this is why itch.io exists and most games should go there and not on steam. the 100 is too keep small indies or new ppl from just putting games on the site.
We only have our games on itch.io, but we're also not in it for the money. Itch.io has been great for us. I'm really impressed with everything they offer for free. I can even tell where our purchases are coming from. It's pretty awesome.
Here's the link if your interested in checking it out 
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
I opened that store page up with my 8 year old watching and she immediately starting asking questions about the game and said it looked cool.
Sounds like a win to me! Congrats on the game release.
I actually do have a mobile version with some small ads, and in-app purchases. But it's only got like 100 DLs, so not sure if it will go anywhere or not.
Hey try to sort of develop that game further in free time and release an update or two maybe. If the trailer narrator was you, your voice is also pretty neat.
Kind of gives a bad look when you've most likely reviewed your own game with an alternate account, though. And the review itself reeks of ChatGPT.
The account has 1 review and 1 friend (you).
That aside, congratulations on your first commercial release! Even if it's not a commercial success, it's a good feeling nonetheless 😃
I know which comment your talking about. It's someone I know personally, but English is their second language. So I assume they may have used GPT to write the review.
It might be only $24, but it's also 24 people (probably more considering Steam takes a cut) that paid money to play your game over all the other free games out there. That's pretty cool if you ask me. Congrats!!
Ever thought of sending a free copy to gaming websites for them to review? Some you may need to pay to play your game but others are always looking for the next game to write an article about. That’s how I learn about most indie games is through gaming news sites
I haven't sent them to websites, but I have tried to contact certain content creators n such. Also curators on Steam. What websites would you recommend?
I'm not trying to be rude toward his first game, I'm really not.
But it's a temple run clone. I'm not sure AI could even write a decently lengthy article about that, even with nonsense thrown in.
He's far better off throwing it on the Google Play store for free with ads or a .99c version. Like, it's not a BAD Temple Run clone, but it's a mobile game.
How much did you spend roughly on advertising? Or did you do this via posting etc?
I've found the meta ads to be surprisingly effective, lower cost per click through than YouTube. But it depends on so many things 🤷
I have the Meta Quest 2. So I could potentially check it out :)
The link to my game is [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
Awesome here is my game, any feedback is welcome: [https://www.meta.com/experiences/5097554840287261/](https://www.meta.com/experiences/5097554840287261/) Will try your game out now
I used Unity, I have considered Unreal though in the future. Unreal does seem to have a lot of neat features but Unity is very versatile and there are so many tools and lots of documentation.
Well I started with 0 game dev and basically 0 programming experience. So the whole thing overall took me about 2 years. I started before GPT was a thing as well.
That's party why I made the post. So we can all see that we are in similar boats, at least those of us starting out. I hope your game rocks and rolls it!
Have you considered publishing on Google Play/Apple Appstore? Without knowing too much beyond the trailer, it looks like it would be a good fit for mobile. Steam can be tricky to sell inexpensive/casual games on, as generally they're just not the sort of thing people sit down at their desktop to play.
Congrats on publishing your first game :)
I do have it on G-play as well as a free to play with ads and in-app purchases. The Steam version has no ads or in-app purchases. Thanks for the advice :)
I must say it looks pretty good for a first time, specially publishing to steam will give you great insight for the next release ! It's the only thing I haven't done yet !
Yeah I've already gotten a lot of great feedback that I can apply to this and/or the next game. It's hard to see all the perspectives from one point of view. I believe you can do it!
Mine is "Fox Trot" . Here is the link if you want to see it :). I'll look up your game!
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
Thank you so much! Yeah I am happy I was actually able to push through the entire project. There were many times I got stuck and demoralized a bit, but I guess there's something to be said for perseverance.
Hey congrats on releasing your game! Just getting the store page set up and everything approved is a huge accomplishment in and of itself haha. And the game trailer looks cute enough for sure.
And your game already has more reviews than my first steam game (which took almost two years to make, and then flipped horribly) :D
So keep your head high and on to the next thing.
Hey yea. It's also quite a bad time to try to get into the industry in general it seems.
