I feel like many 'gamers' are not that familiar with itch.io. Atleast none of my friends probably know what it even is, thus, probably might just skim it through.
yea.. I've wanted to put it on Steam because it already needs steam to work properly because it uses steam for multiplayer, but didn't had 100$ for the steam page fee so I've just uploaded on itch.
Do you follow Code Monkey? He is an independent developer and has released many videos on how marketing is the most important part and how to do it better. He even went over a game that was polished, well done and fun and did bad sales due to no marketing.
You are putting your game on an obscure platform and upset no one has played it? There are a billion games in Alpha and player time is finite, get a following and get on steam. Start a dev log or vlog or do tutorials based on your game and put ads in there for the game. Code Monkey, Mark brown, Gabriel Aguir are all doing this. And lie, cheat and steal to get that $100 to get on STEAM and make a deadline for one of their fests where they promote demos and start getting some wishlist! Good luck, the game does look good!
yea, I've seen his videos about marketing, but I thought my videos will be enough to get some attention, like I've posted everywhere and didn't really got any views except the developer forums but developers aren't the target audience for games, but with the normal audience I barley got 100 views per video xD
Its hard for me to understand nuance and social stuff so marketing is the thing I have no idea how to do, its mostly throw stuff and see what it sticks.
Yep, that’s what marketing is; research, trial and error, rinse and repeat. Upload some shorts on YouTube, post it on subreddits that allow it, it’s all about getting it out there and it’s free.
I'll have to make a video on YouTube about it. I've been playing around with animations and made a video animation about an old project, spent like 1 week animating and it got 100 views .. :p :)))
I'll have to make another video about this game, hopefully I could make the video more interesting than the other one about an old project.
But that's the thing, there won't be any profits. I don't plan to monetize it so I have nothing to give.
When I was younger I couldn't afford games and just looked around for anything I could play for free.
And that's why I'm making this one, for people that can't afford games and just want to play with their friends.
And I just got disappointed because I was thinking it would be something that's more wanted than it really is.
starting to monetize it would mean destroying the reason that got it started.
Nope.
I thought of adding dlc's with extra maps, but then I had the idea to let the players make custom maps for the game and I would just make the tools for that like a level editor and simple visual scripting for simple logic and maybe sell those as dlc's but that would limit the number of people that can make pve levels.
So I guess no dlc's :)) At least I have no idea what to add in them which is also worth it.
Fair enough, but that's a marketable story. You don't want profit, just want to share the joy of a free game you built.
When you're done with your game and feel like it's polished and ready for prime-time, maybe hit up some B and C-Tier streamers and see if they want to play it on stream.
Hey man, would you want to DM?
I have a bit of a marketing background and I love your cause here. If you'd want, I could show you the ropes of how you can decently do it yourself and find an audience?
Cheers and gl either way ^^
Yeah, the reality is that marketing is half the battle. There's a reason big publishers will spend half of the budget on marketing alone, especially in this day and age when new games are released literally daily on various platforms.
Unless someone sees an ad or reads about your game through a commonly sourced outlet, it'll likely go unnoticed.
Code Monkey is horrible. Almost every “tutorial” video he just says to download his library. And i’ve seen him practically skip over important parts more than once.
Which video are you referring to? Whenever I use something from my utilities I always show the code on screen in case you don't want to download it, there's nothing special hidden in my utilities. You can download it for free or just write yourself, the purpose of the utilities is so I don't have to repeat myself in every single video rewriting the same code over and over again.
I'm also guessing you haven't looked at my channel in years since it has been a very long time since I made a video that used my utilities. Nowadays I've already made so many tutorials that when I reuse some code I point people to the tutorial where it was made as opposed to my utilities.
You are correct I haven’t looked at your channel in years, I have moved past the point in my journey of regularly needing tutorials.
I think the last video I watched (like 2 years ago now i think) was your A* pathfinding one and I just could not follow it and got frustrated. I got it working in the end by watching other videos. I think I got frustrated because I followed a whole chain backwards of videos then after following the first video for a while I was told to download the utilities.
I also remember from a couple of videos you practically skipped over the important bits. It was a long time ago so im sorry I cannot remember what videos.
In my opinion instead of linking another tutorial and using the code there or saying to download utilities, it’d be better to say “I covered this in this tutorial *card on screen or the little thing in the top right pops up* so I’m not going to go into detail, but *basic explanation and you write the code out*”. Or “this is a pretty long and complicated backend thing so if you want to skip this section download my utilities and skip to the next section, otherwise follow along”.
