I'm intrigued, terrain generation looks very nice, but I fear the arstyle is really too similar to Minecraft. 
There are tons of Minecraft clones out there. You need a way to distinct yourself from the huge competition, at least visually.

There's a neat online tool called IFTTT that allows you to link various accounts - you post a screen on Facebook, it also gets posted on Twitter. It's not appropriate for EVERYTHING, since different socials need different content, but it can lighten your workload a bit.

Following!

[distinctive]

I love the look of this. The world needs more watercolor games. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! We're really satisfied about the style we choose, feedback so far have been overwhelmingly positive ^^
Watercolors are working well for us for various reasons:
- they're not only pretty, they're distinctive. That's real important when you're a little indie game struggling to get noticed.
- they're easier to pull off than "standard videogame graphics", since we all went to art school and watercolors were the bane of our existence for years.
- using hand-drawn graphic in game is proving to be comfier than expected, thanks to collision maps. We'll talk about this in our next devlog.

I think out of these two options, 3D models sound like the hardest to get right within this style, you'd need really solid models and textures for them to blend in. Not sure about toonboom either since I never used it, I hope it is good enough to create subtle animations, instead of typical cartoon animations.

Yeah, I fear hand-drawn animations are still our best option. The problem is, the workload is starting to be really heavy for just the three of us.
So, animators, send us your portfolios. We'll need help sooner or later

This looks awesome! I loved Spice and Wolf, and wondered right away if that was an influence on the design.

Spice and wolf was definitely an influence! I know there's a DS game based on the franchise, but sadly it's Japanese only and I can't try it... I'd really like to see how they handled the gameplay.

Rune Factory, the Harvest Moon spin-off about living in a fantasy world, was another huge influence. Those games have a (weak) overarching plot, but their true focus are the tons of sub-quests based around interesting NPCs and their personal issues, often interacting with each other. I really loved that feeling of living in a close community of friends, and hope Selling Sunlight will have a similar atmosphere.

Definitely curious to hear some OST samples when you have them - the world itself seems a bit "off" and definitely diverse, so it will be interesting to try to match music to that

First time I heard our composer play, he was beating rocks in front of a microphone and accompanying it with the distorted sounds of an hacked keyboard.
I think he's crazy enough to work with us. Music samples should come by September.

What do you people think the importance of supporting macosx is?
More generally what kind of hardware do you think I should target because I realize my desktop is fairly high spec?

Uhm.
I think your game would mostly appeal fans of surreal/strange games like Yume Nikki, LSD, Gingiva...
Now, this genre isn't really rapresented outside the indie market, so people know getting strange games means shuffling through obscure indie titles. And this means having a Windows - or knowing how to emulate it. Therefore, I think you should focus on Windows, because most of your target audience already uses this OS.

I also think you should keep the min specs as low as possible, for the same reasoning: the most famous "strange" games are made with the likes of rpgmaker and game maker, and usually have very low specs. The kind of people that likes this type of games doesn't usually upgrade their pc to play the lastest Assassin's Creed.

(Obviously, you are the one that really knows your target market! I'm just assuming things. Also, nice smoothie.)

[Devlog #3 - The masked one]

Devlog #3 - The masked one

When we started working on Selling Sunlight, we didn't plan on having a visible main character. However, the project quickly evolved from a text-based game to a more graphical experience; suddently we had maps, so we needed someone to walk on them! Our character artist made sketches for a male and a female hero, but they felt somewhat... Restrictive.
Our game is a role-playing experience: we didn't want to force on the players a gender/race/face they didn't like. We wanted them to feel perfectly at ease with their in-game identity, but making a proper character editor would have been too draining.
If you can't see your character's face, your mind becomes the editor. So, instead of a face, we designed a mask.


(Concept art.)

The default name is Blanc. Their gender is neutral, race will be changeable, and their sexual orientation is up to you. A blank slate of a character, with tons of possible identities hidden behind the disguise.