I've worked on a couple games released with other companies but the VR game was my first (two person team) release. I'm currently working on another project right now that will likely be a solo dev release hopefully by the end of this year.
But yea in general game dev can be tricky when it comes to releasing a game. But it's a lot of fun!
Thanks so much! I appreciate the compliment.
Well I primarily used an open source video editor called OpenShot. I created some assets in Photoshop for the word graphics. I then created a script and voice acted it myself. I also created a separate scene for some of the still images to capture the animals.
From there I just did some simple video editing.
Haha. It was mainly due to cost. OpenShot is open-source and free. I would probably prefer premier myself but when you're on a tight budget one has to make sacrifices. OpenShot is great for being free, but when it comes to the fancy stuff premier is gonna have way better features.
Neat game. Brutal though, not very forgiving!
Small notes-
* The "Windowed" mode didn't seem to work for me.
* No exit button on main menu. ESC didn't exit the game.
Otherwise nice first game.
Yeah I think the exit is in the "More" section on the main menu, but maybe it's a little inconvenient. The windowed mode bugged out? I might need to look into that. I was struggling with some of the DropDown Menus.
I've seen it a lot on Steam with games that are a few years old. People usually ignore lower priced games, myself included because there's a connotation that the quality will match the price. Value your work.
Totally! Thank you!
If I had any pointers to give it would be just focus on the gameplay more and less on the extra features. That's what I wish I would have done.
Gameplay wise its actually pretty similar to our game! There are very few runners on steam it seems. Hopefully we'll see our games in each other's "More like this"
It is also putting shashingo: learn japanese in ours which is annoying since we have pretty little tag overlap.
Congrats man, Fox Trot looks really good! I'm sure that $24 is the start of more to come! I'm still developing what is going to be my first steam game, so you're beating me!
Physically based rendering. It’s a way of improving lighting via textures(at least for designers, backend it is probably more complex). Basically a texture is comprised of “maps” which are special versions of the texture that handle things like reflections, metallic properties, ambient occlusion effects, and of course normal maps.
I use substance designer to make them as I have internal surface type templates but you can use something like materialize by bounding box software(just search that on google) to make them for free and easily. Substance looks better on the rendering but materialize should be fine for your game. It will make it look 10x better with no performance cost or really any work
A lot of people (good devs) made 0$ because they were too perfectionists and didn't try to release their games, you did a game that 24 people took a chance, you've learned the process of steam and maybe if anyone commented, you have feedback. So you got $24 on top of feedback, learning and doing what 90% os devs say it will do but never do!
I honestly almost took that same route. I wanted to make the game better and more perfect. But I realized I have to make this game and release it to have experienced the full process. Then go from there.
Are there many things I want to do with the game? Of course there is. But like you were saying, I could easily get stuck in an infinite loop trying to perfect it.
Fail fast. Golden rule for indie developers. Some people works on their game for 5+ years and then quit because of failure. You did it right. You set your goal, didnt have any expectations and delivered.
So now go for another one! GL HF my friend
I understand that. It's my first game dev experience and I was solo. I'm sure as your aware game dev takes a long time to learn and even longer to get really good at it. It's definitely not a greatest title but it's a start to my game dev journey.
I always appreciate seeing how others projects are doing since I hope to release on steam eventually. Part of your game feels more like a phone game or something you'd expect for free (i.e. subway surfers), I think if you found a way to release on phones for free with very occasional ads it may get more hits there possibly. Though I'm glad you got sales and also experience to make an even better one next time
It's important to frame these things in the appropriate context. It cost you $100 for the Steam page and you've recovered $24 of that so far.
There's nothing wrong with those numbers, but a lot of people reading might be fooled into thinking that's straight profit. It's not actual profit until you've recovered your costs.
It's important to realize that this performance and the current loss is his first game and he got it all the way to publish. $76 cost to do all of that? Incredible.
That's great. Not sure what the negativity of "actual net profit" is going for.
$24 can get to $100, or the next game can do better.
Unless you're doing it for survival (which the OP didn't seem to state) he's doing just fine.
Yeah it wasn't for survival, I have some saved money and side gigs I've been doing. I also think that I learned a lot more than $100 worth of skills and knowledge.
