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[saint11]

The game is officially done!
Now we're going to translate it to Portuguese (my language) and we need to do all that boring marketing/business/distribution stuff and hope for the best.

The pre-order will start tomorrow! I'll try to share all the info and statistics I can on the game sales and on how I am marketing and dealing with this business stuff.

So... We have a blog, it has around 200 daily visits, and my plan is to do the pre-order there, using Fastspring (TeeGee told me about BMT, but I already made all the arrangements on Fastspring, so let's try it out). The idea is the get everyone's email and when the pre-order is over I'll send download links to everyone.

But I still don't how I'll create this links, I can host the files on a friend's server, but is it too amateur to send everyone the same link? The game is DRM free, so anyone could just use the same link. I'll try to find out how to do some kind of link that changes every time it is downloaded or something like that.


In the marketing side we prepared a cool press release and we are sending it to pretty much everywhere, to famous blogs like indiegames.com, smaller ones and to press release sites, like www.gamespress.com/. I'm not sure if our luck is low or if we have some problem with the game and/or the trailer, but we didn't got any good answers or preview.
Anyway, let's keep trying!

[ANtY]

It's done and you're releasing pre-orders tomorrow?  


Files problems could be solved by using BMT, same with links

[saint11]

Yes! It will be a 7-day pre-order (those who pre-order will receive some bonus stuff, like the soundtrack and a retro-looking pdf manual). I'm not releasing the game yet because I want to:

1. Translate it to Portuguese (people here in Brazil would crucify me if I release a game with no Portuguese version)
2. I think that I really really could use another week of bug hunting and general testing, I don't want to sell a game with bugs on it.
3. I still have a lot of marketing/PR to do!

[r0ber7]

This looks great.

[Manuel Magalhães]

Parece muito bem feito. Parabéns por terem acabado de fazer o jogo e desejo que tenham um excelente lançamento. 

[Kevin]

This looks awesome! Congratulations on finishing. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

[saint11]

Thanks everyone!
The game pre order is ON!! 

The pre order version has the same price of the game (4.99 USD), but it's called Voskhod Edition, and includes:
 - The digital copy of the game (.exe, Windows only)
 - The original soundtrack of the game in MP3 format
 - The digital version of the Hint Manual, that includes concept art and… hints! (PDF)

I plan to sell this version for 6.99 dollars after this pre order.
When I get some consistent numbers about the sales I'll post them here.

Now, I'll try to share the link everywhere I can (WITHOUT spamming, of course).

And if you guys want to pre order it, here's the link! PRE ORDER

[C.D Buckmaster]

I've somehow managed to miss this devlog until now, and now that I've finished looking through it, I'm going to go ahead and pre-order it right now.

[James Rossi]

Let's see if someone can recognize which game I based on doing this

Isn't that style just the freeware close game splash screen of just about every Apogee game made in the 90s? Also it looks fantastic, I'm pre-ordering now.

[saint11]

Thanks a lot for the support!

@James Rossi Hahaha ALMOST, It's the shareware screen of Doom!

First statistics report:
The pre order started 10 hours ago, and well, only 12 units sold, mostly to friends. It's not going very well, but no international site has made any preview or shared our game yet.
Now we will start sending the press releases to all the websites and see how that impacts.

[Yodhe]

Making games doesn't sell games in my experience, its that other bit that most of the money is actually spent on in making games, i.e. marketing. Hopefully though you will get comparatively "lucky" and get some good exposure, and make some sales. And just remember don't get caught "shilling", and don't fall into the trap of giving away your hard work for free in desperation.
But of course I hope that all of the above is pure bullshit, and you "do a Notch"..
Good luck with your endeavours, as it looks like a "sweet" game.

[KopanoGS]

Pre-Order - Done!

Can't wait to play this game. Congrats once again.

[cynicalsandel]

Will there be a demo available once released?

[saint11]

@KopanoGS: Thanks a lot for the support!
@Cynicalsandel: Yes! I'll do a demo as soon I finish the Portuguese translation! But it will be released only after the pre-order.
@Yodhe: Well, I hope we can get some exposure, we are trying really hard to send press releases to everyone in the press that we can. And thanks for the advice!

What Happened on Day One & Statistics

We sold today 65 pre-orders (most of them are here from Brazil and friends of ours), for 4.99 each. Fastspring bites off 0.75 of each unit, meaning that we have to pay 48,75 to them. So, the gross profit today is $275,60 USD. It's not a lot of money, but honestly is more than I expected! I have confidence that the game is actually very good, but it's a pre-order, so people probably like our trailer!

A thing that helped a lot is that we got featured at Kotaku here in Brazil (link-portuguese only) and since the Brazilian indie industry is very small our game is having some attention.
Only few international sites and blogs are also talking about us, but our focus now is to increse that number, we are still trying to send our PR to some journalists or to other bigger indie game developers (to get some tips and feedback too!). Some journalists are helping a lot, but most of the big indie devs just ignored us  (they are probably very busy, I don't blame them, but that sucks anyway)

This is today's report Hope it can be of some help

[Gabriel Verdon]

I think it's great that you're making all the sales information public. And I think it'll pick up quite a bit once the game actually goes on sale. I don't know of any indie games that get a lot of preorders except for Overgrowth.