As soon as we nailed the design, another problem quickly arised: why is this fellow masked?
As a merchant, our protagonist has to daily interact with other people. If the mask was a quirk of their own, it could severely impair their ability to socialize!
The mask needed to stay. At the same time, it needed to be mundane in its weirdness. Something socially accepted, with a clear meaning.
We made it a simbol of penance.
You broke a religious taboo. You have been deemed not worthy to bask your face in the radiance of the sun.

What exactly did your character do? That's up for you to decide, too.
During the first minutes of our game, an NPC will ask you about the mask. The answers you can give are all very vague - ranging from "someone backstabbed me" to "my lover didn't tell me s/he was technically married to the Sun". It's a simple choice, but helps build up the narrative in many neat ways:

- It gently forces the player to roleplay. Blanc is not just your an avatar, but a character who had a life before the start of the game.
You get curious. You want to know more, so you start to speculate. Without even realizing it, you just made a background for your character.

- Estabilish coolness. It's not easy to make a character as mundane as a merchant exciting. But your character broke a taboo; they did something mysterious and wrong and intriguing.
You just started playing and you already know this person is a badass.

- It makes social interactions more natural. It's always jarring when in RPGs, characters you just met give you personal quests or important informations.
But you're an outcast. People will get curious and ask questions. They'll have a good reason to approach you first.


Blanc is our hero, but also our biggest risk: we perfectly know such a strange character can risk alienating the audience.
It's a bold choice, but we think it will only make our game more compelling. Tell us what you think.

Following! Nice art 

Everything looks so pretty. Music also sounds nice.
Keep up with the good work!

Following! I like clicker games, and your art style looks so polished. Keep up with the good work!

Greenlighting has nothing to do with the actual quality of the game: is all about first impressions. Try to ask yourself why your video/screenshots aren't striking the right chords.
I see the greenlight page has plenty of comments. Read them all, especially the bad ones! You'll find sparks of truth among all the harshness and nasty critiques.

Personally, three things would stop me from voting your game:
- Cutscenes looks very amateurish. The simple art style fits the tone of your game, but the shadowing/lineart of the characters need more work.
- Design of the main character is unappealing. Not because it's "too girly" (I am a girl, after all), but because it's the wrong type of girly: it looks stereotypical, and remembers me of Hello Kitty games.
From the look of your character, I am assuming the game's target are very young girls. But is that really the case?
The platforming looks really solid, and the game seems relaxed, but not easy. I fear you're limiting your own target audience!
- Game description is screaming I am an amateur but I'm trying my best. Though humility is important, be more confident when you talk about your game! If you, the developer, are saying the game has its flaws, why should I buy it?

Just my two cents. I haven't tried your game yet, I just looked at your greenlight page and tried to analyze your presentation.

The monster reminds me of the glowing aliens from Attack the block. Nice work!

Some good input here. I personally have always liked the idea of a level up/experience system where instead of keeping track of what does what, have your stats be entirely based off of what you use most. That would also be a good way to keep classes out which a lot of people seem to dislike.

Out of curiosity, how would you implement that? Because I feel that's very difficult to do right.

Ultima Online already did that, and the system works well enough.
You have a long list of skill, and everything you do raises one or more skills. For example, hitting a bandit with a sword mkes you a better swordsman, but also raises your anatomy skill - which acts as a passive bonus damage, but can also be used to check PCs/NPCs and have a report of their health status.
For every skill, you can decide to let it raise normally, lock its growth or decrease it in favour of other skills. There are no levels, but you have a global skill cap.
I don't know if the other Ultima games used the same gameplay, but UO's system is fun and works well for an MMORPG. It could be a good starting point, though of course it will need a lot of rebalancing to work for a single-player game.

The usual problem with such a free sistem is that unexperienced players may risk raising the wrong skills, thus rendering their own characters completely useless.

I think tails (and also ears i'd guess) really help communicate the emotions of the dogs

I vote for ears! Make fluffy ears for everywobbly!
But yeah I also fear making HUDs and inventory and stuff is going to be boring but necessary right now. Helps you define the scope of the game.
Have you actually decided what to do with the wobbly creatures? Can you like buy them new toys and bring them to contests, Nintendogs-style?

