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[nikolaus]

The game is up for almost a week. What has happened?

• The game was featured on indiegames.com. That is very nice.
• A tweet by @auntiepixelante: "this game looks so cute and also like something i never ever want to play"
• Number of sales so far: 1

I didn't expect a lot, but I really underestimated the marketing effort to get some kind of traction. Although the website got some traffic, a very little number of people really played the game. Had I known beforehand, I would have put out the game for free.

For now I reinstalled the prototype on the website and reworked the copywriting, removing phrasings like "difficulty" and "madness" (honestly, for me that is what the game is about, in a positive way). Still looking for ways to plug this somewhere close to a potential target audience.

Not to discourage anyone of you people with all your beautiful projects.

[mike_w]

That one sale wasn't me by the way!! (I'm totally buying it now though)

Suggestions:

Make a trailer or gameplay video! It's hard to figure out what the game is from the site. There's like one animated gif and the prototype, but a 1 minute trailer would go a long way to explaining it and showing the stuff it has to offer.

Also make a demo version with the first world (or first few levels of the first world if you're not feeling that generous) playable instead of the prototype. If you have time I mean! I don't know. Also you probably need to get on more than just one website. This is like the hardest part of games, I think. Good luck!

[travisofarabia]

The game is up for almost a week. What has happened?

• The game was featured on indiegames.com. That is very nice.

Sorry to hear the game hasn't exploded! Maybe the price point is a little high? Don't get me wrong the game looks worth what your asking but lets be honest anything over $2.99 may be a hard sell. I wish you a ton of luck and have you considered steam green light? I've heard there system of up voting or however it works is awful but maybe worth a try? Congrats as well on the feature on indie games, did you contact them or was it just featured?

[nikolaus]

Thanks Mike! For the record, his sale now showed up on my order listings.

I kind of knew beforehand that a trailer usually is a major selling hook. Will get started right away on a gameplay video of some sorts.

I'd like to get this into a storefront, but with most I am unsure about their actual reputations. The greenlight system feels kind of repulsive to me, with the vote begging etc.. basically comes down to a mobocracy, doesn't it?

I like the humble store, though most titles there seemed to have some sort of exposure beforehand. Anyone have experience with their policies on who they let it?

I'd really like to concentrate on just making games

[JobLeonard]

"mobocracy" - thank you for that word, I will now use it when appropriate in discussions (which is sadly far more often than I want to)

[nikolaus]

You're welcome. If you use it too often, you might be perceived as arrogant.

[mike_w]

Yeah, marketing your game is basically kind of repulsive since you're just going "Hey, look at this thing I made!! LOOK AT IT!!!" to a million different places. It can seem like you are just hocking your stuff without abandon and it's certainly not as fun as making the game. It's just sort of self-promotional.

That all said, nobody will know about the game otherwise, and if you have something that's cool, other people won't be like "gross, stop marketing to me" they'll be curious and want to check out your game. So at the very least you can take solace in the fact that people want to know about new games.

Greenlight is kind of repulsive, also, but getting a game on Steam puts it in front of the biggest audience, digitally. It's also sort of a good time, since they seem to be pushing lots of games through in anticipation of eventually ditching Greenlight (replacing it with a more open system, I believe), so even if you do have to beg for votes your chances of getting in there are better than they've been.

[nikolaus]

Guess I have to work on my attitude in the future. I am on twitter now, marketing wise: @nikbaumg

Meanwhile work on the android version is coming along. Got a pretty satisfying solution instead of the ugly dpad controls. I mean, a lot of games completely fail on the controls with their android ports. I want to get at least that right.

At the moment it works like this: The player is able to control the cat by touching any point on the screen and drawing an invisible path. The cat is following along that path 1:1, relative to its current position. 
As soon as the cat is hitting a wall, the path is reset, so the player is immediately able to switch directions. Still has to be smoothed out a bit, but already feels very intuitive after a brief period of acclimatization.

Choppy gif with debug overlay:

[nikolaus]

The price for the game is now $2.99. Grab it now before I change my mind.

All purchases will include the android version as soon as it is released.

[JobLeonard]

Guess I just bought you a latté

[James Edward Smith]

I think a game like this will do better on mobile than it will as a PC release.

