Found this game after I discovered the long-finished XKCD Game Jam earlier today.
It's possible to get across the road, but as far as I can tell it's not possible to do so without causing a major accident.
Thanks for playing! During development we did not do anything, that is why our kickstarter tanked. We did launch the game as early access on itch.io pretty much one year ago to get some feedback (really great to have a small tester audience first, don't just throw it on Steam!). But it became obvious that just platform traffic is not enough. At first I would try to understand how the "game is played" from the perspective of press, bloggers and more. You need to do the fundamentals right. On top of that try to tell your story and that of the game and get people involved in the Beta/EA of the game.
Last part was the most successful for us but wouldn't have worked without the preparation.
Best of luck with your game! If you want, send us something on discord if you want us to give you more feedback :)
And for independent developer that don't have or don't want a store of there own (because it's a big way to ruin yourself) there's always the Humble Widget or itch.io who take under 10% for selling your game.
The problem is that lots of these marketplaces (Bethesda.net, Blizzard app, Paradox's client, Ubisoft's uPlay, lots of others I'm sure) exist for the sole purpose of first-party games.
Steam is a marketplace which does have first-party Valve games but it mostly has games from other developers. Other open marketplaces that focus on third-party games include GOG and Itch. But Humble and GMG don't really count since they mostly sell Steam keys instead of distributing games themselves.
If you want Steam to have competition, buy from Itch or GOG.
If you're planning to move to linux the best possible option is to stick with steam, they treat linux users as first class citizens and even actively contributes into making the ecosystem better for everyone by supporting open standards and making a lot of their tools open source, so people doesn't need to be locked to their solutions if they want to buy games. There's the humble store which has helped linux users a lot too and AFAIK is a pioneer regarding gaming on linux with their humble bundle initiative, on top of that they give you a DRM-free copy along an steam-key most of the time, there's no client tho. There's itch.io too which has a client that supports linux perfectly, it's even open source if i recall correctly, the negative part is that (i may be wrong) the game catalog is lacking compared to other stores. There's gog too, while there has no been any remarkable news lately about linux support and their client, they sell linux versions of games and the whole store is DRM-free, which is important.
Fortunately there's a lot of stores so we're not starved regarding options, specially if you consider steam which is the biggest one on windows too, but it's sad discord doesn't want to dance with us in this party. The more the merrier.
Hmm, was it actually itch.io? I tried to search for it and "rimworld" didn't come up on it
https://itch.io/search?q=rimworld
Maybe it's been removed, but make sure he didn't buy it from ilch.io or something.
edit: from the other thread, looks like it was removed
We've been addressing the feedback in this thread, if the mods are reading it'd be nice to give "itch.io developer" flair for:
(feel free to DM me if you need any sort of proof, team page for starters)
we're still trying to figure out the best way to rename that category to fit all the good times in, folks can check out our efforts here: https://itch.io/t/384953/physical-games-classification-project
It's Itch.Io, which is mostly small 2D games. Unreal is not really the first choice for that kind of content, and 5% royalty is probably too much hassle for most devs to bother with when you have very low sales.
If you included Steam and specified a minimum revenue then Unreal would be a much bigger share.
This is your dream game? You don't want to screw it up.
So don't start with it.
Firstly, your choice of Unity or Gamemaker really depends on you. No-one can tell you which you'd prefer so, some advice:
Start small. Clone something existing, like snake, or flappy bird, or something. Do it a few times until you can make a rudimentary game in a day without stressing. Do a few Game Jams. Switch between your two choices when you do so (even make the same game in each, see how you get on)
Once you're comfortable with your engine of choice, pick something about your game you want to do, and implement that in another small game. (For example, just make a simple platformer)
Then make something where you interact with NPCs, have a chat system, an inventory. Doesn't need to include your platformer stuff. It doesn't even need to be a full game.
Then move on to an RPG. Something with statistics, combat, shops, items, levels etc. It doesn't even have to be a platformer. It could be all text-based (take this as an example)
Identify key systems of your game, break it down. Make something small with each of them.
Not only will you have your dream game by the end of it, you'll have a bunch of smaller games along side it. You'll have a portfolio, a journey and a story besides.
[edit] also, check out the subreddit's sidebar, there's loads of resources there for Unity. And check out /r/gamedev for more stuff.
Oh, and Stack Overflow is a great place to look for the answer to questions that other people have probably asked before :)
Hi Todd! First of all, congrats on releasing your game! I've been actually following it a bit and saw a few mentions of the game before.
A few things:
1) itch.io offers only a fraction of Steam audience. If I were you - I'd spend those $100 and make a Steam page, you'll probably get a bit more sales, even without a following.
2) $14.99 seems a bit too steep, probably due to the graphical style (the assets are from Kenney, right? I have definitely seen this style before). It's your choice of course, but if this was my game - I'd put it cheaper. I don't live in a first world country tho so take it with a grain of salt. You can take a look at how Deathwar Redux 3030 (game that is apparently similar to yours) did it: they started cheaper than 14.99, but kept adding features and increasing the price occasionally.
In any case, good job for getting the game to where it is at and good luck with further development.