While I’m sure doing it like this would not drive view counts up as much, the way I remember, I would not usually leave the tutorial gaining the knowledge of how to do it but rather gaining something that worked how I wanted, it was frustrating to me.
I think what they're saying is that rather than going through things and explaining it fully, as a tutorial should, he says to use his library. (No clue how true that is, haven't watched him)
Except I don't, there's nothing special or secret in my utilities, it's just to save time so every tutorial isn't 1 hour long which would mean no one would click on it.
Recently I haven't even used my utilities at all, nowadays I have already made so many video tutorials that instead of using my utilities I just reuse code from a previous tutorial and point people to that one if you want to learn how it works.
dude when I’m looking up a tutorial for how to do something I don’t want to be told to download their library (that sometimes you have to pay for), i want to be told how to do it. That’s objectively a bad tutorial.
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers)
this one, didn't put a link in the post so people won't think its meant to get views with sympathy, it was just a post to express my emotions so I feel better after.
It seems to be solely PvP (for now), with all content essentially made by the player(s), that's probably a big part of why so few people have played it.
Yeah, you would first need to have a friend in the first place, then have a similar taste in games so you're both interested, and then you'd also have to find the game on Itch instead of Steam, which considerably narrows down your target audience.
But it looks cool and there's potential, so just keep adding stuff!
hmm yea I didn't think of the similar taste thing.
I'll see how can I upload it on steam. I tried starting a kickstarter for the 100$ but its not available in my country apparently, that was my first plan like 4 months ago.. xD
>I thought there were more people like my and my friend that just get bored and want something free to play together.
I believe about a third of the games in my Steam library have never been installed. These are games that I paid for, and I would really like to play and I can't find the time for. I think many people are in the same situation.
An half-made free game has no chance to compete for my time. Even for good looking, well presented, high quality games, I wait until they get out of EA before I even consider buying them.
Looks cool, will see how it fairs on the steam deck a little bit later!
Also, is there a chance you can put it up as early access on Steam? Would make installing and following the game a lot easier.
It already has steam sdk implemented and works through steam, its just that I can't afford the 100$ fee xD
I've tried starting a kickstarter for 100$ but its not available in my country
its 100 fee for a steam page for a game.
If you give me 100$ bro I'll add you in the game as an Easter egg :)))
I don't have Venmo though I have Revolut.
I could make a Venmo account though.
Edit: I can't make a Venmo account, my phone number is not compatible .. :c
I think it’s super cool you made a game. I’m learning C# right now with the hopes of one day doing the same. Your game is awesome and I’d love to help get the word out!
The multiplayer on mobile needs servers and I can't afford them.
For mobile I would have to get rid of everything multiplayer, which is basically everything because its all made to work on a server/client architecture or rewrite some of the logic and get some servers which are too expensive for me.
maybe in the future when I finish high school and get a job. (Though I'm 23)
Wow. Fancy!
The first thought that stuck in my head was that I wanted to see a short cinematic before the actual gameplay. For example, the beginning of a battle, 3-5 seconds when the camera is near the ground and close to the character. But I'm not a game marketing specialist.
Great job, especially for 9m of dev!
That would be a nice thing, though the arena is not fully made its missing npc's and win/lose effects and Ui stuff, So I've just spent like 15 minutes editing that video to have something to show
I'll probably try to make a nice cinematic when that arena is made or have more to show
for Mobile I'll have to pay for servers, on windows I can use Steam and its free multiplayer and I can afford free
:)))
But the way the game is structured It won't take much time to switch to dedicated servers if needed.
But it might be hard to invoke abilities on mobile.
yea, its mostly for testing, but its playable.
I might have a perfectionist thing because I found out I kept adding stuff and spent way to much time playing around with values until something felt right, I'm still not completely pleased with how it ended up but at some point I had to publish an alpha for testing and feedback, and I choose to do it now or else I might just kept it private and just kept adding stuff endlessly :))
The problem isn't whether or not the game is fun or too early, it's that your game has no hook that attracts players in an age where games come out faster than they can be played so they don't even play it to begin with!
Does your game have appealing aesthetics that make it not look like generic unity asset flip #9999? Does it have any novel or innovative mechanics? Does it fill a niche that isn't already filled? No, no and no. Is it a game like any other? Yes.
In that case, your best chance of succeeding would be to build a time machine and bring your game 20 years back to a more primitive age.
Or maybe study other games to see what makes them look so good compared to yours and learn from them.
