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[Fat Pug Studio]

Interesting topic OP, as a noob developer it's helpful to read other people experiences.

I've been doing mostly the same things as you, but i've been having more success. I'm having some 180 followers on twitter, but i've been posting some meaningful content and also following other game devs, engaging conversations and networking. I find that very important, even one retweet from one of them can have significant gains. We're all there to help each other after all. You needed to post more content on twitter, and it should have been more interesting, like explaining mechanics behind the game. You need to put out something every goddamn #screenshotsaturday to people don't forget about your game, no matter how miniscule is that. Requesting feedback is also a good way to engage people. People love giving feedback, makes them feel involved in the process of game making (and they are). "Hey, how you like this explosion?" etc.

As someone said, you really need to double-down on that neon stuff. Fonts in the game suck (score, combo, shield), i think everyone wants to see fuckin' awesome neon fonts and bigger explosions.

[jeremiah]

The approach that you simply have to keep posting more on twitter, creating more social media pages, make a better website, make more and better press releases seems really misguided to me.

The sad truth is that everyone starts from a default position of nobody cares. More than 4000 games were released on Steam last year. Why would anyone care about your press release? Why would anyone care about going to your facebook page? Nobody does. When you create a website for your game, there's nothing magically driving traffic to it. It's floating there in space with no one looking at it. Nobody cares.

Most of those tools are useful only after you've got someone to care about your game. If people are actively seeking out more information about your game, it's good to have a nice website. If journalists are desperate for more information about your game, a press release might work. Otherwise, it's shouting into the void.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

well, you aren't actually competing against all 4000 of those steam games released in a year, you are competing just against the ones in your subgenre, other shmups. if i were you, what i'd do is go through this list of all shmups on steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Shmup/#p=0&tab=NewReleases

there are 399 shmups on steam. so that's still a large, but much more manageable, thing to consider.

play as many of them as you can afford, and learn from each. look at each one critically, find where it shines and where it fails, and adapt your game to that market so that you don't make similar mistakes and you do some of the things that worked for other games in that genre.

i'm not talking cloning, but rather a higher level learning process. if you find a shmup that succeeded because of x, y, and z factors (in the abstract sense), intelligently try to apply those factors to your game as well. this can include gameplay, graphics, the way the trailer works, or even just how they marketed themselves.

pay particular attention to other shmups that have a neon look (such as, for example, the geometry wars games). because that's a sub-sub genre, those are the games people are going to be comparing your game to. visually, your game does not look as good as geometry wars, an indie game that was released 10 years ago. so that might be something to work at.

i think i posted earlier in this thread something along these lines (regarding learning from competitors), but i want to post an article i wrote on marketing here in the hopes that it'd be helpful: http://rinkuhero.tumblr.com/post/157442122632/indie-game-marketing-advice

i know it might sound silly to say that playing other games in your genre is 'marketing', but it really is -- even just spending a few hours a week playing other shmup games on steam (a new one each time) would help you enormously.