I know you are pissed off that people don't like it. My game is not the best either but it is polished enough to be shown to public. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/668230/SLIFI_2D_Planet_Platformer/
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Just try to keep on making more and more games. Even if you think your first games are awesome, try to show it to objective people and then decide if you make it public. Or try itch.io or something. But try to improve and then upload to Steam.
As strange as it sounds, game development can be cheap hobby; especially for 2D. Godot is a free (in both beer and speech) and easy to use once you start learning. For art, use Krita or Aseprite. Krita is pretty normal drawing program while Aseprite is used for pixel art. Both are technically free (Aseprite is $15 but could be compiled for free). If you don't want to get create your own art, websites like itch.io have free assets you can use.
Thanks for posting this here u/diggyhole41! Glad people are enjoying the game :)
Also I fixed the terrible button click issue, so that should work for everyone on the itch.io page now.
Lot's of love <3 And all hail Remouladin!
To put it really simply, just have a lot of content. Design/build games and put them on an itch.io page. Do game jams. Start 1GAM. Polish the games you like, and try releasing them (an entire skill by itself!). Employers want to see that you are inherently passionate about games outside of school/uni, and a diverse/dense portfolio of actual, playable games will show them that. You'll also build up the technical skills you need to break into the industry at the same time, and get a good feel for specifically what you enjoy making. See if there are any conferences near you that you can attend. Go to them and meet other game developers and pick their brains and tart building those connections early on. Good luck!
It's not for necessarily clicks, it's for less work for the artists. When you have to draw 3 characters compared to one, it's a big difference. Thumbnails can take 2-4 hours to produce, depending on the artist and what there is to draw, and we don't want to strain them too much. We don't want to end up using stock/reused artwork to save on time/artist capacity either. Every thumbnail we want to be unique, that's one of the staples of the channel.
However, I have been focusing on more STRONG reaction images, as opposed to more boring thumbnails that are stiff and lifeless. When I mean reaction, I don't mean a like screaming face/baity shit, but imagery that evokes a reaction from the viewer (such as fat dude sim, itch.io games etc). Sometimes, cutting down on drawings and just make 1 or 2 drawings look REALLY good to achieve that better then having all 3.
Itch is pretty good. I can't find the tweet now, but I think I remember seeing a tweet from them talking about how they take reports of games with bad messaging seriously. This was in the wake of steam throwing up their hands and saying they didn't want to filter out content that promotes bigotry or incites violence.
I feel like Steam might not be the right platform for Indie Developers. The generic store page takes away most of the charm that makes an Indie Game. I have found that websites like itch.io give a much better platform. I personally use GameJolt because it lets you customize the way you want to present your game in a really nice way. It is also easy to find the kind of game you are looking for on there. Additionally it gives you the option to write a DevLog, which not only can help you keep track of what you have been doing on your game, but it also gives you a way of showing people the amount of work you put into your game.
Try putting your game up on one of those platforms. It would be a shame to see such a dedicated and well polished game rot, just because steam makes it incredibly hard to find and market.
Honestly, I feel like people put forward reasons like security, moral/ethical concerns, and all the other things they criticise about EGS because they're nice-sounding rational reasons, but I truly believe the biggest reason people dislike the EGS is the fact that it divides their collection yet again into yet more launchers. I know that is the case for me, at least. What this industry needs, more than anything, is more stores but less launchers -- sort of like how Ubi games work on Steam but without launching UPlay before the game.
No one likes to see their collection split up across multiple libraries, and I know I've bought a few games I forgot I already owned on other launchers or that I rebought on Steam just to have it there as well. All that being said, I don't know how to solve this, I like the approach of something like Discord and Razer Cortex of trying to collect all your games in one place, but all they can detect are those you have currently installed. But I know I'd buy from GoG or even itch.io a lot more often if it meant that these games were to be automatically added to a all-encompassing personal library of mine.
https://itch.io/t/154771/activate-on-steam-#post-296910
"ONE YEAR CELEBRATION:
Sorry to all honored fans and players but there won't be any STEAM KEYS! Only download! Please, read our comment below.
We are deeply disappointed with all scammers who tried to take STEAM Key, not the game itself.
Now we exactly know why Itch and Humble are no giving away free STEAM keys. Since we wrote you will get one key for subscribing our newsletter, it doesn´t take 4 hours and we have 4000 subscribers with really strange addresses and so on... It is obvious these emails are from scammers or bots who want STEAM key (for re-sale?) and not for the game itself.
Since we are really small developers, we cannot take that risk because these scammers would overtake control of our sales.
To all true players with the heart, please apologize us for this misunderstanding, we are new in this business and this is really new valuable experience what we didn't expect.
You can still enjoy the game through download or amazing Itch client but again – no steam key.
Thanks for the passion and your support!
<3 Paperash"
>but the only company that cares about us is Valve
The lead developer of the itch.io desktop app uses Linux primarily and the entire client, as well as various libraries and software stacks powering their store and related stuff, are FOSS.
Kinda like Steam and GOG, it's a cross-platform DRM-free gaming platform. The biggest difference is that it allows anyone to host games, no fees or votes are required.
Many devs release games on both Steam and Itch, ex: Super Hexagon, VVVVVV, Screencheat, Ravenfield, Boson X, many more.