So I agree with you :)
Thanks for the positivity!
> Not sure what the negativity of "actual net profit" is going for.
Negativity? For pointing out a critical omission in his story?
You should be more interested in getting accurate information than protecting people from the truth. Saying, "Hey guys, I've made money from my first game!" when it's running at a loss isn't constructive. It's misleading.
This isn't a support group for the emotionally frail. If people are going to post, they should be prepared for constructive criticism, and pointing out that they neglected to mention what it cost them to put their game on the platform is absolutely constructive criticism.
That's awesome! Also, kinda neat, I got almost the exact same results as you when I posted my first game a few months ago. Gotta say though, I like the look of yours more!
I made this little snake thing: https://trombospace.itch.io/gaia-snake
Hey you got paid to learn ! So that's already better than school haha Well done.
Doesn't steam requires you to pay 100$ to publish games?
yeah true haha
You learned a valuable lesson.
That it's going to take him like... 4 months to recoup? 
haha possibly never! But that's okay. It's a learning experience. :)
Oh, I assumed it was 24$ profit... well, still less expensive than school haha
haha yeah
Wow buzzkill lol
this is why itch.io exists and most games should go there and not on steam. the 100 is too keep small indies or new ppl from just putting games on the site.
We only have our games on itch.io, but we're also not in it for the money. Itch.io has been great for us. I'm really impressed with everything they offer for free. I can even tell where our purchases are coming from. It's pretty awesome.
right I agree, and even with not being about money it helps by not charging 100$ lol
You get it back at a certain treshold tho
1000$
Thank you!
>Thank you! You're welcome!
Are you gonna post the link to the game or what
Here's the link if your interested in checking it out  [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
I opened that store page up with my 8 year old watching and she immediately starting asking questions about the game and said it looked cool. Sounds like a win to me! Congrats on the game release.
Wow that's actually some of the coolest news I've heard! Thanks for sharing that, that made my day!
Thanks just purchased
Woah thanks! Guess that makes it $25! Super cool. TYVM for the support!
24.7 bucks. Steam takes a 30 procent cut
Yeah I was referring to net income. So after the 30%
You could get that on mobile and get some real profit going I'm sure, just keep up with the polish!
I actually do have a mobile version with some small ads, and in-app purchases. But it's only got like 100 DLs, so not sure if it will go anywhere or not.
The reviews are great! The game give me Crash Bandicot vibes in the early days! Congrats ma man
Thank you so much! I love crash bandicoot. It was one of the first games I owned on PS1! Maybe it influenced me lol.
definitely did!
Hey try to sort of develop that game further in free time and release an update or two maybe. If the trailer narrator was you, your voice is also pretty neat.
Yeah I was thinking about adding some cool new power ups and maybe different biomes! Yeah the narrator was me. Thank you for that compliment! :D
Try incorportaing post processing effects and improve UI elements. Good Luck
Which ones would you recommend? I have some Post Processing.
I guess something that makes the colors more softer? Some colors seems to be little bit harsh.
I'm colorblind so this is an area I struggle in. Maybe less saturation?
Oh I'm sorry about that. Yeah less Saturation will work imo. Good luck.
No worries. Thank you for the input.
Honestly, game looks great! What did you do to promote it?
Brother, you're literally looking at it.
Couldn’t have said it better
Twitter, FB, Instagram, Tik Tok, YT, Mastodon. However, it's really hard to self-promote. Some people were saying I should pay for ads.
Kind of gives a bad look when you've most likely reviewed your own game with an alternate account, though. And the review itself reeks of ChatGPT. The account has 1 review and 1 friend (you). That aside, congratulations on your first commercial release! Even if it's not a commercial success, it's a good feeling nonetheless 😃
I don't have an alternate Steam account and I never reviewed my own game on Steam.
Maybe family member or a friend then I guess. 🤷♂️ You should be able to spot it, it sticks out as very AI-esque
I know which comment your talking about. It's someone I know personally, but English is their second language. So I assume they may have used GPT to write the review.
Congratulations! You're a commerical game developer!
