Felis' post mortem thread (Steam)

[dogzerx2]

Hey!

I’ve released my first game called Felis 1 week ago on Steam.

Some general info, I started this platformer game it about 3 years ago, designed mostly for mobile, though I decided to experiment with Steam first, seems like a more active market than mobile.

I effectively didn’t market my game at all. Mainly because I have no idea how to approach reviewers, and get past their spam mails, LOL. They literally can’t take care of the 100s of mails they get imploring reviews.

My personal experience has been great. Steam users aren’t nearly as bad as they make them to be, though you have to be extremely humble and grateful for their good reviews and more so for their criticism. When a player criticizes your game, that is extremely valuable, it means that person likes your game enough to want you to fix it. Those who stay silent, probably just too dissapointed to ask for a fix, the thought of that is painful. So be grateful for criticism!

Sold 175 units so far, so I’m not calling myself a professional game developer just yet. But hey this is my first game ever. I’m yet to release on other platforms.

Sales behave as much as you expect. Start great, then plummet. Selling 5-10 copies daily.

Median played time is 20 minutes. A lot of people seem to get bored before 10 minutes of gameplay. Though I’m not heartbroken about that, I often do the same, even if I like a game (remember buying 30 games or so on humble bundle, all games I like, but just got a 10 min taste of each them, and saved them for later).
Some players do play for at least an hour, and apparently 5 players have player longer than 200 minutes.

Apparently there’s a lot of people who set the game on wishlist… maybe waiting that I make a discount sale. Which I will do as soon as Steam allows me too after release.

One small piece of advice, if you’re working solo like me, or your game is big or you’re not 100% sure it’s bug free, do release as Early Access. Even if not for possible bugs, if your game haven’t been heavily beta tested, expect players to ask for changes. This all seem more proper as an Early Access game, than players feeling disappointed at bad design or glitches on a fully completed game.

I will report back after 1 month or so. The main question here is… will this game sell at all after 30 days? or after 1 year? This is an extremely important question, because the key here seems to be able to overlap game profits, hopefully adding up to a relatively reliable “salary” that can allow you to do this full time, and finally call yourself a true gamedev.

[djweinbaum]

Congratulations! The game looks great! Really charming art and I think the thumbnail is great. Could you tell us what happens after you’re greenlit? Does someone from steam contact you personally or is it an automated thing? What does the developer back end look like? Can you choose prices per country/region? Does the process for updating the game look easy? Is there good documentation for how to use everything?

[Billy4184]

@dogzerx2

Hey!

I’ve released my first game called Felis 1 week ago on Steam.

Some general info, I started this platformer game it about 3 years ago, designed mostly for mobile, though I decided to experiment with Steam first, seems like a more active market than mobile.

I effectively didn’t market my game at all. Mainly because I have no idea how to approach reviewers, and get past their spam mails, LOL. They literally can’t take care of the 100s of mails they get imploring reviews.

My personal experience has been great. Steam users aren’t nearly as bad as they make them to be, though you have to be extremely humble and grateful for their good reviews and more so for their criticism. When a player criticizes your game, that is extremely valuable, it means that person likes your game enough to want you to fix it. Those who stay silent, probably just too dissapointed to ask for a fix, the thought of that is painful. So be grateful for criticism!

Sold 175 units so far, so I’m not calling myself a professional game developer just yet. But hey this is my first game ever. I’m yet to release on other platforms.

Sales behave as much as you expect. Start great, then plummet. Selling 5-10 copies daily.

Median played time is 20 minutes. A lot of people seem to get bored before 10 minutes of gameplay. Though I’m not heartbroken about that, I often do the same, even if I like a game (remember buying 30 games or so on humble bundle, all games I like, but just got a 10 min taste of each them, and saved them for later).
Some players do play for at least an hour, and apparently 5 players have player longer than 200 minutes.

Apparently there’s a lot of people who set the game on wishlist… maybe waiting that I make a discount sale. Which I will do as soon as Steam allows me too after release.

One small piece of advice, if you’re working solo like me, or your game is big or you’re not 100% sure it’s bug free, do release as Early Access. Even if not for possible bugs, if your game haven’t been heavily beta tested, expect players to ask for changes. This all seem more proper as an Early Access game, than players feeling disappointed at bad design or glitches on a fully completed game.

I will report back after 1 month or so. The main question here is… will this game sell at all after 30 days? or after 1 year? This is an extremely important question, because the key here seems to be able to overlap game profits, hopefully adding up to a relatively reliable “salary” that can allow you to do this full time, and finally call yourself a true gamedev.

Looks great, and thanks for sharing the info! Looking forward to seeing how things change over time.

[GhulamJewel]

Your game art looks beautiful it reminded me of Dust: An Elsyian Tale. Did you draw the art yourself?

