I have to say, I was very skeptical, but this is probably the best Unity game I have played. Good article on it here: news
Curious if anyone else is having fun with this incredibly indie and yet fun game. It is hard…damn hard.
It’s not my cup of tea (puzzlers) but I can see people would enjoy a new spin on the block pushing genre. I think really it shows people like attention to detail, and you can’t just put a game out that took 5 mins and expect success.
Not into the type of game either but it was interesting to see all of the little game experiments he created leading up to this. A lot of practice. Paid off in the end it seems.
Unfortunately according to Steamspy, it doesn’t look like it’s doing that well financially (< 1500) and it’s been getting a lot of returns. As a game that’s being touted as one of the best puzzle games ever made, I feel the lack of success is kind of frustrating as someone who endeavors to make similarly groundbreaking games.
1 Like
I think it’s pretty clear it’s a niche title. You should expect a large amount of refunds for people who don’t really dig puzzle games but wanted to see what the fuss was. The real customers- people who like this, won’t be getting refunds, so I don’t think it reflects on anything but taste.
The price is too high by far imho. I can buy dark souls 3 for that. In fact I think I will.
2 Likes
@macdude2_1 Well I think it is good to keep in mind what @hippocoder said especially regarding the $30 price tag. Now I actually think it is awesome he set that price and hope that it starts a trend although I doubt it will. Still that will be one more reason for people to either not buy right now (lack of funds) or to get a refund if they do not like some aspect of the game.
Also… the game has 54 reviews on Steam with a Very Positive rating for those reviews. The game was just released this past Sunday (some people only get paid once every other week and others even once per month). That Gamasutra page @tiggus linked says Almost as notable as the game itself is the way that Lavelle is choosing to market it, which is to rely almost entirely on word of mouth. He’s charging $30 for Stephen’s Sausage Roll, and he’s not employing a hard sell. The Steam page is as sparse as it could possibly be.
I think it is more of an example that yes, of course, you cannot rely on just creating a great game. You need to also do the other parts. Pricing it right. Getting the word out. “Word of Mouth” is fine but it takes something to actually get people looking into it to begin with. It does look like that attention is coming in some articles out there. Will they actually reach his niche target audience? Remains to be seen. If he gets some reviews on puzzle game websites and forums I think that would be helpful. Still… $30 price tag at this time is definitely a bold thing to do. I really hope he sees a good return just because I think the current prices on games are lower than they should be. And it is nice to see someone not helping the race to the bottom.
1 Like
I do think that indies can command a higher price point like $30, and I think this is the thinking of most of the supportive developers. But I think when you charge that price point you need something non-niche to back it up. Minecraft isn’t a small niche now. It was, and it was cheap when it was.
This simply doesn’t have the mass market appeal or visual chops to command $30 IMHO. I wish it did, but I’m merely commenting on which way I think market wind is blowing.
Given the concentrated marketing effort by other developers and press, it may well prove doubters wrong, but it is not a risk I would’ve taken. It has mainstream exposure now.
1 Like
It will be interesting to see what the sales numbers are 6 months from now for sure. Having put some time into this game already I think it is worth $30 but then again I am all for indies charging more for their work than they currently do.
I think one of the commenters had a good point which is that since this is really niche charging more is smart, because he can sell less copies, whereas if he dropped the price by half he might not sell double the amount of copies as the market for this type of game is just not that big.
2 Likes
The charging more for niche thing is a pretty solid argument if your title would typically be $5 and you ask for $15. There’s limits. The limit here is you enter the AAA 1 month old price point, and that’s pretty much going to burn you.
I think he should avoid a price point that offers a direct comparison against an AAA title that’s a month old. So perhaps that’s a little under $30 but over most indie titles. $15-$25. There’s a bunch of theory and more on psychological price points.
I really hope people didn’t advise him to charge tonnes just to throw him under a bus and see what would happen.
1 Like
…if there is value there, as in this case there seems to be a lot of praise for it, then you should be able to charge accordingly. A movie ticket is about $10 for 2 hours of entertainment, and a small indie game can be $10 for 8-10 hours of entertainment. We have to do a better job of making it clear that indie games are better forms of entertainment than movies (most people watch only once) and distance the idea of an “indie game” from “shitty free mobile game”.
$30 is a joke, but he’s pushing back against the tide and everybody needs to support the gesture.
