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[dent2]

I'm currently working on my first game which started out as a simple prototype, and has grown to something bigger now. My goal is to finish and publish the game.

I've been working on getting word out about the game, with the goal of having 1-2 people who are very interested in the game and playtesting new updates, to keep me motivated. Back when I started working on this game, I had a close friend who was spending a lot of time playing through and generating ideas. This helped me immensely.

I don't have those dedicated players now. And since I'm not really a huge gamer, I hardly have any gamer friends.

It seems that no matter how many videos or GIFs I post, I'm not generating enough interest. People ask to play the game, I send them the key, then they disappear.
In the experience of those who have actually released a game - what is wrong in my mental model?

Should I hire an artist for my game to actually create some interest? Or should I keep building more gameplay to get people interested that way?
Or are my expectations too high, and I should just have more patience and keep working on the game, no matter how little the interest currently? It's a game that I myself can play for hours.

[Tusky]

What do you mean by hire an artist? Do you mean to create ads or artwork for use in the game itself.

If it's the latter I suppose it depends on the artistic direction you're aiming for. If it makes the game more presentable then there is a chance that will lead to more strangers being interested in your game.

What is the game? Have you a devlog on here maybe?

[dent2]

I mean an actual pixel artist (it's a pixel art game) to draw art for the game itself. I am worried that the current aesthetics (or rather, lack of) is turning people off from trying the game. I know I can clean up the current look and make it more uniform and clean, but I'm not yet convinced that's more important than continuing to build the core gameplay and mechanics.

I want to keep this thread potentially useful to others, so would rather not post my game here. It's currently at the top of the devlog threads if you want to find it.

I guess I'm stuck in this cycle between
a) The game needs to be good enough for people to take an interest in it
and
b) I need to promote it early enough and get people playing it to keep me motivated to make it good enough

[-Ross]

I think your expectations are a bit high. Possibly of your game, but mostly of other people. Even if you are specifically asking for feedback, you may get 100 downloads and only one person who takes the time to write to you. Most of those people are probably just bored, cruising the internet hoping to find something interesting. If they try your game and get turned off by some random little thing, or your game just isn't immediately awesome, they're not going to bother writing to you and say, "hey, I tried your game for like 5 minutes and didn't really get anywhere, but it seems okay."

I checked out your devlog and twitter a bit. It looks like your game is fairly involved, and in a niche genre. Not the kind of thing people can pick up and enjoy in 5-10 minutes. I mean, any game with options like "Navionics" and "Weapons Controller" is immediately going to turn a lot of people away. And there are very few people who actually enjoy flying 2D spaceships around. You might look at games like Escape Velocity/Endless Sky and disagree, but in fact you spend very little time flying in those games. Landing on planets and jumping between systems is automated, they're really all about the RPG grinding and story aspects.

I don't think your visuals are turning many people off, but I doubt they'll draw many people in either. The quality is really not bad, but I think the clarity could use work. The perspective view makes your game pretty unique, but it also makes things harder to see since they are flat slivers. The asteroids look more like clouds. The enemy ships in particular are nearly impossible to see. I would make them just as bright a color as the space stations are (and maybe put little flags above them?). You might look at space strategy games, some of them do the 2d-map-in-perspective thing.

On twitter, gifs seem to do the best, but that means you need some interesting thing that you can show off in 10 seconds or so.

[LyricalReverie]

I wouldn't show my game before having assets (not temporary assets) for at least one or two areas. As a matter of fact, I haven't showed my game yet. But I think it depends on the kind of game you are making. Art is always important as it is the first thing people have contact with in your game, but for a super gameplay-heavy game, it probably matter less than for a story/character-driven game.

[Binsou]

I think -Ross pretty much nailed it on the head with his comment.  The gifs can work, but you'll have to do a lot to entice people to get over the learning curve of the game by showing them what crazy antics they can get up to.