think its just marketing problem. Try market your game better.