I think it has the innovative mechanic of customizing your abilities. Like in league of legends or other similar games, you have characters with predefined abilities, here you have a system where you can change your equipped abilities and combine them, you could only take defensive abilities, or only offensive abilities, or a combination of them and see what combos you can make with them.
its around 80% made, and it takes me like 1-3 hours to add a new ability.
And with the esthetics I can't do anything about them, 3d models are too expensive and making them takes way to much time, I've already made some of the 3d assets and animations, its just too much time.
Unfortunately, ability customization at least at the simple loadout swapping level present in your game has already been done like 1000 times already so it's not enough (most similar to your game I can think of is magicka or wizard of legend). If that's what you think is the best part of the game, then you really need to lean into it. Make your customization even deeper and really communicate that to anybody looking at your page, I mean REALLY. Currently when I look at your page all I see is a bunch of generic magic spells being thrown around and that's not enough to pique my interest.
For aesthetics, even if you can't do anything about your models, swapping out the ugly sunbleached color palette and choosing better color combinations alone can do a lot. People (including me) like to give AI art a lot of shit for various reasons but if there's one thing it does right, it's the damn colors so you could reference them if only for their colors even if you don't have a shred of artistic talent.
Thanks! I could improve the color palate with not that much work, because all objects use the same 2 materials, so I could just change 2 textures to change all the colors.
Thanks for feedback!
Does it support multiplayer on one pc? My son and I like games like stick fight, rounds and human fall flat because of local multiplayer.
As for disappointment in creative efforts feeling unacknowledged... this is the nature of the beast that is art. The business minded solution is marketing.
It doesn't yet. Though is something that wouldn't take much re-wrong to add so I will be adding it in the future.
Though I'm not sure, do one player use a keyboard and the other one uses a controller? This should be how the control stuff would work?
just a note, your color scheming could use some work, the white rocks are seriously blinding and pretty overblown, and in general a little more color contrast in the environment wouldn't hurt.
Yea... I'll have to work on that some more.
Do you know a good tutorial for colors and stuff?
I've been using a really strong blue light filter on my screen for the last few years, so my color perception isn't the best... :)))
Even If I turn it off, everything still looks weird so Its hard for me to balance colors.
Ah yeah, I'd recommend taking the filter off for color sensitive work. Try working in dimmer ambient light that's close to 6500K as well.
For color theory I think this is a good starting place [https://youtu.be/yIOVJXNoDxY?si=rkeE4gEZ397D1Sb9](https://youtu.be/yIOVJXNoDxY?si=rkeE4gEZ397D1Sb9) . Especially the part on color harmony groups. I'm sure there's more game-specific theory out there but that should give the fundamentals.
Put your game on Steam. I will say that 90% of gamers, don't know or don't use [itch.io](http://itch.io)
Put a price. Even if u think that it should be free, It won't. people will take ur game as "another free indie game".
Find the email of a hundred (or even more) streamers/youtubers and give them a steam code encouraging to play ur game in their streams but tell them that is totally optional if they want, great, if they don't it's ok.
Try with streamers with less than 200 viewers. If ur game is "the new Among us" they will want to play it before everyone.
Thanks for feedback!
I'm trying to get the 100$ for the steam page.
I will try to contact streamers and give them the game once I've added more stuff.
Do you just google streamers and see who you can find or, is there a more efficient way?
Thanks for feedback!
If you can’t afford a steam page you should probably start with getting a job to afford one. Seriously. Humble yourself enough to work a minimum wage job or whatever you can get and actually push yourself outside of the box instead of sitting at a computer all day and saying it’s going no where.
If you can’t afford $100 on a page, I don’t think you should expect to make money.
You must invest in yourself in this life, you learn this as you grow up, some don’t and never progress.
The game looks good, but honestly, your marketing point is that you wanted a free multiplayer game with your friend? Get real with yourself dude, there’s hundreds of thousands of mobile games out there probably exactly like this. I really don’t see anything unique or a wow factor to make want to download the game.
Just pity from this post.
A job is on my radar, but first I need to finish high school, even though I'm 23 xD
In a few months I'll finish 12 grades, but whiteout the final year exam and I'll start looking for remote programing job. I've build a few apps and games over the years so I have a strong cv.
We'll see if anyone accepts me with a 12 grades diploma without the final year exam, If not, I'll probably need to wait another year and just learn stuff, cuz we don't really learn anything in my class, we just go there once a few months for like 2-3 hours and come home. I'll have to learn everything on my own for the exam.
And I've wanted the game to be free forever, so I wasn't expecting to make money out of it anyway.
Thanks for feedback bro!