1 Like
I’ve thought about buying it just for that reason. If someone likes these puzzle games I can gift it to them? (Surely there are people who do!) Give me a Steam handle or whatever it is that is needed to do such a thing. I do like the idea of him actually standing up against the race to the bottom and saying “I am willing to drop down this far… but no less.”
I also think it is probably a smart move because although he may get non-buying whiners on Steam… he will probably get a higher quality customer. Honestly, don’t know enough about gamers to say for sure but certainly in other industries many businesses are finding out the people who want to pay the bottom of the barrel prices are generally the same ones who complain the most. It is very weird yet very true. So he may have just saved himself a lot of unreasonable requests by charging so much.
BUT… with games you have the consideration of all of the good folks who live in other countries where I’d guess $30 is a huge amount of money to spend on a game.
you might be surprised, give it a try! It is sort of like a rubik’s cube(I think most here are old enough to know what that is). When you have some downtime you just fire it up and play a couple puzzles. To the satisfying hiss of grilling sausage.
2 Likes
I was excited to see this as we all like puzzlers that rack our brains. We play them instead of other shorter games, when we have a few minutes we might have one or 2 attempts before we have to stop, but the problem percolates away in our head. I was even willing to pay the $30usd for the 4 of us to play it but we don’t game more than 1hr on PC per month. If this was available on iOS, especially since the controls seem so simple, this would’ve been another sale for him.
I’ll just have to add it to my list of games to watch for on iOS.
2 Likes
I think its quite obvious that Stephen is not relying on his sausage rolls to make himself a living. Not entirely sure how he is being funded right now, but it seems the sole purpose of his games is to make statements. I think he even more than Jonathan Blow, Stephen is using games as means of self expression. If you check out any of the games at his site: http://www.increpare.com, you can see what I mean.
Just found this article, wow, going to have to try some of his games out.
Really getting the vibe the SSR is basically a mockery of people in many ways. Definitely seeing selling SSR for $30 on Steam as simply an extension of his desire to express himself and his frustrations.
In this respect, I can see where you’re coming from @hippocoder , with any effort into making this game appeal to a larger audience he could have certainly made a lot more. But that clearly wasn’t his goal in the least.
Crazy, crazy guy, haven’t even played his stuff, but the idea that this person exists brings up a lot of questions.
1 Like
Yeah you are right, the controls wouldn’t be hard to replicate on mobile. I’m guessing he just wanted to release on Steam first so it wasn’t perceived as a mobile game that was ported to desktop. Sure it will hit mobile after a bit, makes sense.
This is the first I heard of this guy but I will follow him from now on. It sounds funny already being so passionate about a game but the complexity and genius of these puzzles is hard to explain. You can definitely tell this is years of hard work from someone very talented at mind games.
This goes to show if you have truly engaging “mechanic/content/whatever” the other pieces like graphics and fancy UIs can be prettym uch disregarded. This game is all about the puzzles and the game is just a way to deliver it to you as basic as possible.
I did hear he enjoy’s irritating vegans and that was the whole purpose of the prominent sausage theme. Quite a character.
I noticed the same when checking out many of his previous games. He does seem to be an odd character. Yet from all of his little game experiments you can tell the guy has an incredibly deep understanding of what makes a game… a game. Although very simple, most of these experiments are able to hook players in some way. You can even find an experiment or two where he is testing “training” people how to progress. Although nothing ever actually says that. He knows how to make the game interesting enough that you want to know “what happens next”. And that is something very few people seem to have a mastery of.
Would be interesting to hear @Gigiwoo 's take on his games & the elements of game design in a podcast one day.
2 Likes
This kind of game would probably drive me insane. I don’t have the patience to play such things. I just watched a video where the guy spent 1 hour to figure out 1 level. On his second video he did mention it was becoming kind of addicting [despite the fact that he nearly went insane by the time he completed two levels].
I would actually go the other way on this… the more niche the more you can charge.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/259060/
This game is 3 and a half years old, but still has it’s price tagged at $35. It’s actually one of the most expensive titles in it’s genre, including the AAA entries. For most of it’s release lifecycle it was over $50.
Check out the 1992 style graphics. The franchise couldn’t even get on Steam at all till it got through Greenlight.
That game is incredibly niche. But it services that niche so completely, and so uniquely that it can hold a high price tag years after release.
1 Like