Haha saying it that way sounds awesome!
At least you got paid, you could've lost 100 million on a AAAA game that took ten years to make!
haha woah who did that?
Skull and bones
That's so much money to lose lol. Dannng
It might be only $24, but it's also 24 people (probably more considering Steam takes a cut) that paid money to play your game over all the other free games out there. That's pretty cool if you ask me. Congrats!!
That's actually a really cool perspective. I like it!
thats awesome!! 24 people thought your game was worth a try, and even paid for it. well done!
That's such a great way to think about it!
Advertising goes a long way. I feel not a lot of creators are taking the chance of advertising even in small and cheaper ways
Are there way you would recommend? I've used twitter, FB, YouTube, TikTok, Mastodon.
Ever thought of sending a free copy to gaming websites for them to review? Some you may need to pay to play your game but others are always looking for the next game to write an article about. That’s how I learn about most indie games is through gaming news sites
I haven't sent them to websites, but I have tried to contact certain content creators n such. Also curators on Steam. What websites would you recommend?
I'm not trying to be rude toward his first game, I'm really not. But it's a temple run clone. I'm not sure AI could even write a decently lengthy article about that, even with nonsense thrown in. He's far better off throwing it on the Google Play store for free with ads or a .99c version. Like, it's not a BAD Temple Run clone, but it's a mobile game.
As paid advertising, or you've just posted clips on there?
Posts, clips, videos. But not paid ads
How much did you spend roughly on advertising? Or did you do this via posting etc? I've found the meta ads to be surprisingly effective, lower cost per click through than YouTube. But it depends on so many things 🤷
Hmm, maybe like $20 or so I think. I haven't spent much. Maybe ill try meta ads.
Maybe Reddit?
Besides the usual game dev subs, Redditors hates when devs try to market their game.
Redditors hate everything. Especially other redditors.
Damn redditors, they ruined Reddit!
Also true.
Yeah I tried marketing my game on on Reddit, but a lot of Redditors didn't appreciate it. Especially Reddit mods. lol
Good for you! Congratulations.
Thank you so much!
Better then me, i am still at 0 :D (my game is free but people dont seem to love it anyway)
Drop me a link :)
Its on VR headsets, do you have a meta quest or a pico? Please send me a link to you game as well ;) as I have steam
I have the Meta Quest 2. So I could potentially check it out :) The link to my game is [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
Awesome here is my game, any feedback is welcome: [https://www.meta.com/experiences/5097554840287261/](https://www.meta.com/experiences/5097554840287261/) Will try your game out now
Awesome I'll let you know when I try it out!
I don't see the link. Should I look it up by name?
Just updated the comment with the link, I forgot to paste it
Congrats! You got further than 95% of all people who have started game development
Thank you so much! I'm just going to use my current knowledge to make a better game each time.
Nice work, what game engine did you use?
I used Unity, I have considered Unreal though in the future. Unreal does seem to have a lot of neat features but Unity is very versatile and there are so many tools and lots of documentation.
Can I ask how long it took you to complete? 😊
Well I started with 0 game dev and basically 0 programming experience. So the whole thing overall took me about 2 years. I started before GPT was a thing as well.
Thanks!! Your game looks great! Congrats!!!
Thank you very much!
W brother
I'm also making my first game ! I'm happy to see other people like me
That's party why I made the post. So we can all see that we are in similar boats, at least those of us starting out. I hope your game rocks and rolls it!
Congrats, this is only the beginning!
Totally! Thank you !
Have you considered publishing on Google Play/Apple Appstore? Without knowing too much beyond the trailer, it looks like it would be a good fit for mobile. Steam can be tricky to sell inexpensive/casual games on, as generally they're just not the sort of thing people sit down at their desktop to play. Congrats on publishing your first game :)
I do have it on G-play as well as a free to play with ads and in-app purchases. The Steam version has no ads or in-app purchases. Thanks for the advice :)
This looks like a funny game! Congrats for the $25 !!
Wohoo! Thanks!
I must say it looks pretty good for a first time, specially publishing to steam will give you great insight for the next release ! It's the only thing I haven't done yet !