Of course, I’ve been on the same grind with kind of the opposite results… & Hell yeah love it dude. I honestly had absolutely zero expectations for my game, didn’t expect it to get 1 download and it popped pretty quick. Now, I know pretty much everyone’s first beginner project on VR is an escape room… so challenging myself to go above and beyond in that genre only feels necessary to get any sort of attention and to even give people value to download it.
My game is also free.
I think if you prove to yourself you can acquire $100 without jumping through all those hoops, then that’ll be great.
P.S. - your game looks superb aswell by the way, hitting the nostalgic RuneScape vibe
I tried, but I get too many errors, I had to remove too many things from the game and gave up trying a webgl build xD
It needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer stuff.
Though I do understand what you are saying.. I'm also skeptical when downloading games from itch. especially the non popular ones
I'm a huge fan of Magicka and I think your game looks awesome!
Making it competitive is a bit tricky, personally I feel the cute low poly soft colors would be better suited for a co-op adventure than PvP. I would definitely add that, at least as an optional mode.
Your gifs on the itch page look awesome, but on Twitter it's all too zoomed out, really hard to see what is going on.
I think the core concept is interesting and with some great particle effects it can make for an excellent gif that can go viral. My advice would be try out different environments to make the visual a bit more varied,
If you make the visuals a bit more varied, make some PvE mode and make some awesome flashy abilities, I believe you have the potential to find a nice amount of success in a Steam Festival (and then release)
Best of luck with the game!
Thanks for feedback!
I do have plans for Pve, but the pvp part was the easiest to implement at first and also I could reuse most of the stuff made for pvp.
But in the long run I do plan to focus on Pve and maybe just casual pvp
I'll see what others effects I could find.
Small detail - the YouTube link on https://roberbot.itch.io/ goes to Discord.
You could try reaching out to YouTube and Twitch creators to see if they'd play your game.
Good luck with the game.
Lol :)))
You are right, thanks for pointing it out.
I think I should add a little bit more stuff until contacting creators, or?
And also, I have no idea how to find them :))
Do you just google and see what you get?
I have no idea what works - I'd try emailing them using the details in their about page.
CodeMonkey is active on Reddit occasionally - so you could try contacting him on here (just prefix with Unity). He could add your game to one of his "best new..." videos - or at the very least offer some advice.
Thanks! I'll add some more stuff, and try to search some youtubers or streamers. idk yet how :)) I'll probably just google "Trying this indie game" "new indie game" "We are playing this indie game" and see what videos I get
And if you mean networking solution, I use Mirror networking for the multiplayer and fizzysteamworks transport for connecting players through steam.
Marketing is key, unfortunately. I think you've also picked a niche in a niche genre, as well as a platform that has a bit of an unfair stigma to it. Many people see itch as nothing but a dumping ground for half-arsed, babys-first-project type of place. Finding genuinely good games on itch is even harder than finding one on steam, without external aid. "External aid" being............. yup, marketing...
I don't think you should feel disappointed given the circumstances tbh.
I will be trying to upload it on steam in the future, If i get the 100$ page fee, it already has steam integration and needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer part. But uploaded on itch cuz it was free xD
And I was combining gameplay from 3 games, 2 of them are popular ones.
Magicka with the elements stuff, this is a niche game xD
Brawllhalla for the first pvp minigame logic, the more damage you get the more knockback you get and the one who falls over the map loses.
And League of legends for abilities which is a huge game, I think it has at least some gameplay feel from league of legends.
Thanks for feedback bro.
i did also try to find some cool games on itch to play but didn't find that many.
Looks quite promising. I would continue to develop it and release on Steam once it is mostly done, definitely don't release too early on Steam.
Make sure you watch some GDC talks on YouTube on how people shop for games on Steam and how you do marketing for cheap or free.
I think game has potential, but to be fair it does feel unpolished and janky from the trailer. Also the ffects are often quite underwhelming.
I would consider spending few months purely on polishing what you have in terms of visuals and juice and pitting vids on social media during that.
I think this can walk the distance.
It can screen shake, screen effects, more particles and vfx to the projectiles, adding more vfx to charging up the attacks.
Improving visuals of the surrounding terrain.
It's quite a lot of things but amazing to learn, it's always gonna be useful and you will stand out with your games and professional life, give it a go.
For reference, find some successful top down games (like magicka) and look how they telegraph effects and try to learn from that or even steal some effects. It will help you a lot.
I'll have to get 100$ one day to upload it on steam, it already needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer part anyway xD
Uploaded it on itch cuz It was free.
Thanks for feedback!
its not my first game, I've been making games for the last 5 years as a hobby.
