[Here's some quick stats:]

Right, it's definitely no small task, so I don't want to do the usual drive-by glib "do this super hard thing!" post .

Since we're using similar technologies and similar games (Defender's Quest is an AIR-based tactical RPG of sorts), I'll share a bit of my experience in case it's relevant to you. I'll just share some data, so do take it with a grain of salt as it's only one data point, and feel free to do with it what you will.

This is your announce thread, so I don't want to sidetrack it talking about my own game (which is why I didn't post any links to it) unless I have something relevant to share with you.

That said, here's the data-dump:

**********************************

In our experience, not only does a browser-based demo vastly increase your demo-plays and exposure rate (which also makes it easier to get journalists to write about your game), it also lets you use flash portals for distribution. We set up 4 different "buy" pages for our game to do some basic tracking, we had one regular "buy" page that is linked all over our website, and then three "demo_buy" pages that are linked to from various versions of the demo. The first, demo_buy.html, is linked from the browser demo we host, which was quickly "stolen" and uploaded to a bunch of tiny flash portals, it's also linked to by the download version of the demo. The second, demo_buy_kong.html, which was linked from Kongregate's version of the demo (before we switched to selling the game with their on site currency "kreds"), as well as on all the flash portals that steal from Kong, and then there's demo_buy_ng.html, linked to from the Newgrounds version and the portals that steal from NG.

Here's some quick stats:

-17122 hits - demo_buy.html (demo landing page, our site and minor flash portals)
-12348 hits - demo_buy_kong.html (kongregate demo landing page)
-2644 hits - demo_buy_ng.html (newgrounds demo landing page)

-13898 hits - windows demo exe
-431 hits - windows demo torrent
-negligible hits - non-windows demos, both direct&torrent

-7340 hits - buy.html (regular buy page, linked from all sources EXCEPT the demo)

That basically says where people are coming from. BOTH the download version of the demo and the browser demo link to demo_buy. So, although buy.html could include some hits from demo players (as well as people who bought the game sight-unseen), the demo_buy... links only come from within a demo, so we can be pretty sure that's what those hits represent.

Also note the demo_buy hits represent people clicking through from the demo - actual demo plays were much higher (since not everyone wants to buy).

We had more raw hits than sales, obviously, but the correlations are pretty tight and we had other stats to confirm that sales from these sources matched those ratios. Based on some other tracking (coupon codes & some other things), about 80-90% of our sales have come from Kongregate+Newgrounds alone.

(We're not doing "microtransactions", as in in-game items and other piecemeal stuff. The NG demo just links to our buy page, and on Kong when we switched to Kreds all we are selling is the full version unlock).

Most of the revenue is from Kongregate, but even at a far distant second, Newgrounds still exceeded all of the revenue we gained from a very positive Rock Paper Shotgun review.

I have no idea if you would see the same results we did, but I think there's something to browser-based demos and using flash portals for distribution. Our full game was way too huge for flash portals, but using conditional compilation in FlashDevelop I was able to create a simple boolean trigger I could switch off to exclude full-version-only assets and publish things with compressed images and audio settings, etc, to get down to a reasonable file size.

If any of this is interesting to you, I'd be more than happy to share some more of my tricks since we're using similar technologies.

Your price point might make your game a tough sell to the flash portal crowd (they are cheapskates for the most part), but a browser demo could still be useful on your own site. Customers keep telling us it's the #1 reason they bought the game.

Looks really cool!

If this is done with Adobe AIR, you might consider doing an in-browser demo with vanilla flash? I'm sure you'd get a much lower bounce rate that way, and a lot more sales.

Technically Defender's Quest is in alpha/beta funding right now.

Sales have been good so far, but I can't talk about that in much detail because I'm submitting an article about it that's still under embargo. Should have numbers to release in a month or so.

@Rudy:

Thanks! Fixed it.

Thanks! I'll forward your portfolio to the team for review.

[This position has been FILLED. Thanks!]

This position has been FILLED. Thanks!

Hey guys! So we released our Tower-Defense / RPG hybrid Defender's Quest back in January and have been doing pretty well. We're looking for someone who's awesome at pixel art, specifically animated character sprites, to help with our battle scenes.

Here's our

.

The game has received some nice critical reviews so far, and we're looking to add some more features as we proceed towards "gold release" where we add a lot more bonus content and more polished art.

We've already brought on some artists to help with cutscenes and terrain tiles, but what we really need is someone who is great at animated character sprites. You'll be creating some more detailed character sprites, monster sprites, and adding lots more battle animations than what we have currently. If you're also good at effects we'll have you do some of those, too.

If you're interested, reply to this thread or PM me with a link to your portfolio and/or samples of your work. This position is all about animated characters, so you won't have to do any tiles or terrain, etc. If you also happen to be brilliant at interface graphics or anything else, we wouldn't mind hiring you for that too, but for now the core of what we're looking for is characters.

The gig is short-term and we have cash in hand to pay you. If you work fast, that's an even bigger plus though quality is obviously our first concern. We're looking to get this round of art polish done in about 1-2 months.