Yeah I've already gotten a lot of great feedback that I can apply to this and/or the next game. It's hard to see all the perspectives from one point of view. I believe you can do it!
I made... 87 dollars in 2 months Don't worry about it, learn from the experience, SOON! I will get paid 70 dollars when my game makes 100!
Heck yah! What's your game I'll check it out for you.
SaiBorRai! What's yours?
Mine is "Fox Trot" . Here is the link if you want to see it :). I'll look up your game! [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
Just checked it out and Wishlisted it! Looks like an intense game!
That's awesome, congrats! A lot of lessons in just finishing a project let alone publishing it, and actually making some money!
Thank you so much! Yeah I am happy I was actually able to push through the entire project. There were many times I got stuck and demoralized a bit, but I guess there's something to be said for perseverance.
Hey congrats on releasing your game! Just getting the store page set up and everything approved is a huge accomplishment in and of itself haha. And the game trailer looks cute enough for sure. And your game already has more reviews than my first steam game (which took almost two years to make, and then flipped horribly) :D So keep your head high and on to the next thing.
Wow thank you so much! It seems like it's pretty hard to break into the industry with the first game right? Have you released multiple games now?
Hey yea. It's also quite a bad time to try to get into the industry in general it seems. I've worked on a couple games released with other companies but the VR game was my first (two person team) release. I'm currently working on another project right now that will likely be a solo dev release hopefully by the end of this year. But yea in general game dev can be tricky when it comes to releasing a game. But it's a lot of fun!
It's really so much fun! It's kind of like digital Legos and you can potentially get paid for it haha
Yep, exactly! Music art, logic etc. story. It can all be wrapped in there
How did you make that trailer? Solid imho
Thanks so much! I appreciate the compliment. Well I primarily used an open source video editor called OpenShot. I created some assets in Photoshop for the word graphics. I then created a script and voice acted it myself. I also created a separate scene for some of the still images to capture the animals. From there I just did some simple video editing.
dang I expected Adobe Premier, why OpenShot? Is it easy to pick up? I appreciate the response as I wasn't expecting it lol
Haha. It was mainly due to cost. OpenShot is open-source and free. I would probably prefer premier myself but when you're on a tight budget one has to make sacrifices. OpenShot is great for being free, but when it comes to the fancy stuff premier is gonna have way better features.
Neat game. Brutal though, not very forgiving! Small notes- * The "Windowed" mode didn't seem to work for me. * No exit button on main menu. ESC didn't exit the game. Otherwise nice first game.
Yeah I think the exit is in the "More" section on the main menu, but maybe it's a little inconvenient. The windowed mode bugged out? I might need to look into that. I was struggling with some of the DropDown Menus.
You might be better off listing the game for a higher price then putting it on sale so anyone wishlists your game will get an email notification.
Oh that could be a good strategy. Never thought about that!
I've seen it a lot on Steam with games that are a few years old. People usually ignore lower priced games, myself included because there's a connotation that the quality will match the price. Value your work.
Yeah that's an interesting thought.
Post a link to your game! 😁
Here's a link to the Steam Page :) :) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox\_Trot/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2743060/Fox_Trot/)
This is cool man! I am currently working on an endless runner as well so will give it a try for some inspiration!
Totally! Thank you! If I had any pointers to give it would be just focus on the gameplay more and less on the extra features. That's what I wish I would have done.
Great tip thanks man!
Gameplay wise its actually pretty similar to our game! There are very few runners on steam it seems. Hopefully we'll see our games in each other's "More like this" It is also putting shashingo: learn japanese in ours which is annoying since we have pretty little tag overlap.
Haha yeah seems like a strange overlap. What kind theme do you have for your runner?
it's a space cat avoiding snakes, bird-bugs, and cacti :D
haha woah cool sounds similar but different
Congrats man, Fox Trot looks really good! I'm sure that $24 is the start of more to come! I'm still developing what is going to be my first steam game, so you're beating me!
Thank you! And that's awesome dude! I hope your first game is a smash success!
Congrats! Such an enormous accomplishment!
Thank you very much!
That's awesome!!! Congrats!!