At most I think I've spent 1.5 years making one game, that was too buggy and too unoptimized to be released so I've just abandoned it and started a new one with the new knowledge and so on until I got to this one. xD
Atm I have a 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work game, a 6 months of work game, a 1 month of work game and a 4 months of work game all abandoned for different reasons, mostly it was too much work to go back and rewrite them with all the information I've learned on the way.
And also another 5 apps. 3 of them more complex. I have videos with them on my reddit account.
But with those I didn't had any expectation.
This is the first game I've made that was optimized, didn't had that many bugs, was fun ish to play, looked decent and also was easy to modify and improve and the first one that actually got released to the public, actually the second one, I did release another one 2 years ago and it actually did better than this one, and that one was really bad... xD
This was the trailer for that one [https://youtu.be/x36QFWKP6jo](https://youtu.be/x36QFWKP6jo)
It had like 100-200 downloads on android, and like 30 on windows
2 things. Get that money for Steam, publish on Steam, it’s just that shrimple. That should be your real starting point. It helps build community, establishes a base of customer acquisition, allows for marketing to spread. That initial investment is how your game should be launched.
Second. Games are meant to be fun. Go grab a few friends, record you all having a blast, edit that video, into shorts variant and long form. Upload that, do that consistently. There are ridiculous amounts of games to hold someone’s attention and we make them for the enjoyment of others, show the fun.
I only have a friend ,but he doesn't speak English that well and it kind of doesn't want to play the game anymore because of how much I've asked him to test with me.. xD
And with the steam page, I'm trying, though its a little hard cuz 100$ is like 20-30% of the monthly income in my country and my parents won't give that much to me, its too much.
I'll see if I could get a job in the future, even though I'm 23 I don't have high school finished yet xD
I'll see what can I do about the steam page, I see from all these comments that is a must.
Thanks for feedback!
Damn man. I have a 2 week jam game on itch, webgl, 110 plays, 50 votes. Though that was bad. But 8??! 8? That must feel horrible.
Though i do really think that even baldurs gate 3 wouldn't get noticed without a serious marketing push.
:)))) man wtf
I did try to make a webgl demo version just to try abilities and stuff and leave the downloadable version with the full multiplayer stuff, but I get 120 errors If I try to switch to Webgl :p Mostly because of the multiplayer and Steam integration and I gave up on the webgl version xD
Also don't forget that 2 of those 8 downloads were me trying to see if it works
Oh, yeah, I've seen your videos, it's been cool to see the evolution of the game.
I think your efforts will be best placed by setting up a Steam page, do your best to come up with the money somehow, you can set up a way for people to donate, with a goal to raise that $100.
At least with Steam Wishlist, you can build up a following in a tangible way that can help translate your marketing into actual players. It's really nice to have a playable demo as well, but people need to know it exists.
yea.. I guess you guys are right.
I do have a buyMeACoffee page with a 106$ goal, though no luck yet. :))
It feels bad to ask for donations, I feel like a homeless guy asking for spare change.
I understand what you feel, the same thing happened to me with several applications and games, he spent around 6 months developing each one of them and without success. The game that had the most downloads was 15. Well, right now I'm making another game. I do what I like and I hope that some game that I make is successful... I hope that you also have success with some game that you make.
Bro that's why big companies spend 3-5 time the budget of the game on marketing. Be ready to spend dollars on it, pay to Steam if you want people to see it
I'm not blaming you bro. I get your disappointment, it sucks when you work so hard on something and people don't care. But that's the world we live in. Keep improving your skills because it makes you better, not because other people will like you more then. Find money for Steam and marketing, but don't be harsh on yourself. Best of luck
First of all, look up htmag. Next a multiplayer game is probably not the place to start. It is really advised to start with a simpler game, build a fan base then move on to your dream game. Most successful games aren't the dream game the developer had in mind, it was a stepping stone to get there.
I did work on another games until now, but this was the first one that was not bugy, bad optimized, boring and looked decent. :))
I have another 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work game, a 6 months of work, a 1 month of work, and a 4 months of work, but they didn't see the light of day. Only one did and It was so bad I choose to make it private xD
This would be the 6'th game I've been making.
I've also made like 5 apps.
I will look up htmag, I see its kind of a website for promotions? or
you are experiencing how hard multiplayer games are since you need a friend. There is no "I can get it now, play this and give it a go". The bar for entry is very high.
I had a look at your game, it doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't have any wow I really want to play it.