Itch has a pay-what-you-want model, but you can set a price minimum. It also allows you to host Android games, and misc files.
I like it better than GOG, personally. https://itch.io/app
This is the amazing work of /u/AstroTibs . He completed the game without save/load feature and adjusted the 3d rendering accordingly. Once finished he played through the game once again to make sure everything worked out as he had planned. 3DN file and more detail about his craft can be found at: https://itch.io/t/30542/finishedmega-man
The Last Night actually first debuted in the 2014 Ludum Dare cyberpunk challenge thing, and the initial iteration is playable over here.
Interestingly, Va-11 Hall-A was part of the same Ludum Dare, which ended up being fairly successful with its release.
Hey, this is my game so I just wanted to point a few things out:
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1) I'm an Oculus Start member and told Oculus what I was going to do via multiple channels.
2) If they contacted me and asked me to stop future sales I would, but I'm sure they won't.
3) Developers can already sell Oculus games without giving Oculus a cut. Any game on the official store has the option to create keys and sell wherever they like, including Itch.io. Oculus doesn't earn anything from key sales and they still introduced the feature. They don't mind because most games are discovered via Oculus Home / Apps / website.
4) Imagine how many "developer registrations" Oculus are getting to enable Sideloading. They know how many people are using SideQuest and are fine with it.
5) While Oculus have tight curation for Quest, they are still pro-indie and want devs to grow and keep creating games. The ability to earn money is an important part of that.
6) Sideloading is a niche audience, it's not going to worry Oculus.
7) Piracy is the only concern with SideLoading as Oculus have warned in a previous post and even then (IIRC) they hinted that the offending users would be affected not everyone using SideLoading.
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tldr; don't worry, it's fine.
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It would be great if /u/OculusSupport dropped by and said "lol, this doesn't worry us :)"
>The only way EG can compete is to make deals with publishers
If the only way to compete is by screwing me, maybe I don't want this competition after all.
>Why are people so eager to support Steam as a giant virtual monopoly in the online game store ecosystem
Personally, because their Linux support is really good. But generally, I'd more than happy with GOG as well. If Humble or itch.io had local prices/local currency support, I'd be all for them as well (and itch has an even more generous share for developers). None of them are so overtly hostile as Epic with their exclusives, and all of them are already better for me in terms of feature and support.
>Why are people so eager to support Steam as a giant virtual monopoly in the online game store ecosystem
They theoretically could, but never did and there is no sign they will start now. On the other hand, Epic doesn't even have the same market share and they already started to do it.
>Without competition steam has no incentive to change
They have changed a lot over the years, including successful and failed initiatives. Refunds, curators, developer pages, recent reviews, controversial content policies, anti-review bombing, greenlight, steam direct, workshop, paid mods, big picture mode, steam runtime, marketplace, their security tools which are now open, steam controller, steam machines, steam os, steam play, steam vr, now the valve index... They are not even all good things, but we can't deny they have been changing or trying to change.
If you dont want to use the APIs why not publishing everywhere. If you want to use APIs for achievements, billing etc. It would require some effort to publish on multiple platforms. So I recommend try not to use platform specific features so much as a solo dev to have more time for the core game.
As a solo developer I also highly recommend using a Cross-Plattform Framework, so you can write code once and deploy to the most important plattforms without additional work.
I'm using LibGdx, it's free & open source, it's java or kotlin and has a good documentation and many extension.
You can run your game made with LibGDX on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and even as a HTML5 game in the browser.
You could publish at: Windows Store, Apple Store (Mac, iOS), Google Play, itch.io, (Gamejolt, Kongregate, Miniclip or any other HTML5 game publishing site)
It's a good idea to choose as many platforms as possible if your goal is to reach as many players as possible.
No to both. Humble Bundle's main business is selling Steam keys, their DRM-free content is a small subset of their sales. Itch.io does not restrict DRM usage (see this topic), it just tends to be.
The lack of consensus that punching people is OK is "an exasperating subject", apparently. (Note also that the article is 'filed to "Donald Trump"').
The game comes from here: https://itch.io/jam/punch-nazis
That said, I think Kotaku have missed the obvious philosophy of this game. Inserting political messages into games stops them from being fun! Look how annoying it is when political messages interupt gaming! The game is much better without the crude politics. Good work ;)
My first try at this awesome game I found at itch.io. Check it out here!: https://gamesandapps.itch.io/attack-on-titan-vr-by-kosma
If I didn't almost fall plenty of times his could be my new workout routine. It's a bit hard to grasp the controls at first but it after you get it, the fun really starts!
There's nothing wrong with Flash games, other than how Flash is generally unsupported today. Nothing wrong with little web games in general. It's also good fun when people are hacking little playable things together while learning, and sharing them with their friends..
But I guarantee that any web (or Flash) game that is decent quality and appeals to a moderate-sized audience, has had hundreds of hours of work put in it. And there's something weird about working for hundreds of hours, but not be willing to put up the $100 you'd quickly get back from making even a few sales. The $100 is a spam filter; and if you don't think the global gaming community is interested in buying even a few copies of your game, then maybe you shouldn't expect Steam to advertise it to the world.
