Hey guys, my friend just released his first game on Steam, if you want, check it out. He's also running a small sale. ๐Ÿฆ„

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1169770/Swordrite/

PS: @Strasco (owner and developer) it's in the comments, if you have any feedback, feel free to write it down.

4 years ago*

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Added to wishlist :P
Tell him to add achievements to the game!

4 years ago
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Noted! Thank you!

4 years ago
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Hi, I'm the dev and thank you for the support. Achievements are next on my todo list

4 years ago
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I don't know if you need or want marketing tips, but I'll give you a few anyway.

1) send review copies to legitimate reviewers (RockPaperShotgun, Kotaku, etc.)
2) find streamers/curators who specialize in either indies or roguelikes or metroidvanias, and send them free copies
3) DO NOT send free copies to review groups, or to anyone who asks for multiple copies, or mass gifts. At best, those just devalue your product

4 years ago
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Hellos, this is actually good advice,
1) no one mentioned to me to send e-mails to such big reviewers, I guess I should give it a try.
2) Until now I waited for people to e-mail me about the curator program, I'll try and look for specific tags
3) Steam is also against mass gifts in a way, In the Steamworks doc they say if I give away a lot of keys I can just make the game free. They don't want to take for granted steam customers.

4 years ago
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Not a good idea to talk about steam policies, I think.

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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There are so many games coming out on steam, that there's no way RPS and Kotaku and such will know about them otherwise. Marketing requires putting your name out there. I don't read Kotaku, but RPS has a weekly segment devoted to smaller and easily overlooked games. If you're worried about being ignored by their reviewers, contact their editors and ask them what the process is to get a game reviewed.

For curators and streamers, it's about targeting. If you send dozens of keys to a single 'curator', of course they're gonna sell it. If you mass-spam every single streamer on the planet, most keys will not get used properly. But if you find a few streamers/curators who specialize in those type of games, and send one key each with an explanatory email, with any luck they'll try the game, and with even more luck, they'll give it a good review.note: while generally you want a streamer with a lot of followers, it's more important that they occupy the right niche than that they have a wide audience that's not the right target

A good primer on game marketing would be to find every article about Dawn of Man - they talk openly about how their two-man game made the top of the steam sales chart without spending a penny on advertising. It all came down to targeting the right streamers and the right reviewers.

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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merely creating a game, putting it on steam, and hoping someone will notice rarely works. People need to hear about the game somehow. Marketing is all about getting the word out, and there are a lot of different ways to do so. But if you don't try, you won't succeed

4 years ago
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Yeah, definitely try getting some of the better reviewers to look at your game. As dingbat said, there are way too many scammers out there, so it's just not worth handing out keys to whoever emails you claiming to be a reviewer or marketer. I think you have to do the looking and offer single keys to legit people yourself. The game actually looks pretty decent from the preview, so wishing you the best of luck with it.

(Unfortunately, I'm stuck with only a mac atm, otherwise I would buy and check it out.)

4 years ago
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RPS (RockPaperShotgun) do a regular weekly indie-game roundup where they feature 5-6 indie games, and your game seems like a good fit for that. The people there also rather like metroidvanias and/or rogue-likes, so it may catch their interest.

Worst case scenario, they don't feature your game, and all you've lost is the time it takes to write an email.

4 years ago
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Congrats on making and releasing your first game!

Before doing achievements, I would focus on fixing the camera (it does look really jerky when changing directions) and adding controller support. Add achievements once the fundamentals are solid. :)

4 years ago
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Nice game!

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Looks really good! Good luck with his game. ;D

4 years ago
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Looks good overall.

But, there are definitely some noticible issues just from seeing the promo video and screenshots:

  1. the way the camera almost instantly moves to the left/right each time the character turns seems like something that could cause motion sickness to flare up for some players.
  2. The text/numbers don't fit in the level select UI or the the yellow bar at the top in the promo screenshots, and all three of the icons on those top bars are at different resolutions.
  3. What is even happening here? The gif starts with a red number coming out from behind a crystal, then an enemy runs behind, gets ready to attack, and then it restarts. This doesn't show any interesting mechanics or effects, I'd definitely replace it.
4 years ago*
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4 years ago
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Agree with 2 and 3. In addition, seeing from the video on the store page, I'd say wooden box shattering and torch flames are way too 3D/real life simulative for the rest of the game.

4 years ago
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  1. Some friend testers told me the same thing, it IS a problem and it should be checked.
  2. Honestly, I did put up the least amount of effort into making the UI's look good.
  3. Badly edited gif. If there is room for an explanation it goes like this: I had to finish in time the Page of the game for Steam staff to review it to be in my planned time. I will edit the gif
4 years ago
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4 years ago
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the gif is not the best that's right, but after i watched the video i understand it eventually the gif need 2-3 sec more before the player gets frozen.

4 years ago
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๐Ÿ‘€Can you play even if you can't read English?
Thank you GAโ™ช

4 years ago
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Wait, how do use this site if you can't read english?

4 years ago
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The translation function cannot be used in the game.
Sometimes you can't solve in-game puzzles.