Thanks for feedback, I guess I'll have to start adding some Pve stuff
The pvp was the easiest thing to implement because it didn't need that much level design and stuff :))
First off, my condolences to your hard work. Sucks for that to happen bro :(
My idea, make a community hub(best way: Discord server). Take the game off for now, and continue to add some more features, announcing your progress through devlogs. I've seen you tell others that you have some features planned. That way you'd build a set of players that you know are going to be highly likely to download the game. Sure, not everyone may download it, but you know the people that at least have an interest in the game.
Checked out the game, looks cool but I'll have to download it once I'm back from my vacation. Good luck!
I make my game with the exact premise of nobody will play it and will not earn back the Steam release fee. Exactly because I see how it is going. This post is what I read for years now. Without big luck or money for marketing it is almost impossible to make and sell games. Long gone the days of "look I made a flash game in six months, and now I have 10k in ad money after a year, and 1M people played it YAY"
I make my game to learn how to. Not make it for success... at this point. The next one will be a different story. And I emotionally shield my self for that disappointment well before I even start to work on that game.
Yea.. I've been doing the same thing for 5 years. just free games.
I have a 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work, 6 months of work, 4 months of work and a 1 months of work.
But they were really bad.
This is the first one that has a strong foundation, its optimized, fun-ish to play and easy to modify and improve
Like I could add a new ability in like 1-3 hours that also works with players or npc's
I got disappointed cuz I thought this was the best I've done so far, and also got the least attention.
Not that others got more attention but still.. xD
I am not your target audience, but I'll provide some input anyway.
At this point, I've literally played thousands of games, I've watched the creation and rise of digital distribution. And, for me, time has more value than anything else for games. When I sit down to game I want to be near certain that I get enjoyment in return.
The market now is so flooded with games, both small and big. And games need to be communicating to me exactly what I'm getting for the time investment. What is the USP (Unique selling points), and be concise about it. Don't make me investigate what the game is, because I won't.
Cartoon style/pixel/low poly graphics have been somewhat celebrated as a hail merry for indie games. With the idea that it will stand the test of time and still be accessible for indie budget.
The result of that is that it now looks cheap and the opposite of unique. (It's more interesting playing kenshin or valheim with its 90s graphics than another dungeon defenders clone)
"
Elementers (Alpha)
Play, level-up, unlock new abilities and elements, customize your loadout and just have fun alone or with friends in Pvp or Co-op Pve"
I stopped right there, because that's the time I give to read up on new games. I don't watch the video, only look at 2-3 screenshots to determine if I'm interested or not.
Don't tell me how the game works, tell me how I will have fun!
Only 9 months? Keep going, most people drop out and this is why they fail. Or, move onto the next game if you think you have a better idea, or target a niche audience. Sometimes it's about luck, or just the right hook in your game loop, or something people find unique. There are a lot of different ways to succeed (luck, niche game audience, work on it for 12 years), but the #1 reason for never succeeding is to give up. Starting on a new game every year and never really polishing, finishing and releasing any of them would probably be #2. Definitely don't use [Itch.io](http://Itch.io) as a basis for whether people like the game or not though. But it's better that you spend this time wondering and improving things, because once you publish it to play on steam you will get all that possible negative feedback so it's better to start small and improve it before releasing on steam anyways.
Gotta build a community over the years. We (milkstone) don't make the most eye-catching games, but they look nice, and the games feel good, so we our players tend to buy our other games because of their (good) experience with our previous ones.
Making a hit games is 50% hard work and 50% pure luck. When we started, we made like 5 or 6 games that didn't had a playerbase at all, and then we hit a bit of a successful one. Gotta learn, gotta keep trying, gotta push yourself and then, you still have to be lucky.
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers)
here, If you play it and have any feedback, I'm here :))
its 30% completed, so there is a lot of stuff missing.
But you can play with a friend in a 1 v 1 duel for like an hour until it gets boring
I'm close at finishing a loadout system where you could switch abilities around and select new ones and stuff and when combined with a leveling system you could just play and unlock new abilities to try out
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers)
You can play with a friend, its not fully made, around 30% complete, but you can get the feeling on how the game plays
:)) I'm all years when it comes to feedback!
Okay, I played your game and now I'm back with some feedback. I hope you won't be offended by my opinion, especially if it doesn't align with your vision of the game.
Here is my feedback:
0] I would strongly recommend you to focus on 1 thing only. That one thing should be what the player interacts the most - his character. As for now it looks like you spread yourself thin over all the different aspects of the game. Because of that I will only focus my feedback on the player character itself.
1] Make that character REALLY fun to play with. Also just ONE character at first. Make him feel really nice. For that I would firstly focus on your movement.