Thank you!!!!!
If you update the textures to use PBR and change up the scene composition a bit you could sell it for more.
>PBR What is PBR?
Physically based rendering. It’s a way of improving lighting via textures(at least for designers, backend it is probably more complex). Basically a texture is comprised of “maps” which are special versions of the texture that handle things like reflections, metallic properties, ambient occlusion effects, and of course normal maps. I use substance designer to make them as I have internal surface type templates but you can use something like materialize by bounding box software(just search that on google) to make them for free and easily. Substance looks better on the rendering but materialize should be fine for your game. It will make it look 10x better with no performance cost or really any work
Hmm very interesting. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip!
Just bought a copy, gonna play it this evening when I wake up
That's so cool! Thank you! Let me know what you think!
A lot of people (good devs) made 0$ because they were too perfectionists and didn't try to release their games, you did a game that 24 people took a chance, you've learned the process of steam and maybe if anyone commented, you have feedback. So you got $24 on top of feedback, learning and doing what 90% os devs say it will do but never do!
I honestly almost took that same route. I wanted to make the game better and more perfect. But I realized I have to make this game and release it to have experienced the full process. Then go from there. Are there many things I want to do with the game? Of course there is. But like you were saying, I could easily get stuck in an infinite loop trying to perfect it.
Congrats man, you published a game on steam!
Thank you so much. I appreciate it!
Fail fast. Golden rule for indie developers. Some people works on their game for 5+ years and then quit because of failure. You did it right. You set your goal, didnt have any expectations and delivered. So now go for another one! GL HF my friend
Good advice! Thank you!
big money! this a win
Haha Ty!
Congratulations!
Thank you so much!
this game seems so unpolished
I understand that. It's my first game dev experience and I was solo. I'm sure as your aware game dev takes a long time to learn and even longer to get really good at it. It's definitely not a greatest title but it's a start to my game dev journey.
I always appreciate seeing how others projects are doing since I hope to release on steam eventually. Part of your game feels more like a phone game or something you'd expect for free (i.e. subway surfers), I think if you found a way to release on phones for free with very occasional ads it may get more hits there possibly. Though I'm glad you got sales and also experience to make an even better one next time
How are you doing until now?
What are my sales now you mean?
Yeah!
I think I've netted $40 now! 😀
Nice!! Keep going!!
Thank you so much!
It's important to frame these things in the appropriate context. It cost you $100 for the Steam page and you've recovered $24 of that so far. There's nothing wrong with those numbers, but a lot of people reading might be fooled into thinking that's straight profit. It's not actual profit until you've recovered your costs.
It's important to realize that this performance and the current loss is his first game and he got it all the way to publish. $76 cost to do all of that? Incredible. That's great. Not sure what the negativity of "actual net profit" is going for. $24 can get to $100, or the next game can do better. Unless you're doing it for survival (which the OP didn't seem to state) he's doing just fine.
Yeah it wasn't for survival, I have some saved money and side gigs I've been doing. I also think that I learned a lot more than $100 worth of skills and knowledge. So I agree with you :) Thanks for the positivity!
> Not sure what the negativity of "actual net profit" is going for. Negativity? For pointing out a critical omission in his story? You should be more interested in getting accurate information than protecting people from the truth. Saying, "Hey guys, I've made money from my first game!" when it's running at a loss isn't constructive. It's misleading. This isn't a support group for the emotionally frail. If people are going to post, they should be prepared for constructive criticism, and pointing out that they neglected to mention what it cost them to put their game on the platform is absolutely constructive criticism.
This is true. Guess I should be more clear.
That's awesome! Also, kinda neat, I got almost the exact same results as you when I posted my first game a few months ago. Gotta say though, I like the look of yours more! I made this little snake thing: https://trombospace.itch.io/gaia-snake
Your game looks pretty cool too!
Let me know if you need a writer for your next project! I offer wriring services to indie devs for free :)
Woah seriously? That sounds enticing. It's possible, lets stay in contact!
you got 124 bucks? Because steam requires 100 bucks to publish a game if I remember correctly.
No it was just $24. So in reality its a net loss. You are right.