We've been contractors ourselves in the past so we want to treat you guys the way we want to be treated. You'll be paid well, on time, and given a plain-english contract with clear and fair terms (if you already have some boilerplate you're comfortable with that you'd rather use instead, we can use that, too).

Looking forward to hearing from you guys! If you have any questions, let me know and I'll reply right here.

Here's a screenshot of some of our old battle art:



And here's another:

Hey guys, two things:

First thing - we released our popular cell biology flash game, Cellcraft, as open source a while back:
https://github.com/larsiusprime/CellGame--Open-Source-fork-of--CellCraft--

So, hopefully someone finds that useful!

Second thing - some researchers contacted me wanting to translate the game into other languages, but couldn't get it to compile in Flash CS4/CS5. I've been trying to reproduce their errors, but a fresh download and compile works just fine on my machine with Flash CS4. Any AS3 programmers here have any ideas?

Also please excuse the horrible messiness of the code - this was my first AS3 project from several years ago

FastSpring already will remove the phone number field if you ask them and you have some orders under your belt, but I'm glad to hear they're streamlining the entire purchase process, I've been getting messages from customers asking about this, too.

No problem, and so sorry for the hassle! I'll get on tech support with FastSpring and see if there's a way to move the coupon code field to the front page.

Processed your refund, David! So sorry about that. The coupon field is kind of small and easy to miss, and it's really dumb that FastSpring makes you put in your payment info first. Please e-mail me if there's any other problems!

Since everyone doesn't have 6 bucks, here's some free download codes:

First come, first serve!

FREE5KSCN
FREE7TXAB
FREE3AJSW
FREE6EFMT
FREE7JJBF

Redeem at www.defendersquest.com
(My payment provider unfortunately requires you to enter payment info first, but I assure you before the sale is finalized there's a coupon field that will reduce your amount to 0 when you enter the code).

Thanks so much. If we somehow pull this off, I'll post about our deployment strategy and (if my biz partners are cool with it) post some numbers.

So, whether we do great or are a miserable failure, hopefully we'll have some info to share with the community.

[Update:]

Update: Defender's Quest is now coming to steam!

I'm not sure if it's bad form to necro my original thread or if I should have started a new one. Someone tell me if I'm doing something wrong?

Anyway, we have a bunch of cool new features in our upcoming gold edition, which is due out in a week or so. The blog post has all the details!




Hey all you TIGSource people! Our new game Defender's Quest has just been released!

Video:


Media page with screens,etc: http://www.defendersquest.com/media.html

Playable demo: http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html

We posted about this on the feedback forum like a million years ago and you all had lots of great advice for us. Now it's out and you can play it to your heart's content!

The game is a hybrid tower-defense / RPG, where you build up a party of persistent characters who serve as the "towers" in the battle sequences. Characters can be customized both visually and through skills and equipment so you can specialize your team and strategy.

The game's got a cool story too, interesting characters, and lots of configuration settings since it's on the PC.

We have a browser-based demo, and the full game runs on Mac/Windows/Linux. You can import your save file from the demo into the full version, as well.

It's $6.99, and that gets you the full game and any future updates (which we plan on rolling out over the next few months, such as lots of bonus end-game content).

If anyone feels like buying it, the coupon code TIGS will save you a buck Otherwise, enjoy the demo!

Screenshot:

We've had a lot of success with a browser-based demo. Plenty of people will play a demo if they don't have to install something, and then you have enough of their attention to sell them the full version.

Not a silver bullet or anything, but definitely another tool to chip away at the "Exe barrier."

This probably has a lot to do with Minecraft's success, at least early on.

Course, this only works if you're using flash/AIR, Unity, Java, HTML5. Game Maker has a plugin I think to work in browser but not many people have that installed, and I guess they released a new "HTML5" version you have to fork out for to use, not sure how well it works.

Wow, sounds amazing! I was annoyed by Fastspring's insistence on address/phone number. I imagine that submissions to get into the system are clogged by hundreds of desperate indies like myself, as usual?

Sounds cool at any rate. I'll knock on their door once I release my upcoming mac/win/linux game, maybe I'll get lucky...

@paul:

First read about it on TIGSource a couple months back, don't remember where or how - probably in the forums (I'm generally a lurker who reads more than posts).

At any rate, really like the visual style and the pacifist angle sounds really neat. I have a personal fascination with games that eschew violence/combat as a core mechanic.

No changes? Mabye I confused this year with last year. Anyways, I remember there being a lot of articles about changing how they did the scoring system (though that might have been for a previous year), etc, but the juries were a new thing this time, right?

But I guess the juries would be a separate process from judging...

@Dragonmaw:

As a judge, can you comment on whether the much-discussed changes in IGF judging for this year were an improvement?

Is Saturated Dreamers out yet? Heard good things about it.

I think I would support only letting released games in the festival. That would have disqualified me this year as our game isn't out yet, but it seems fair, would keep the entrants manageable, and end the controversy of submitting games multiple times once and for all.

To boot, it means we could actually play all these "IGF winners" when the awards are announced instead of waiting several years to find out what's so great about them.