Itch.io seems like a better fit than Steam; but there's also a lot of good stuff there, and the quality level is far higher than <$100 projects. Perhaps u/DeveloperLuke has a good point; it could be fun to have a site where people could post their throwaway prototypes etc; stuff that isn't fit for selling, but still might be fun to mess around with.
I think that those people fear that Steam might end up in a state like the other open marketplaces (AppStore and Play Store) where good games barely exist and are being drowned out by thousands of cheap clones and cashgrabs.
Although that's something that probably won't happen because the problem isn't that those markets are open, it's because they have a completely different audience and barely any tools for filtering and finding good stuff.
Itch.io is proof that open marketplaces can work. If you look at it's latest releases, you'll see that it's being flooded with games of varying quality, but only the really good ones will ever reach the frontpage.
Leaps were made, Discord Store, Itch.io and others shops that had lower cuts from sales. Nobody cared, well some cared but most didn't. Not even enough to release alongside Steam. Not until Epic started paying out big bags full of money to promising high profile indie devs and all publishers that took them up on it. And suddenly the narrative of "Steam takes too much" is born.
A lot of devs do put their games on itch.io, just not exclusively. The website gets less traffic then steam and is even more flooded with games, so releasing a game exclusively on itch.io would cut into sales numbers a lot. Unlike epic they dont offer devs money up front for going with them exclusively. However it still makes sense to release on itch in addition to other platforms, since devs will get a bigger share of the money from the games they do sell there.
Well first of all we did not do any marketing for this, this was released more than a year ago, I think 1 year and a month. At first we got sales from the new page, + we had a price of 5$, promotion for the first 5 days, if I remember correctly. We upped the price and the sales declined in volume, but made up in price. All in all, we made around 400 - 500, but this involved itch.io as well. People who were interested we directed to itch because we get a larger cut, 90% instead of 70%. On Unity, there were months without a single sale, and then there were months with 3-4 sales. There has to be something with the algorithms. With the redesign of the website, we did not get any sale, but after a while we started to get more.
Reason for making this free is that we published another pack, and that one we plan to support, and since we are shifting our focus there, we're making this free. Also some publicity for the next pack.
+ the amount of free assets that I have used from there or GitHub, wanted to make something free.
This is just my observation regarding sales and stuff. I don't have any more data, + very few people reached out to me and talked about the asset. So I have no thoughts whatso ever, this is why I want to hear from people more, especially what they do with it.
- Read every book you can on Game Design.
- Watch every GDC talk you can from the dozens in their youtube channel.
- Listen to designers tell their stories in podcasts such as Designer Notes or The AIAS.
- Learn programming and the basics of art so you can implement your own designs. A design that has not been implemented is not a real thing. Implementation is where designs show their mistakes, ambiguities, holes and missing parts.
- Make games. Small, medium, alone or with others. Not just start them, but finish and polish a few. Publish some of them in places like itch.io, AppStore and Google Play, Steam, or just on your own page.
- Do stuff outside of games, open your mind and learn to appreciate and understand ideas and topics that games don't do or touch today but might in the future.
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It will take a while, but you have a life to live, don't neglect that. You are a person not just a game developer.
How about learning to read first? http://take.ms/P22Gw You can also enter 0 and get to downloads that way. That's just how itch.io works. Not to mention the second link that leads to a free WebGL version on Newgrounds.
Hi! trivial-gamekit is designed to be trivial to use to create simple things :) Also, check out lispgames wiki for more or less complete information about current state of lisp gamedev.
P.S.: Lisp Game Jam 2018
Since you already sell Steam gift cards: wondering if you can talk to https://itch.io about some collaboration. Smaller game distributors should be more accepting of new initatives, especially grassroots efforts like this.
In any case, great initiative, can't wait to see what comes out! /u/tippr gild
It looks like they were offering free steam keys up until about 15 hours ago when they realised they were getting scammed by thousands of bot accounts for resale. So no steam key to go along with it unfortunately.
It's completely free and unrestricted to publish a game on itch.io, apparently. Of course, there's restrictions on copyrighted content, but other than that...
This part of the FAQ puts it best.
There's also a lot of community-friendly features, like letting people follow their favorite devs and stuff.
Basically, itch is a completely open market for games and I think even more than that.
This has been requested a lot, finally got time to organize this! From August 25th to 27th you'll be able to join the game jam and create a game using only pre-made game assets.
For all the rules (and pre-registration) look here;
3DNes V1.4 change log:
[New Feature][Shape Editor] multi shape processing (adjust, delete), multi shape merging
[New Feature][Shape Editor] manually select tiles to create new shape.
[Facility] Add 79 pre build 3dn file of popular nes games
[New Feature][Pro] Vive - Oculus - 3D Monitor support
[Change][Window][Linux] 3dn files will be managed at $3dnes_path/3dn
[Bug Fix] Fix texture rendering bug in some nvidia cards. This is a regression bug.
Full change log: https://itch.io/t/78771/version-14-release
Full change log:
https://itch.io/t/50041/version-12-release-virtual-reality-first-person-view-and-more#post-77443
Exactly. Itch.io allows developers to take a 100% cut if they choose to. Discord as you mentioned also offers a lower cut.