Rpgmaker MV's button input processing is INSANE. I have no other way to describe it - and it will probably drive me mad too.
Basically, whenever you tell the program to check if a button is being pressed and then do x, it will continue doing thing x until the button is no longer pressed. This means if I have a window I can open/close with the same key, keeping that key pressed will make the window opencloseopencloseopen forever.
Annoying.

After a day of work, it turns out rpgmaker has a function for checking whether a key was being triggered, not held down - it's just not available using normal commands, you have to manually call it and it's prone to screwing things up.
Rpgmaker 2003 had a better button input processing than the lastest version. Arrrg.

[The Etched City]

Reading The Etched City by K. J. Bishop. Loving the setting so far, though the writing is proving to be a bit tiring for a not-native speaker. Lots of new words I haven't heard before, like bathos - it's the contrary of pathos! And it sounds so silly!
The English language truly is full of wonders.

These are valid points.

What about releasing on itch.io, since I think the revenue potential there is minimal anyway(?), and use whatever few people who buy it there as feedback/beta testers. While at the same time submitting the game to steam greenlight.

Does that sound like a reasonable plan? Or do I really need to deal with marketing first?

Seems like a good plan. However, I'd advise you to send at least some press relase to gaming websites - talk about beta testing, don't treat the launch as a full relase.
Don't forget that Itch.io is really crowded! You won't have feedback if people are unable to find and play your game.

imo start with a gameplay trailer, have the second half of the video or a separate video featuring talkytime funtime intercut with concept art.

Yeah, it's the format I saw most often, and I think it's the right way to go - first show the game, then maybe talk a bit about the team. The contrary would seem a bit narcissistic.

also harvest moon has a broader community than you'd realize given the fact that one of the most prominent porn games of recent years (and the subject of a hilarious controversy) is basically a harvest moon clone that plays up nostalgia for that franchise. i'd say that yeah, probably in general there are less assholes who vibe with harvest moon than who vibe with, say, gears of war, but you'll still get them.

I remember that game! The one with the artist who fleed away only to make another rip-off game!   
Hilariously sad. Also, there are tons of porn mod for games like Stardew Valley, so... Yeah, the HM community can be pretty gross sometimes.
(Not that I have anything against porn, mind you - it's just that I find a bit disrespectful to pornify a game clearly not meant for that.)

On the other hand, the Sunless Sea/Fallen London fandom is generally very sweet and supportive - because by giving the opportunity to play as a non-binary protagonist, the games quickly won the sympathy of the Tumblr/LGBT community. Now, Tumblr too has plenty of ugly sides, but at least they don't have anything about women. By having a masked, gender-neutral, non-necessarily-white and whatever-sexuality-you-want protagonist, we hope to cater to the same audience.

I'm starting to think about my incoming KS campaign, and this also means thinking about the video. However, I'm really concerned about the best way to show the game - and above all, the team behind it.
Do you think appearing in person in the project's pitch video gives more credibility to the team, or is it better to make a gameplay-only presentation?

Mine is an all-female team of people in their twenties. Frankly, I fear to receive criticism on the note of "go play Farmville, you can't make videogames!" Because we're young, because my teammates are cute and doesn't look like typical "nerdy" girls.
On the other hand, we're making a narrative game about being a traveling merchant, and our target audience are people liking games like Sunless Sea and the Harvest Moon series. We're not making a shooter, so maybe being females can be seen as a plus - because we're more "sentimental" and all that stuff. I don't have a first-hand experience with the Harvest Moon community, but it doesn't strike me like the kind of game played by hateful/mysoginist people, I must say.
 
Maybe a compromise would be to have no "people talking to camera" moments, but to just show our artists working on our hand-painted backgrounds and graphics. Emphatize the crafting instead of the crafters.
What do you think?

I'll follow you!
Really digging the artstyle.

The graphics look good, remember me of old adventure games like Day of the Tentacle.
Drop me a note if you need an Italian proofreader!