I mean, I love your game, but I see myself playing it more on the toilet and that sort of thing. It's the sort of elegant and simple game that lends itself more to that than "Man, I can't wait to get home and boot up Ferdy!"

So for that sort of space, yeah, sadly, the norm is less than 6 dollars. It's ridiculous to think about when you think of how much we used to pay for NES and Gameboy games way back when, but you can't fight the market. Also, it's a lot less grim seeming when you look at how easy it is to distribute a simple game like this once you get it made these days. You don't have to find a publisher, no boxes or carts need to get made and shipped anywhere and attract buyers on shelves. A lot of the money is taken out of the equation but so is a lot of waste and overhead. Are the two equivalent, I'm not entirely sure.

The other thing is this game does strike me (just one man's opinion) as pretty niche in a lot of its appeal (Stuff like the Windows 3.1 looking visuals which I LOVE, may not appeal to a lot of other people, *shrug*).

Honestly, I think it's hard for any one man game to ask for more than "name your price" and expect to get many downloads in the current space. Like I love my game I'm working on right now, but unless I end up putting a lot of work into presentation once my core concept is realized, I don't see myself asking for anything more than "name your price" of people who download it.

The thing is though, even when Ferdy is on mobile, I'll download it and pay whatever price you're asking, because I'm an indie dev myself and I think you did a good job and I want to support you as best I can, but I don't know if it's going to grab a very big audience. For instance, I bought the enhanced edition or whatever it's called of the game Hoplite because I love the design of it. It realized a concept I've been DYING to make myself; a simple turn based tactics game that you can play wherever and whenever, that requires very player investment and is very low frills, but that has the perfect amount of depth to keep you entertained for a while. So I bought it, but I did so despite the fact that really, the free version is all you need. I don't feel like the pay version really offers anything to get people to make the very hard transition from not paying jack squat to paying anything at all. It's a big hurdle. Sadly, while it's nice that like minded devs will appreciate these greatly designed and well done games and throw some cash at them, I don't think in the grand scheme of things it's ever going to lead to the original dev getting what they deserve for the work put forth.

We have to add value in some other way or place our pay walls better (without being exploitative in a way that harms user experience of course).

The other thing is that I think we need to get used to telling a lot of people and places about our game and get used to accepting a LOT of "Not interested"s and no response from a lot of the places we try. With a game like Ferdy, you NEVER know who is going to think it's amazing and who is going to think it looks boring, so saying the net cast needs to be "wide" to get any real attention is an understatement. Being on Indiegames.com and one tweet from a super obscure (to the world at large, not us) indie developer isn't going to do anything and I think the proof is in the pudding on that one.

[nikolaus]

@jobleonard
Thanks mate! I will honor your support with a cup of black coffee.

@geothermal
Yeah, I admit my goal is to grow my productions into a sufficient source of income, but I am still trying to figure out how to best work with the available markets. I mean, the mobile market is so full of shit, at least with google play. Its like a magnet for shit that seems to mainly favor the growth of even more shit. Hard to get any visibility there.
 
Huge discrepancies there, how to best combine the aesthetic and financial goals. Ferdy is a success in being a first finished game, also having received very positive feedback from people who played the game. I will continue to work on the marketing though. I am notoriously bad at that. I mean, one has to take it easy and keep on exploring. What about your game? When are you going to be done with that?

[James Edward Smith]

Oh, I wasn't working on it for a long time unfortunately. At first due to personal reasons and then because I was working on something else that I thought I could get done faster.

But I've returned to working on it again now due to feeling more inspired and motivated to work on it than on other things. I feel like it's a very "me" game and I want it out there for people to experience.

I'm not posting anything new about it until I have something playable that I want people's opinions on though.

Anyway, congratulations on finishing such a charming and well designed puzzle game.

[Calined]

congratulations on finishing it and putting it out there!^___^

if you put it out on Android and iOs maybe consider making it free to play with half of the later levels unlock for 99 cents?

and yeah, marketing is a meh ._.
i wish you lots of exposure =)

[nikolaus]

Yo, half a year with almost zero sales - finally got around to put the thing out as freeware.

Your opportunity to play the thing -



http://www.ferdythecat.com/

[JobLeonard]

Aww... At least you got a coffee out of it