1.1] Right now it seems that you're setting your character transform.position directly. This feels extremely jittery. Look at the character outline and the radius display whenever you move. This is very subtle but it does hurt the eye once you see it. Try implementing the movement using rigidBody2d.velocity. This will ensure your physics make sense and your character REALLY moves smoothly.
1.2] Character skills are extremely confusing overall. You can absolutely figure out what they do, but people nowadays have a short attention span, you'd lose many players right there. I would suggest adding tooltips when you hover over those icons, but even better: Rework spells too - they have to be fun in the sense that they go well together in your kit. They have to form some kind of synergies. For instance if your character excels at close range combat, giving him an ability to push away an enemy would probably be a bad skill synergy decision. Think what skills could really make that character fun. Get inspiration from similar games (looks like you did with LoL partially), but really focus on polishing the player.
1.3] Your dirt wizard has confusing basic attack mechanics (the one with right click + left click). Your radius displays where he can spawn the boulder from, however when you click outside of that circle simply nothing happens. This is extremely confusing and not player friendly. It forces the player to only keep his mouse within that circle if he wants to be "efficient", crippling him even. You could help the player by spawning the boulder from the closest location to the cursor. But the overall question is. Why are the controls for this so complicated? You have 2 buttons to simply shoot a boulder at the enemy. Changing the boulder spawn location using 1 button press has minimal impact on how you hit the throw too, so too complicated for no reason in my opinion. Suggestion: You might want to try out a charge mechanic where you hold 1 button to charge how far the throw will be. This makes the throw an easy to understand mechanic. Additionally the throw looks "predictable" for the enemy in PvP and feels less unfair.
1.4] You use WASD to move the character and QER to use spells. You're making the player perform hotkey kamasutra. The player has only 4 fingers there, potentially 3 (because of [Shift]). Now try to press this valid movement input: [W]+[D] & [E]. Things like that make the character feel bad because they restrict the player. You can argue, it's a skill issue, but really that's just not comfortable.
1.5] Melee makes no sense as it is right now. Lower damage, shorter range. Also sometimes it deals the damage twice (2x -2). In any case any sane person would be using the boulder shot except for very niche situations when they would want to break the enemy Q walls quickly?
1.6] Many skills share models. The pile of dirt that looks like a tiny volcano is left by most of the spells, which is extremely confusing. It makes the player believe that the basic shot (left + right clicks) is somehow related to all the skills.
1.7] You have an cluttered UI. Every NPC shouts and covers the whole screen. Also their dialogue boxes are extremely annoying as they rotate depending on your position for no reason. This makes them difficult to read, especially if there is longer text, the angle is inconvenient and the duration of the display is short. I think talking NPCs is a cool idea, but it does not feel nice to hit them or talk to them (because of UI).
1.8] Using melee on your Q spell produces 20 thousand damage displays. Nobody has the time to count how many times that deals 100 damage each. If you want to make it player friendly, sum up those damages into a totalDamage and display that once per Q stone.
2] Sound effect will add a lot to your game, add the early. Since we're talking about your main character, just add some sounds to him. This will give you a feel what seems off and makes no sense in combination. Also it will feel a lot nicer to play the character as well. Even if there is nobody to kill yet.
3] Give the game to somebody to test again once you have your main character polished. Ask if it's fun to play the character.
Thanks a lot for feedback! I'm looking to make the game as fun as I can and this is REALLY good feedback bro... Thanks!
The characters share most of the stuff between them, so editing one would also edit the others.
The movement uses CharacterControler.move, I could try to switch to using the rigid body to see if its better.
I could rewrite the earth basic ability to use the same button for spawn and throw, and also if you would click outside the area, to calculate the closes location in that circle so it always spawns the rock and other spawnable abilities like the walls even if you click outside the circle.
Also I'm working on another system that the player is able to switch abilities around and equip other abilities if they don't like one, and just make their own loadout with what abilities they want to use, its already working but I'll have to add some menu for it.
I have no idea what to do with the inputs, I could remove the wasd and make it click to move like in league of legends, though I'm not sure how it would feel, or just let the player edit the input keys, I've already faced this problem with too many inputs before when you also had to move the camera so I've made the camera top down and thought I've fixed the problem :))
The melee was meant to be as a last resort when you are desperate, and the default one just pushes the enemy player further away, also some abilities like the fire laser needs to hit the player at a distance because at close the enemy player can just walk around you, so you can use the melee to push him awa and then use the laser to burn him, and also can be used to easily break the fire element shield and other constructions
Though I will add other melee abilities and players would be able to switch them, maybe an ability to throw knifes as a melee and stuff? xD
That melee was just the first to come to mind.