It isn't about the cut. It's about the large pile of Fortnite cash they are paid to go exclusive.
OP is asking for roguelike favorites only on itch.io, specifically. It's a commercial site that distributes indie games. OP probably has an account there and I guess prefers getting their games from that source? (Similar to how some people occasionally ask for specifically "good roguelikes on Steam.")
If you're like me, and you're far too slow to crank out any sort of game in that time, may I recommend the Jam Fists Into Nazi Faces, which will be running for the next four years.
I reckon I'll be able to submit something in that time!
~~Only about two hours left but itch.io is running a similar bundle for charity:~~
~~Yeah, I know, not many Steam keys (I think four or five at most...), much of it is weird experimental stuff, etc. but if you want to give $20 to worthy charities (at least they are "worthy" to me, ACLU & Planned Parenthood) and get a bundle with 173 items, then you have TWO HOURS LEFT! There's multiple tiers but much of the "good stuff" is in the $20 tier.~~
~~Edit: Original GameDeals post about this bundle. I hope itch extends the deadline.~~
The itch.io Good Bundle is over.
I imagine most (aside for Humble and GMG) are unhappy. From my understanding, unlike Steam, Epic has to give developers the "ok" to sell elsewhere using Epics keys.
Epic allowing BL3 to be sold on GMG is a huge mistake Epic made since GMG uses a 70/30 revenue, which is the very thing Tim claims to be fighting against. They could of at least justified Humble because Humble offers a revenue some-what in line with Epics (75/10/15) with the 10% going to charity.
Due to Epic seemingly being in charge of how developers sell their keys, this also means that Epic is currently denying developers from selling keys on their own site, meaning developers lose out on being able to receive 100% of the revenue if they are Epic exclusive or want to sell Epic keys.
It makes you think, who is really "taxing" developers, Steam or Epic? Steam may have the higher revenue, but they certainly justify a lot more through their service and the freedom given to developers. Epic lacks both of these things and is currently taking 12% while offering nothing. This is why I think developers are better off with Itch.io, Humble Widgets (not the same as Humble Store btw) or selling on their own site, as Epic is currently overcharging for what they currently offer.
A bit of advice... You're looking for a job... But clicking on your itch.io, the first thing seen is "Go outside or the sun with fucking rape your shit". Which is fine for some people, but it's not exactly putting your 'best foot forward' when looking for a job.
Believe it or not, there are way more games that have only a couple of books than there are games with huge piles of expensive books. A few games to consider beyond the ones already mentioned:
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Honestly, there are vast numbers of games available at places like DriveThruRPG and Itch.io, for wildly varying prices (Some as cheap as free) as long as you are willing to sift through things a bit and content yourself with a digital product. If you want a physical book, prices go up a bit, but nonetheless, many games are pretty affordable.
(Could be the 'net nanny at work... will check later.)
Are you honestly calling the creator's brother's illness as a "marketing scheme" to get cash? Because that is what it sounds like to me. The changes in Patreon is causing him to go to Steam AND he is putting it on Itch.io too, I believe. You can even play the classic still for free.
Also, why are you being so vicious towards people you don't know? "A merry band of hipsters"? I'm honestly quite baffled.
So you know, I am not trying to be rude in any way here. I'm more or less just confused.
I think it's pretty scummy to want to hack these games when there's so few otome content out there. We need to support the developers so we get more, not cheat them out of their effort and money.
There are completely free otome if you do not have the money. Check out itch.io for free otome games.
GOG does not even have a Linux client and their 1st party games aren't on Linux, the fact that Linux users support GOG astonishes me.
Itch is IMO a much better platform. They have a Linux client, still DRM-free like GOG, no 1st party games, but there's already 12000 Linux games available.
I don't think that's a problem though. Let itch.io be that place. Its client is getting better all the time, and it's extremely welcoming of smaller niche titles.
Steam has never been where I personally looked for small indie games. Only the bigger "double A" or "triple I" indies like your Owlboy's and your Spelunky's.
Desura has been going under for a while now, and there were reports a bit ago about them not paying developers for months. It looks as though this is still going on. https://itch.io is a really great place for publishing, as well as Indie Game Stand, as they, IIRC, give the most profits to games (But obviously don't have the same user base as steam)
I would advise you to get into those bankruptcy proceedings. They owe you money, and even something is better then nothing. Good Luck!
Second story linked today about Epic vs Steam in favor of Epic.
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Paradox, the company known for releasing the chassis of game and later releasing all the bells and whistles that make it great via nickle and dime DLC's complaining about getting nickle and dimed? Rofl.
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> "I think it is, especially for new developers. They have lower margins, to get into the market. But I think it's also a matter of decency. I mean, how much does it actually cost to deliver a game?
Then why charge $60 + DLC for them? If it's so cheap to deliver a game, you (Epic) could release games for a lot less and still make money. Or, you know, release a full game and not force people to pay even more for the other parts of the game you felt you could get away with charging more for, even if they are already developed and part of the existing game files you got with that initial $60 purchase.
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> For his part, Sweeney has publicly stated that it will abandon its exclusives strategy if Valve changes Steam's revenue share to offer developers a more favourable deal.
Way to pass the buck there Sweeney.