Would you know anything about Steam Workshop? Like do they give you access to it after you are greenlit? So can add leaderboards and achievements? So that would mean intially you would have to release without achievements and leaderboards?

[dogzerx2]

@djweinbaum

Congratulations! The game looks great! Really charming art and I think the thumbnail is great. Could you tell us what happens after you’re greenlit? Does someone from steam contact you personally or is it an automated thing? What does the developer back end look like? Can you choose prices per country/region? Does the process for updating the game look easy? Is there good documentation for how to use everything?

Thank you!!

In my case, I just got an automated email when I got the greenlight.

At first the developer page will overwhelm you. It’s nothing like the Asset Store, it’s a bit more complex. But do not despair. Slowly but surely you’ll tackle the list of things required to publish your game. Do contact me if you need help.

Perhaps the trickiest thing is how to upload your game.

After you’re signed up. You get an appID for your game. You’ll need this appID when importing the Steamworks.net package you can download from here https://steamworks.github.io/ You must edit a couple of files and replace a couple of things with your appID.
You’ll also need to download a SDK provided by Steam. And SteamCMD. There’s a useful video in Steam docs, that tells you exactly how to upload your build. If you can’t find it once you’re greenlit, just PM me, it’s actually very easy, just not very straightforward.

I haven’t tried setting a price for specific regions, though when you choose your price it allows you to modify the default values for each currency.

Updating the game is easy. There’s a content folder where the game files you want to upload go (you specify where this folder is in the SDK tools), then you just have to replace the files and re-upload from SteamCMD.

Once you have uploaded, you must select the new update as default. And publish changes.

There’s a neat feature in Steamworks, that they’ll analyse what files have changed or not on every update, so you’ll only be uploading the changed files. So you don’t need to upload the whole game every time, and neither will the players. Just the files that have changed.
It also allows you to go back to previous uploads, just set a previous upload as default, and publish again.

There’s a an extensive documentation inside Steamworks. So far it has been very helpful.

[dogzerx2]

@Billy4184

Looks great, and thanks for sharing the info! Looking forward to seeing how things change over time.

Thank you! I’m also eager to know. I will let you know, and hopefully it’ll be valuable info.

@G-Jewel

Your game art looks beautiful it reminded me of Dust: An Elsyian Tale. Did you draw the art yourself?

Would you know anything about Steam Workshop? Like do they give you access to it after you are greenlit? So can add leaderboards and achievements? So that would mean intially you would have to release without achievements and leaderboards?

Haha, you are extremely kind! Yep ,you can add Steam Achievements and Cloud Saving. There are docs for all of that, though I haven’t gotten to that part yet. Too busy fixing the game!

You’re not obligated to release with Steam Achievements, but it is very recommended.

Once I’ve implemented those things I’ll let you know more about it. I’m sure it’s not difficult at all, though the first time is always tricky.

[djweinbaum]

@dogzerx2

Thank you!!

In my case, I just got an automated email when I got the greenlight.

At first the developer page will overwhelm you. It’s nothing like the Asset Store, it’s a bit more complex. But do not despair. Slowly but surely you’ll tackle the list of things required to publish your game. Do contact me if you need help.

Perhaps the trickiest thing is how to upload your game.

After you’re signed up. You get an appID for your game. You’ll need this appID when importing the Steamworks.net package you can download from here https://steamworks.github.io/ You must edit a couple of files and replace a couple of things with your appID.
You’ll also need to download a SDK provided by Steam. And SteamCMD. There’s a useful video in Steam docs, that tells you exactly how to upload your build. If you can’t find it once you’re greenlit, just PM me, it’s actually very easy, just not very straightforward.

I haven’t tried setting a price for specific regions, though when you choose your price it allows you to modify the default values for each currency.

Updating the game is easy. There’s a content folder where the game files you want to upload go (you specify where this folder is in the SDK tools), then you just have to replace the files and re-upload from SteamCMD.

Once you have uploaded, you must select the new update as default. And publish changes.

There’s a neat feature in Steamworks, that they’ll analyse what files have changed or not on every update, so you’ll only be uploading the changed files. So you don’t need to upload the whole game every time, and neither will the players. Just the files that have changed.
It also allows you to go back to previous uploads, just set a previous upload as default, and publish again.

There’s a an extensive documentation inside Steamworks. So far it has been very helpful.

Wow thanks so much! So much good information here. All very good to know. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. Knowing updating is easy is a relief. Did you take any precautions when structuring your unity build to ensure small changes don’t result in lots of big file changes?

[dogzerx2]

@djweinbaum

Wow thanks so much! So much good information here. All very good to know. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. Knowing updating is easy is a relief. Did you take any precautions when structuring your unity build to ensure small changes don’t result in lots of big file changes?

My pleasure!

I didn’t really take any precautions, in fact I didn’t even know it worked that way until I noticed upload was way too fast after the 1st time.

