Hi all,

Sorry for the long rant, but I could really use some advice. A few days ago, I released Building Block Heroes, a game that you may have seen around here on the Marketing Monday/WIP Wednesday/Screenshot Saturday threads. However, its performance has been abysmal, and I'm at a loss for words. First, some background.

About a year ago I released a $5 game called World Boxing Manager, which was my attempt to dip my feet back into gamedev after a 5 year hiatus. It was a remake of a well-received free game I released on IndieDB called Kickboxing Manager. Because it was meant as something of a soft entry back into gamedev done in my free time, I didn't really put too much time into graphics or marketing. The idea was to use existing code to avoid taking on too much at once and ease myself into the grind of gamedev. Due to being a better programmer than before, as well as actually caring about the project due to a lack of good boxing simulators on Steam, I ended up rewriting the game from scratch anyways sans boilerplate code like Save/Load. Nevertheless, because I focused entirely on coding (my actual background), it only took me about 4 months to do in my spare time. The game has minimal art and no sound. I had to do a bit of marketing while grinding my way through Greenlight, but once the game was Greenlit I added Steam Achievements, and released it about two weeks later.

I had gotten Greenlit with less than 300 Yes votes, so I figured I'd be happy with making back my Greenlight fee. Instead, I sold over 50 copies on the first day (despite a near-game breaking bug), broke four figures within launch month, and since then have sold a few copies a day fairly consistently to the point where the revenue pre-Steam cut has broken five figures. Not a bad ROI given that the only money I spent was on the $100 Greenlight fee, and that the only marketing I had done was a weekly devblog on several subreddits and gamedev sites.

Fast forward a few months, and I got laid off from my job. I took it as a sign and decided to try my hand at a real game, with graphics and sound and everything. More importantly, this upcoming game represented everything I had learned from my previous gamedev experience.

World Boxing Manager had sputtered through Greenlight, saved only by a deus-ex-machina surge of votes from r/boxing about a month in. It had gotten pilloried for its lack of graphics and artwork. I resolved to push myself to create a game that was pleasing to look at, with an eye-catching art style that wouldn't need justification like, "but the match simulations are realistic." It was dismissed as being too niche and too hardcore to appeal to more than a few people, so I deliberately designed a gameplay hook that I felt would appeal to anyone who enjoyed playing games, or at least to more than just a hardcore subset of number-crunching gamers. I even included local co-op. It had gotten criticized post-release for its lack of tutorial or instruction, so I made sure to develop a game with simple pick-up-and-play gameplay which contained several tutorial levels to ease the players in. I had largely sat around for two months due to the unexpected time I needed for marketing to get World Boxing Manager through Greenlight, so I prepared to market my new game as soon as I had something worth showing off and get feedback early.

Creating this new game included a commitment to learning a game engine, and learning how to produce digital art and music myself. The idea for the game itself was a mish-mash of games I had enjoyed in my youth, which helped keep me motivated throughout the project - I'm firmly in the "create a game that you yourself would enjoy playing" camp. I put in 10-14 hour days, 7 days a week, learning Godot, teaching myself how to paint on a tablet, and learning how to write music in MuseScore. I pored over every detail and practiced day and night until I could produce work that I felt would be worth paying for. Slowly but surely, the game came together and it came time to show it off to the world. I announced the game back in June, with the gameplay largely complete albeit buggy, and about 30% of the artwork done.

I did what I did before, writing up weekly devblogs and posting everywhere. I created a Twitter account and tweeted on Screenshot Saturday, before starting to tweet every few days once I finished more of the graphics. I participated in feedback threads, taking people's comments into account. I did all the things I didn't do for World Boxing Manager - I set up a website, I created trailers, I tweeted, I sent emails to game sites and YouTubers, and I brought in pre-release beta testers. In the month or so prior to release, I sent out 170 keys to various sites and YouTubers, personalizing each and every one. I got a few articles and tweets from gaming sites, as well as some volunteers for making videos. Moreover, the feedback I was getting from Let's Players and Beta Testers was much more favourable than that of World Boxing Manager. Most people liked the game, and even the ones that didn't conceded that the idea was fresh and unique, and that it simply wasn't suited for them. One Let's Player admitted that he wouldn't recommend it for himself, but had no problem doing so for people who liked puzzle games or puzzle platformers. Based on World Boxing Manager's performance relative to its tepid pre-release reception, things were looking good for Building Block Heroes.

Feedback on the Steam store page and trailers were mostly positive, and I took steps to address the feedback that wasn't. People said the original trailer didn't show off how the gameplay worked, so I tweaked it to show off the core game mechanics earlier in the trailer. The store page description was too verbose and its wording was strange, so I cut it down a bit. I even added tags like "Cartoony" and "Hand-drawn" to it in order to try and piggy-back off of Cuphead's "More Like This" list. The only red flag was a lack of wishlists prior to release, but I wasn't too worried because World Boxing Manager has several thousand wishlists that don't seem to be converting into sales very often. I just didn't think people took wishlists too seriously.

When I launched Building Block Heroes, I at least expected to sell as many as World Boxing Manager did on its launch day. Instead, I didn't sell a single copy. I'm not allowed to disclose the exact number, but to date Building Block Heroes has sold less than 5 copies. Five. To put it in perspective, I've sold more than 5 copies of World Boxing Manager in the same time span. Now I wasn't expecting to become a multi-millionaire (even if I was secretly hoping for it, like everyone else), but I thought I could at least make as much from it as I did with World Boxing Manager, which together would put me at around minimum wage here in Canada. But as the post title suggests, I'm just flabbergasted at how badly the game has flopped. There have been other threads by redditors thinking they've flopped for only selling 70 or so copies - I'd kill for those numbers right now. Even if the devblogging and tweeting hadn't worked, I hoped that the game was unique and appealing enough to encourage YouTubers to play it and drive traffic that way. Additionally, I felt that the Steam store page was strong enough to sell the game on its own merits. Since World Boxing Manager had gotten several thousand page views during its first day, I expected similar numbers for Building Block Heroes, and once viewers actually saw my game in action I figured at least some of them would be convinced.

This breaks my heart. I poured my heart and soul into this game, learning what I needed to learn and doing what I felt I needed to do based on what had worked before. I limited my socializing and leisure time, and focused every waking moment on the game. What hurts the most, however, isn't the lack of sales - I can live with low sales knowing that a game I can be proud of is out there for all to see. It's that the game isn't even showing up in the New Releases list any more. I don't mean in the featured panel, or in New and Trending or whatever. I mean when I click on a tag that Building Block Heroes has, go to the plain old New Releases tab, and scroll page by page - the game literally doesn't appear where it used to any more. I'll post screenshots in the comments to show what I mean, but it used to appear in the list between certain games. Those games still appear, and mine...doesn't. It's still in its launch sale week! Not only are people not interested in my game, it's like it doesn't exist at all after three days. The last six or seven months didn't even happen. My game isn't even out there for anyone to see.

Since launch I've tweaked the banner/capsule images to show off the characters a bit more and hopefully catch more eyes, I've re-ordered the trailers so that the boss fight video appears first, I've added more tags to the Steam page, I've emailed more YouTubers, and I've followed up with a release email to some of the earlier game sites and YouTubers I reached out to. In other words, I've not only emailed more than 200 sites and YouTubers, I've done it twice. I'm at a loss as to what else to do other than keep emailing YouTubers. Any other suggestions? I could use any tips or strategies to help resuscitate some semblance of my game, or at least to help it exist again. Constructive criticism is also welcome, or even just a few kind words to convince me not to just fucking end myself. This game was all I had going for me, and it isn't even there any more.