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> It's a huge advantage. In some cases, that 30% taken is more than the profit for a small studio. That's just crazy, right? So that's a huge incentive for some of us.
So, some indie devs release their product and don't make enough money to cover their own costs, and that Valve's fault? Even though the company knew the deal beforehand (same deal they all get)? Seems like poor planing on their side. Or a bad game.
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Comments on the article point out itch.io, as an example of a company that does a 90/10 split. And others point out that no one knows it because they don't make enough money to promote their own platform. Sure, 90/10 split for the dev sounds awesome. But that's nothing if no one buys the game.
Bit disappointed to see that there's no theme; just "make a game for Linux" doesn't do much for the imagination.
The Godot 2MB Jam sounds much more interesting; there are plenty of ways to get impressive-looking games into two megabytes. (Hint: it usually involves procgen.)
And I'd be remiss not to mention Godot Wild Jam #8, which starts this Friday.
No, I don't think so. For example Epic Games Marketplace changed it's provision from 30% to 12% (just because), Itch.io takes $0.30 + 2.9% per transaction, Turbosquid takes 60%, cgtrader takes 20%-30% and Unity Asset Store and Steam take 30%. So it's all "just because".
Also I believe Ubisoft chooses to sell their games also on Steam and give 30% to Valve, because it is still more profitable for them than to just sell on Uplay. Many companies try to resign from selling on Steam - for example Epic and now Bethesda. All and all, there are many players who will not buy the game, if it's not on Steam, so even big AAA companies choose to suffer the 30% (or maybe they pay less, who knows).
This is excellent! Keep working on it, lots of potential here. I'll download the game and maybe report back with some ideas if I have any.
In general I'm fan of anything procedural, roguelike with-role playing elements.
Some very good games began their life on itch.io. Compound and Gorn comes to mind. Your game looks like another one to follow. Please keep us updated here on reddit as you update and expand the game :)
Ugh, GOG. This is way too many strikes from them--just sent in a request to delete my account.
I should have cut over to itch.io long ago, at least this gets my butt in gear on that.
With the success of the previous jam, ( https://itch.io/jam/godot-wild-jam with 20 brilliant entries and 143 ratings) we decided to go ahead and make the wild jam a monthly event. Super excited and looking forward to this month's games!
We had loads of evidence in the past, when games would hardly shift any units at all, then the developer got onto Steam and things changed. Anecdotally many developers have said that far more than half their revenue comes from Steam, even when they have alternative storefronts available. Should developers also have their game somewhere like itch.io? Sure. And?
Well boys, this is it. The last Tuesday before Sweets Ring launches on May 5th. It will be up at AROUND midnight, give or take a half hour for me to figure out the publishing.
https://itch.io/profile/young-stove here is where it will be publishing!
I'd just like to take this time to say thanks to each and every one of you who have been showing your love over these past 17 weeks. It really means a lot to me that I have people like you who I can share my passion with. Your support has really helped push me forward to make something better than it would have been if I was just doing it for school.
I'd also like to give a shout-out to /u/silent_antagonist. His support during this entire process can not be understated. Sweets Ring would not be in the place it is today without his constant support and feedback. And without his unending encouragement, it would not even be here.
Overall, I know I'm not releasing a DDLC. I'm not releasing a Katawa Shoujou or a Muv Luv (Though I have been told its better than Subahi). However, I am proud to stand beside this, and I'm extremely happy to have finished what I've started. It's just a first step, but it's MY first step. And I can not wait for you all to play it, and I already can't wait to start my next project.
Next week I'll probably say a little something about Sweets Ring, but I'm going to mainly shift back into the fuuka persona and talk about life. For those of you who put up with these weekly shill posts, thank you!
But who knows maybe next week I'll check in saying I'm a billionaire Playboy off my renpy game.
My opinion since the announcement is pretty much the same as in the video. I believe that it'll filter out at least some scams, trash and other not-so-desirable stuff while not really limiting any "real" developers.
It may sound harsh, but in my opinion if 100$ are a significant cost for a game dev then they simply do not belong on Steam. The reason being that if you actually do want to make a game that some general-ish audience would be interested in (as in, even niche one, but not just your friends and family) then you need stuff like a company, trademark on the name, a lawyer, accountant - and that's not counting paying other people that help you with the game (even the smallest indie titles have at least music or art done by someone else than the lead developer). And that stuff costs way more than recoupable 100$.
So yeah, if it's a major cost just release on itch.io and use that money and / or money from your fans to pay the Steam fee if you really need to be there.
Indeed. And in those 2 years they have made at least 47 "games" and 3 "music players".
Note that they made that many "games" in half the time it took that one dude to make Stardew Valley.
>30% vs 12% is a perfectly logical and sound business decision for a developer to make. In fact it’s so much of a difference it’s practically common sense to do so.
Itch.io allows 0%. It's almost as if there was more to digital distribution than the store cut.
This is itch.io, right? It's where indie developers post their stuff, and if they're actually part of the community they should've known that it's a struggle for indie developers to make a game and they need all the financial support they can get. What a fucking moron.