Before setting a new build as ‘default’, you can preview the changes, and it’ll let you know what changes will be done, also the upload size.

[Tusk]

So I just calculated your profits

WOW

You made over $8000 USD in 1 week on Steam that is Amazing, has this covered the cost to develop the game?

Congrats dude this is amazing, the artwork looks so good was it done in illustrator? how many people worked on this game? how long it took to make?

[Martin_H]

@Tusk

So I just calculated your profits

WOW

You made over $8000 USD in 1 week on Steam that is Amazing, has this covered the cost to develop the game?

Please explain how you arrived at that number. I have a hunch it’s very far off.

[dogzerx2]

@Tusk

So I just calculated your profits

WOW

You made over $8000 USD in 1 week on Steam that is Amazing, has this covered the cost to develop the game?

Congrats dude this is amazing, the artwork looks so good was it done in illustrator? how many people worked on this game? how long it took to make?

Haha, man that would be sweet. But I’m hardly there yet.

I have sold 175 units so far.

I reckon you checked SteamSpy, but at this moment isn’t throwing very accurate numbers. I have no idea how it gets data, but if you check the numbers on the left, it specifies a margin of error of 1000.
So if it says I’ve sold 1000 units, it’s anything ranging from 0 to 2000, lol.

[Aiursrage2k]

Game looks great. Steamspy is not too accurate if you havent sold alot of units

Basically what I would do is try putting your game on sale every 2 months for like 50% off (or whatever ). Because right now your game is going to get buried under all the other games quickly and the only way to get any coverage is through the sale (which will at least be listed int the specials list – getting you some views).

[GarBenjamin]

Hey congrats! I rarely notice games for how they look graphically (probably because superb looking games are commonplace these days) but I remember this from your WIP thread and it really looked superb so much so that even I noticed the beauty of the presentation. So that is really saying something. lol

I’ll grab it tonight or this weekend mainly because you’ve always seemed like a real good fella and obviously put a lot of work into this thing. Of course, it will be cool to check out the actual game as well. lol

[Aiursrage2k]

It’s kind of shame that your game didn’t sell better since it looks like a good product

[zombiegorilla]

Looks great! Any plans for a Mac version?

[sicga123_1]

Game looks great. One of the presenters on the Totalbiscuit co-optional podcast - Dodger - seems to play an awful lot of cat games. Has her own youtube channel - PressHeartToContinue - might be worthwhile approaching her, she usually provides contact details.at the end of the podcast.

[GarBenjamin]

@Aiursrage2k

It’s kind of shame that your game didn’t sell better since it looks like a good product

Yeah but see that is the myth people keep going that if you simply build a great product that is all you need. The “build it and they will come” line of thinking. People won’t come simply for that reason because they have to know it exists first. And when a game is one of very many games and most of those games all look great graphically (which will likely happen more and more because [most] developers seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on how awesome their games look)… there has to be something else to get people’s attention.

Maybe get it featured in Made With Unity if it is not already. Maybe some of the big YouTubers will cover it and recommend that people buy it. It just all goes back to the whole marketing thing again. Maybe he can get an interview or write a post mortem on GameDev talking about spending 3 years lovingly crafting his game. Just do things like this to get the word out not so much just for the regular readers to see it but also in the hope that other sites, YouTubers, etc will see it and want to help him out. A lot of it is simply having the kind of story and coming across as the kind of person that other people will want to help out. IMO.

I certainly do wish him luck though and will buy it tonight or tomorrow. I might tweet about it but I only have a few hundred followers the majority of which are interested in pixel art retro style games. But every little bit helps because the right person may just happen to see a tweet and the snowball starts rolling.

[wccrawford1]

Congrats! Thanks for posting here. I’m looking forward to hearing more about it!

[Dustin-Horne]

@dogzerx2

I started this platformer game it about 3 years ago

It shows, it looks incredibly polished! Congratulations! What age ranges is it good for? My kids might enjoy it, but might be a tad young yet.

[Tusk]

@dogzerx2

Haha, man that would be sweet. But I’m hardly there yet.

I have sold 175 units so far. And don’t forget Steam gets a 30%. And for USA’s sold units another 30% for tax purposes. And USA’s almost half the sales.

I reckon you checked SteamSpy, but at this moment isn’t throwing very accurate numbers. I have no idea how it gets data, but if you check the numbers on the left, it specifies a margin of error of 1000.
So if it says I’ve sold 1000 units, it’s anything ranging from 0 to 2000, lol.

Ooh I see, I saw 1100 owners on steamspy and assumed you sold 1100 units. lol

Damn 30% Tax for USA? good thing my country has 0 laws on these things so I would pay no tax.

But then again I do afterall live on a deserted tropical Island with nothing but coconut palms and the sound of the ocean and tropical bamboo grass.