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[TeeGee]

well we don't yet know if owlboy well sell well. i can't really think of a game with pure/classic pixel art that sold well in modern times, except perhaps cave story wii version

Many DS games are pixel art and some sold really well. Though, that's a low resolution platform. The problem with pixel art (or any other form of highly-detailed 2d graphics), is that it's very time consuming to do in HD.

[CowBoyDan]

Many DS games are also bought as presents by people who know nothing about games other than the box art or games that have an established multiyear franchise such as Kirby, Sonic, Mario, etc, most of which gained popularity years ago when pixel art was state of the art.  Many are also geared towards pre-teen, which isn't the easiest target for PC games, especially those that can't be picked up in a store in a box.

[Golds]

can't really think of a game with pure/classic pixel art that sold well

There have been a few on iOS that I can think of:
Sword & Sworcery
The Incident
Canabalt

Probably more.

And then of course there's VVVVVV and Terraria.

[Moczan]

I think Terraria is the perfect example that gameplay over everything else. It uses crappy pixelart, it uses XNA, but still sold great 

[moi]

It was well promoted by Steam, wasn't it? And I think it was the first minecraft-like on steam.

[Moczan]

It got pretty good press coverage before release, so when it came out I've already knew what it is about. And calling it minecraft-like is really unfair, Minecraft is simple sandbox game and Terraria is a definition of Metroidvania (with destructible terrain)

[tametick]

well we don't yet know if owlboy well sell well. i can't really think of a game with pure/classic pixel art that sold well in modern times, except perhaps cave story wii version (and even that had updated hi-res pixel art rather than the original scale). i suspect that games that use pixel art can sell well to people in their 30s or late 20s, but that teenagers look askance at any game with pixel art, no matter how good the pixel art

What is your definition of "sells well"?

I'm currently living off of Cardinal Quest which not only has pixel art but not even "HD" pixel art (the game window is 640x480 with the sprites/tiles 2x zoomed, i.e. it's practically 320x240 with 16x16 sprites/tiles).

It's not enough to support a studio with employees, but it will make a good 5-figures $ amount by its first birthday in profits, which is enough to support my humble lifestyle.

Also, I know of at least several teens and pre-teens that play Cardinal Quest: for them it's just another style & has nothing to do with nostalgia.

Anyway, since there are plenty of 20- and 30-somethings that play games it's not such a fatal blow if kids don't like your game. Teenagers *play* more games but they also pirate a lot more of them compared to adults (not to mention that the indie audience is to begin with probably older than the AAA audience).

[Moczan]

@timetick:
What was your marketing strategy with that game? Did you aim core roguelike communities, indie press or the main source of income was from the Flash demo?

[tametick]

What was your marketing strategy with that game? Did you aim core roguelike communities, indie press or the main source of income was from the Flash demo?

I wouldn't say I had much of a "marketing strategy" - I mentioned it in roguelike circles & but did most of the pimping in general indie communities like tigsource (as well as reddit, twitter, et al.)

The demo itself didn't bring much money but it got me some visibility and opened up some really good licensing deals.

Over all by the end of the year I expect the desktop versions to still be ahead in terms of money made.

[dustin]

The demo itself didn't bring much money but it got me some visibility and opened up some really good licensing deals.

I think he meant not how much money the demo made as a flash game but how many sales of the desktop version do you think it brought you.  At least that's what I'm kinda interested in.

[tametick]

The demo itself didn't bring much money but it got me some visibility and opened up some really good licensing deals.

I think he meant not how much money the demo made as a flash game but how many sales of the desktop version do you think it brought you.  At least that's what I'm kinda interested in.

I have no idea, nor do I know where to get such data from.

I did get a bump in sales once I put the demo up but I suspect that's because indiegames.com wouldn't review it till then, and that triggered a couple other high visibility blogs writing about cardinal quest.

[dustin]

The demo itself didn't bring much money but it got me some visibility and opened up some really good licensing deals.

I think he meant not how much money the demo made as a flash game but how many sales of the desktop version do you think it brought you.  At least that's what I'm kinda interested in.

I have no idea, nor do I know where to get such data from.

I did get a bump in sales once I put the demo up but I suspect that's because indiegames.com wouldn't review it till then, and that triggered a couple other high visibility blogs writing about cardinal quest.

Ahh yeah that would make it hard to tell
Well it's a fun game, I bought it now that you have the pay what you want sale

[Moczan]

@timetick:
I thought that maybe you tracked the link request to full version or something, it's probably doable with php (I'm not really experience in web design so sorry if I'm telling something stupid). But you rise another interesting aspect. I always thought that Flash 'demos' promoting full, downloadable games don't have any chances to go viral, but you said you even got some licensing deals. Were those site-locks with links to full version removed?
I guess you don't want to disclose the exact number, but what's the ratio between Flash vs paid version in terms of revenue?

[tametick]

I guess you don't want to disclose the exact number, but what's the ratio between Flash vs paid version in terms of revenue?

Flash leads atm but I suspect desktops will soon retake the throne again.

[Paul Eres]

What is your definition of "sells well"?

pretty simple: enough so that the entire dev team can live off the sales of the game, above poverty level, per year of dev time. so something like 20k in sales per member of the dev team for 1 year of dev time, 40k in sales per member for 2 years, etc.