Hey guys, the demo is available only on itch.io for now, but it's going up on Steam once that's sorted out. It includes two puzzle rooms inspired by ZE, one simple tutorial-type puzzle room and another that's bigger and we're told to be pretty fun. :)
I like the idea. I would tie it in with some Grand Goal or Central Objective. Perhaps the Andermen are the descendants of Atlantis. Maybe it's a story similar to Lord of the Flies - w*ho will have the conch?* Maybe each player has a secret, that plays a role through-out the game and changs game-session from game-session. Check out the Micro-RPG Jam, and look for settings and mechanics. The resource page pinned to this subreddit has a lot of good ideas in books like Game Design Patterns, where the author goes over various games and their mechanics.
Many times I see games that have a mechanic specially built for the settings. This is especially prevalent in the Micro-Jam, but also in many full Games in Game Design Patterns. There's always a variation that makes the game the game.
> Compared to other stores, Steam goes down a lot, especially around sales
Although no other platform in existence operates on the same level on Steam AND hosts massive events like these Sales, where it's millions of users all want to get a piece of the cake all at once. Considering the shear number of concurrent users actively browsing and loading these webpages at the same time, you've gotta understand... It sucks, and it could be improved, but just think about the scale of this.
A graph in this article states that in a year, Steam delivers about 15.39 exabytes of data to customers - just for another sense of scale.
> Even though the digital store has unlimited space, games still have to share with eachother.
Well, Steam hosts millions of games, so it's understandable. I personally see tonnes of "garbage" games, but that's also down to personal taste. Eventually, whether you like it or not, the EGS will contain games that you consider to be "garbage"; I don't like Fortnite, so that's already on the list for me.
Going back to scale: Steam is an open platform, where basically any game can be hosted; just like on a website like itch.io. It sucks that we often have to sift through games we don't wanna see, although the filtering options aren't too bad, and you can find some great games in there.
The Art of Fight
Microsoft Maquette
Apex Construct Demo
Circuit Slinger
In Orbit
Cosmic Sugar VR
Self-knowledge VR https
Where Thoughts Go: Resolutions
The Last Day Defense
Sniper Rust Trial https
Aleatory https://katanalevy.itch.io/aleatory
Game of Gates https://ardoos.itch.io/game-of-gates
Kungfucious https://gattai-games.itch.io/kungfucious
Listed in the video, for those of you who dont want want to or cant watch the video.
I totally agree.
I'd put a lot of "walking simulators" in that category, and there's a ton of experimental stuff that's basically short, artsy experiences created as a result of game jams and sitting on itch.io
I feel like I'm always pushing the MC from The Rose of Segunda (PC, itch.io or Steam), but I just love her so much. She's been sent to the palace by her overbearing mother to snag the prince for a husband, but she's not about to do anything she doesn't want to do. You can play her as a total rebel or have her play the game of nobility in her own interest. She can smack a butler on the arse, backstab noble ladies, rewrite a classic play on the fly, and get geeky with a scholar.
All the love interests are impressed by intelligence, wit, courage, and an independent mind. One of them in particular enjoys a conniving sneak of an MC. He is my favourite, of course. ;)
Along with what other folks have already mentioned*, itch.io is also a pretty nice platform, both for webby games (your html/css/js thing) and for downloadable games (your jar). You can even do both for cases where you've got a unity game and want to offer a web build as well as native binaries or something.
*As far as I'm aware kongregate doesn't host downloadable content, and doesn't do embedded java (and I believe most modern browsers don't do embedded java either, because security)
Itch.io and Gamejolt.com usually has free and awesome videogames. That's where I found out SCP Containment Breach, Project Frequency, Path of Shadows and RWBY - Vale of Darkness.
As an indie game dev, I wish more people would know about itch.io. Uploading and managing games is easy and can be done under linux (you can even write shell scripts to upload a bulk of different versions or games, because the uploader is a simple binary file, not a complete shell like Steam) and they're giving indie devs a good exposure on their frontpage without taking anything. The only problem itch.io has is that there are not enough people around to generate meaningful traffic.
Also, if you want to support indie games, fuck GOG because they're gatekeeping the hell of that shop and will only take games that are mainstream enough to promise a lot of sales. Steam at least gives you a chance via greenlight (we'll see if that will change in a negative way) but GOG? They'll write you one e-mail telling you that your game is too niche. Game over.
There's some fun games created on this theme as part of the recent Fermi Paradox Jam, I would recommend trying Epitaph if you only try one.
Be prepared to lose quite a lot of time.
I'm not sure how I ended up here but I love that I did. This is my submission to the yogscast game jam
There are a bunch more characters to play as too, including blobby and palp. You can download the game here for free, and please rate once you've played it!
Edit: might develop this further, watch this space
It is still the Walmart strategy regardless of the size of corporations. Epic Games is using their own profits to offer products at lower prices. Epic Games' main goal is to crush all competition on the PC platform and bring rise to a monopoly.
Also, how is Steam close to being a monopoly when they have Green Man Gaming, Good Old Games, Origin, Bethesda Launcher, Discord, Itch.io, and many other storefronts competing against them with the same products at different prices? That is what competition is. What Epic Games is doing is not competition. Buying out every single publisher and major indie developers is not competition. In fact, Tim Sweeny agrees exclusivity is good for monopolization, but not competition - well, at least in 2016 he believed that. I wonder what changed since then.
