GREAT SUCCESS (I think)
I got
37,500 plays between Kong and NG, and was front-paged on NG for an exciting week.
Thanks to all who gave it a try.
Here's my tiny postmortem. May be common-sense to people who have released things, but this is my first proper released game, so I'm gonna talk partly to myself.
This has been enough of a success that I don't feel bad that I messed up developing it, mostly due to endless polish and deliberation of changes.
First I wanted it to be best and nearly missed the LD deadline. I narrowly realized my mistake and got it in and did ok. Lack of sound hurt. If I'd cared less about polish I could've found music.
Then I wanted it to be best to be a commercial product. It wasn't an ideal commercial product, and it took a beating and a lot of downtime for me to realize it.
Then I wanted it to be best for release. I did what I could, but that was all I can do and I finally realized that and didn't delay any longer.
ITIAMOSIWE was a series of lessons learned late or barely in time.
I don't think building in the leaderboard and such, which I debated for a long time, would've benefitted me much. It wouldn't have gotten the game sponsored, and ultimately would've been a lot more work. I work slowly enough as it is, and I should've decided either way and just ran with the decision.
I got more useful feedback and bug reports and things I forgot to add pointed out in the first day after release, and quickly engaging with people's issues and fixing them got me return traffic and a steadily climbing score. Not tenable for a larger project, but it's good for a small thing that may never get a second look. I very quickly figured out which commenters had actually played and gave useful info, so the mean ones didn't bother me much.
So I guess the lesson is: Decide and work towards a decision: if it's wrong, you've made some progress, maybe in the wrong direction, but some of it may be beneficial and it's better than being paralyzed by doubt/indecision/f2p mmos.
I'm still pretty proud that I managed to get almost 40000 people to play a creepy indoctrination gameboy-style game.
And now I can finally put it to rest and move on.
Thanks, everyone.