This is the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/652770/Zofia/
Some other fun stats:
- The demo had 27,719 downloads (Almost all from Steam with 45 of those being from itch.io)
- ~334 players (demo and game owners combined) played splitscreen at least once
- ~12% of players beat the game
- ~70% of players quit playing when they encounter the first town
- As of today, the game has had ~2 million impressions and ~800k page visits
- I showed the game at three local expos (which made no noticeable impact on wishlists/sales/views)
I’ve been told the early access release was ‘the release’ and going to 1.0 was essentially a minor update, though my stats have reflected a little differently. Zofia went into early access almost entirely unnoticed and it wasn’t until 1.0 that it got some attention, and more or less bursts here and there since then.
All in all I ran into pretty much every pitfall you could along the way, so I didn’t walk away learning what the “correct” answers are, mostly just things to avoid doing - Which was unfortunately a lot.
That’s it, thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing! How long did development take?
And please share with us the lessons you learned. I’m going to pick up a copy of your game tomorrow to check it out!
From the reviews, it sounds like you’d make people really happy if you added a kick ability haha.
Two million impressions and only 1500 sales, never knew the ratio would be so rough. On the one hand it’s nice that steam pushes obscure indie games so much (I guess that’s where the 30% is worth it). On the other hand, they do it for everyone so I bet it’s hard to stand out and get conversions on those impressions/clicks.
I know I’m guilty of speeding through my discovery queue. Although I at least wishlist things that interest me.
(PS I’ve seen games from major publishers do worse than 1500 sales, but I can’t say more since it’s nda lol)
Yeah the conversion rate is pretty bad. I’ve been told its not visually standout enough to really grab much interest.
There’s a lot of factors, but a lot of it is also luck. You’re looking at an incredibly saturated market, though, so even if you had striking visuals it might not be enough (and usually, it isn’t). I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a fairly typical conversion rate given the Steam method of conveyor belt showcasing.
Besides, you did have otters. That’s a plus!
What’s an impression in this context?
Ah sorry, I mean’t impressions on Steam, which is any case where Steam shows the game to someone like search lists, the discovery page, friends list, etc.
Why haven’t you updated the game in over a year?
I burned myself getting through 1.0 and some of the subsequent patches. When I finally got back to it, I started chasing what turned out to be massive slogs in terms of effort: Upgrading to Unreal Engine 5, getting voice actors, localizing the game, and adding a new area.
All of those essentially ‘failed’ because of technical barriers or other issues, leaving me with very little to show for all that effort.
As for minor patches, I don’t have any excuse.
I’ve been playing your game. It’s actually rather excellent and I’m loving the flying race immensely.
I love the mechanics of it. I wonder if you actually lowered the graphical fidelity of the player characters so they’re more low poly, pixelated text, UI, etc a little and give it a boomer-shooter vibe, perhaps leaned into the whimsy that shows from the otter/ferret character with the other characters, and you leaned into the quake-like vibe I immediately got once I started moving, it’d be received better.
You rock at player movement thought, it’s fun immediately! I also love how doing stuff makes you better akin to Morrowind.
Please keep making games :)
Oh thanks, its much appreciated!
I think I agree, the design and art direction could have been stronger as (especially early on) the game feels a little genre confused. Hopefully whatever comes next gets closer to nailing it.
Even “programmer” art along the lines of Mojang/Minecraft or Synty Studios assets would be great. It’s an accepted and loved aesthetic now and saves a monumental effort on art.
I completely ignore anything Early Access after being burned too many times. Would you say that releasing in EA was “worth it” for you as an indie developer? Would you do it again?
I’m not sure, if I’m being honest.
In this specific use-case (largely linear levels), I don’t think it was particularly useful. I was aiming for more discussion on the mechanics, overall pacing, enemy design, etc when the vast majority of early feedback we got were bug reports.
It wasn’t until 1.0 that a lot more people gave us the feedback we were looking for as they could see it better as a whole, but at that point it was much more difficult to make significant changes as we’d have to go back and make sure the changes worked for the whole game.
If I was to do it again I would do early access as “basically beta” where the game is largely complete but has some room for changes.
Thank you! Given how many games have died in early access — and I suspect some because of early access — I’ve wondered what developers thought about the experience. I appreciate the insight!
I noticed you have a demo, did having that spark downloads?
If I’m being honest, I’m not certain.
I didn’t see any notable increase in wishlists when the demo released, and according to Steam, the demo’s ‘time played’ average is actually way below most other games. The numbers didn’t really get decent until the late early access or early 1.0.
I did have people ask me to set up having the demo save file carry over to the main game so there must be a decent number of people who played the demo and ended up wanting to check more of it out.
Do you have data in how many people that downloaded the demo bought the he game?
I don’t believe I do - Unless Steam tracks that somewhere, but as far as I can tell, I don’t think they do.
Interesting that the game mostly saw traction after 1.0. So many games spend their whole life in beta that I would think most people wouldn’t bat an eye at it. Though a 1.0 launch means the dev feels it’s a full experience, and with so much to play, I can see holding off until that point. Also, it’s legitimately crazy that the trade shows didn’t impact sales at all!
At any rate, this post has gotten me to try out the demo, and I’m a few minutes in so far. There are certainly a number of QOL improvements I’d have expected, but I think your team of 5 has done an awesome job :D
For a moment I thought the game, based off the name, was a different game I have zero interest in. But this looks interesting enough for me to wanna try it.
Edit:
Played what I think is the whole demo. At least one path. Had a lot of fun. Especially thanks to the power of geometry allowing me to get back into the village after accidentally leaving it. Definitely a game I’m picking up when I can.
I also recently pushed my (first) project to an early access (basically demo) release. How many wishlists did it take for steam to start recommending your game to folks (is that the 1.0 release spike?) Did you do promotion for the game between early access and release? Thanks for the info, very interesting and helpful.
As I recall, Steam shows your game for ~30 days once it reaches full release. This is somewhat limited unless it starts taking off in interest in which case it shows it more often. I don’t believe wishlists counts actually effect how often a game is shown, I think Valve has said its mostly playtime/players, how many purchases it has, if its localized, and some other minor factors.
Yes we promoted the game on Reddit, Imgur, expos, Discord, and a few other corners of the internet. I also reached out to many streamers but only had a handful reply, and fewer played it. The only one that took off was /r/games which amassed 40k page views for the ~hour it was up.
Once we hit 1.0 we kind of slowed down on marketing because I personally was getting burned out at that point.