4 years ago
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Hello, You don't need english to play the game apart for basic controls
Movement W A S D, SHIFT, J, K, Left Mouse Click.

4 years ago
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๐Ÿ˜‰So that's it. I was relieved.(*p'ฮ˜'q)

Thank you ๐ŸŽฎ&GAโ™ช

4 years ago
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You know, I honestly expected to click your profile and see "joined 1 week ago, 1 comment posted" at first, and funnily enough, the quality of the new game also seems to reflect in the fact you're an established SGifts member and not someone just looking for free easy advertisement. I mean, it still shows all the rough edges of a newcomers indie project, but it has a lot more nice little considerations, polish and glimpses of mechanics than most "Hey guys a new game here!" posts do. At a glance, I liked the touch with the torches seeming to have dynamic bodies of fire that distorted with the players nearby movement, for example.

Here's hoping your friend finds a little success and keeps on building on towards bigger and better things. <3

4 years ago
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I'm curious, how did the dev handled the inherent issues that come with mixing the rogue-lite and metroidvania genres?
The level design of those two genres clash pretty badly unless you prioritize one over the other.

4 years ago
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Yep, every game I've seen that tried to mix them failed horribly at it (Chasm comes to mind immediately).

4 years ago
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I don't have Chasm but I've heard that it was a bit of a mess.
I'm currently playing Sundered and it manages to balance the level design by basically throwing away the soul of the rogue-like genre and only keeping a few mechanics that benefited it (mostly for the sake of keeping the combat varied), the sections and important parts of the world are pre-determined but the geography of the small rooms within the bigger rooms shift a little and the enemies never spawn quite at the same place, time or combination of types. It does a similar thing with its RPG mechanics by discarding the concept of leveling up in favor of cramming everything related to the stats in the skill tree.
Similarly I remember Rogue Legacy only barelly nodding in the direction of a metroidvania progression for the sake of keeping it's randomness and the perma-death design of a rogue-lite.

4 years ago
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Congrats, it looks nice :)

4 years ago
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It looks surpringly well made, but without equipments or a skilltree it probably won't be that much of a commercial success.

4 years ago
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Hello,
You are correct. Skill tress and equipment will not be in the game (There is a skill point system but apart from that nothing). I tried polishing the game as best I could so that I give at least a nice experience to some people. Commercial success was not in my mind, more of a learning experience.

4 years ago
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If that is your first attempt, I am really looking forward to your next project.
Enjoy your weekend.

4 years ago
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Nice game, like classic games :D

4 years ago
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Thanks, and good luck to your friend.

4 years ago
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Looks good. I like platformers. Added to my wishlist as well and good luck.

4 years ago
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Thank you for the support!

4 years ago
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Added to wishlist,good luck,sucess!!

4 years ago
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it looks nice.wishlisted.
i really like the metroidvania genre... but dont really like rogue-likes as i dont really like randomness for the sake of randomness.
i prefer a story of some sort of fixed progression, so i hope it wont disappoint

4 years ago
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I took inspiration from Dead Cells, combat can be hard sometimes indeed. Unfortunately this is no story in the game also no fixed progression. Sometimes you have to go back in the previous levels and level up your character in order to defeat the bosses.

4 years ago
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well... levels are also some sort of progression ๐Ÿ˜‰

4 years ago
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The character looks exactly the same as the one in Unbroken Souls (google play game)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Chorrus.UnbrokenSoul&hl=en

4 years ago
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Hello,

The character sprite is actually a free asset found on the website itch.io from the user RVROS. The rest of the assets were bought from the same artist (Tilemaps, Enemies, Effects)

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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congrats abd wish him good luck! :)

4 years ago
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Happy Cake Day! ๐Ÿฐ ๐Ÿ˜Š ๐Ÿ‘ ๐ŸŽ‚

4 years ago
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Happy cake day :o)

4 years ago
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Thank you and Happy cake day <3 !

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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I do send out review keys if you are a steam curator specialized in indie games or similar :)

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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4 years ago
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wow congrats! looks nice =)

4 years ago
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Congratulations on your first game on Steam!

4 years ago
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Bump! ^^

4 years ago
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Hey if the dev wants to sell this game, he needs to pay attention to the games Steam discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1169770/discussions/0/1642052612848150391/

You will lose a lot of potential sales if people think it's been abandoned due to lack of communication. You can "Subscribe to Forum" to be notified whenever someone posts a new topic if it helps.

4 years ago
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+1

4 years ago
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Thank you so much for the heads up!!! Yes, I pay attention to all the discussions, I was not used at all with the steam forums. Thank you again!

4 years ago
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Looks promising actually. I was just expecting a shitty-looking RPGMaker game, but i was pleasantly surprised. May actually pick it up.

4 years ago
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Apart from the lack of premium assets from paid artists and UI experts the game WILL give you a challenge and the controls feel nice (I got some bad reviews about camera movement which may cause motion sickness to some people)

4 years ago
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This is a game that begs for controller support.
Outside of that, it looks like a pretty decent game. Congratulations to the dev on his release.

4 years ago
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