Hi all, I'm one half of Pill Bug Interactive the development team behind both the games on sale.
We are doing a week-long sale on itch.io to go alongside Cycle 28 being on sale on Nintendo Switch™ in NOA.
If you have any questions fire away!
Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox is a god game with fully simulated genetics and evolution.
In Cycle 28 is a 2D space shooter where you're stuck in a time loop trying to get home, and the only person you have to defeat is yourself...
Additional information:
This is just a side project I have, but let me know if you like what you see and want me to keep you updated or eventually release it; I might make an itch.io page for it if it gets enough attention.
I am not a professional of any kind.
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That said, I can tell you why I wouldn't buy/download it.
Tell the story of the game and help the reader follow along so they're playing the game, just by reading.
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Hopefully that's helpful in some way. Good luck!
Hey!! First time posting here! This our first game with adult themes, and for a moment we were a bit confused if it belonged to this sub or not, and we were afraid to share it for some time now. While it is adult and porn-themed, with the characters in our games being inspired by fictional pornographic works, since the game features no-explicit content, we were unsure if we should post it or not, as people both consider it non-erotic and erotic at the same. Still, here's hoping it's fine. ❤
The current version of the game was in one month (with a few more patches since) for Strawberry Jam 3 and got #1 place. Now we want to see and share the game with a few more communities to know what they think. Let us know if you have any thoughts about it!
A good breakdown. I'll say that our sales aren't as high as your most generous estimates, and there are additional costs. The development time total was about two years, with some pre-production being done while Overwhored was being finished. Lewdlogic also did not do work for free but I'd say he made the money back and did a good job.
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I didn't make quite what you thought I did and I didn't divide the money evenly between staff. There was a small team that did a lot of work and got the bulk of it and there were a lot of people that helped out with bit issues and voice acting. Also yes, I definitely needed a break and I'm doing small stuff for a while. I also put out Kissing Therapy while making Snow Daze and was doing some work on Hypnolab so not all the money went to that. There was also a bit of churn as people were hired and had to be replaced for various reasons.
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For my part the best part of releasing on steam is getting a big chunk of change I can use as a buffer to keep myself from stressing to death over whether the patreon is going to fluctuate on a given month. I now don't have to juggle all of my staff quite so much. I don't have to stress endlessly over making the finances line up just right. I now have the money to reliably pay my staff and myself for a good while. It helps that I've never paid myself more than $3k in a given month.
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This profession is not easy, and Steam won't fix all your problems. However, the money you get from steam will definitely help if you don't spend it all right away. Also if you're a game developer legacy sales ARE your retirement, so any platform that will sell your games is going to help your future. Itch.io and steam are both good sites. Don't expect miracles but do things properly and you ought to have things a lot easier for a while.
Itch.io will do it for free....you can set your own percentage you give itch (average is 7%). They also have their own app that you can build your games library on.
1000 copies sold on itch is equal to 1500 copies sold on steam. Yes, that means you have to sell 50% more copies to break even with itch in terms of profit when selling on steam.
Hehe well /u/amusingduck summoned me, and I'm generally around since I moderate a few subs :)
And yep, it's PC.
As amusingduck says, 7DRL produces a lot of cool games each year, lots of interesting experimental stuff. Always fun to see what comes out of it! (2018 results)
Hello, Indygo devs here. We are thankful for letting us know about the issue. We were unaware how Red Shell can affect players. Our publisher Fat Dog Games forced us to implement this and they gathered all data. Their other games probably have/will have it too. With today’s patch we will remove Red Shell completely.
Pigmentum Game Studio
Update: New update is live, Red Shell is now removed from game. Itch.io version needs to be approved by our publisher, so for now Steam version is patched. u/Alexspeed75
We made it as part of the itch.io xkcd game jam, and the comics themselves are Creatives Commons licensed too, although we recreated most of the assets ourselves aside from the xkcd-script font.
We are also going to email Randall to share it with him :)
The 3DS can play regular DS games, right? If so, grab a copy of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer. It's the best commercial roguelike out there IMHO.
Also keep an eye out for the Atlas 3DS release of Etrian Mystery Dungeon coming April 7th, 2015.
And shameless plug alert - try my game Voyage to Farland with Joy2Key although it may not qualify as a "good roguelike" ;) Built-in controller support is coming soon in the next update. I got an Xbox360 controller as well as this SNES controller clone recently to work on the code. Micro review: I'm loving the SNES-ish controller!
A seven days challenge / game jam in which you have to create a roguelike. Similar to Ludum Dare or the Global Game Jam, but without a theme and focused on roguelikes. Here is last year's site https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019
For the record, this is an actual game. Here's what looks to be its Itch.io page. https://mewtowo.itch.io/treats-of-gardenia
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I'm not saying it isn't an ARG/interactive series akin to Petscop, but it might just be someone's attempt at a similarly spooky PS1 styled game.
I'm fairly sure I'll end up forgetting half of the ones I might want to put in there, but from the top of my head:
Honorable mentions go to Sounds of Verity and Let's not stay friends for having really nice art; however, the romances felt kind of rushed in those so I hesitate a bit to count them among my favourites.