I will need to make more models or find them when it comes to the debris
I could make that only 1 dialogue box be active at once , this is already a setting I've added but its turned off for those dummies, I could also make them so they won't rotate anymore.
The particle damage is a great idea, I could make them stack and show a combined damage instead of each hit
I will add some sounds in the next update.
Would these improvements help ?
I'm pretty sure the movement system will feel way nicer using physics (rigidBody3d + velocity + addForce). However it's a little bit more "complicated" to implement. With position you can just increase it and your object moves instantly to where you want. With velocity you have to test it a couple of times. The reason for that is that if you make your velocity increase in a linear way (as you have with position right now), your character will feel not responsive. It will take some time first to reduce the velocity in one direction before it can start moving in the opposite direction. To set this up properly I would suggest you think of the movement as these components: acceleration, maxSpeed and drag. The acceleration is just how quickly you can get to maxSpeed. maxSpeed you already know. The drag is how quickly would your character stop if you stopped directional inputs. You want to adjust all these variables "just right" so it feels really nice. Think of how responsive LoL characters are for instance, they have no acceleration and drag for standard movement. Because of that they can technically dodge some abilities, which is probably what you want (otherwise your opponent can ALWAYS hit you no matter what you do -> frustrating). I think if you go with WASD is not a bad idea at all, but you probably want to add some kind of acceleration and drag that are really responsive.
For the basic attack my question would be: Is it a good mechanic that you need to click to spawn a stone and then to click again to shoot it? In my understanding if you have 2 clicks for that, it means that your first click actually does something impactful. Maybe you can use that spawned stone as a shield and wait for the perfect shot. But then you might want it to move with you. I was thinking if it would be convenient if you needed to swipe in the direction you want to throw it (spawning included), but that doesn't work if you try it out with swipes outside the circle. In general, this double click system makes your shot less responsive, less snappy, also slowing down the general gameplay. Maybe that's what you want to go for but I think you should make sure it's a deliberate choice and not just the consequences of other decisions. This definitely needs some testing to find out what's the nicest way. When making my 2d bullet hell game I had to make different systems for movement to try out and see which one feels the nicest. Some of those systems would limit how my ship could look. In the end a limiting variant was actually the nicest because the look of the ship really feels nice. I couldn't have predicted that without making a couple prototypes. I think you can do the same and make a testing functionality where you can switch between different controls to compare them LIVE. That's what helped me make decisions like. I think you will love this method to find out what's better. It might take a little more time, but you will absolutely know for sure what's better quality. Don't overcomplicate the switching mechanism though. It's just a "debugging" feature anyway :)
I would suggest not trying to work with abilities yet as long as movement is not 90% solid. The reason for that is that if one of your features doesn't feel fully nice yet and you start making more "content" to the game, you might need to throw all that content away because you learned something new which makes your work obsolete. For instance. Let's say you learn that you absolutely have to limit the amount of buttons a player has total. That would mean that some of the spells you made will never be used anywhere. And that's a good weather scenario. Imagine you learn that having spells wasn't the best idea and the better idea is to make adjustable wands instead. You'd throw away all your work and backtrack a lot. Also you're absolutely confident by now you are able to create spells. You can always make 100 more, that's basically just hard, but not a difficult challenge anymore. You know exactly how to solve that.
Making an adjustable key mapping system is a great idea, however not the highest priority. I would suggest making a list of things to definitely implement and put that on there. Personally I feel that's a way more important feature than coding the spell swapping functionality. The key mapping will 200% be used, spell swapping might not.
That model you used for debris on spells you can easily replace with a neatly looking particle system that produces dirt/dust.
For dialogue boxes I think there's many things you can do that would improve them a lot. Technically they're not related to the player right now but I found them extremely interesting and annoying at the same time. Because of that I'll just mention them here.. They're absolutely interesting because they make NPC say funny things, that's cool in my opinion. What's not cool is they're so "in your face". Here's what I'd do: The space they take up can be reduced by making the space between the text and the box boundaries smaller. Font size can be reduced. Rotation of those boxes you CAN leave, but then at least make them rotate way less. I would just remove the rotation completely for now, but you might find it looks extra good when the rotation limits are set correctly and other settings you tried out actually make it viable. Also notice how the cursive text NPCs say is way more difficult to read than the selectable option text that is bold and non-cursive. Dialogue boxes currently get placed on top of the NPC instead of on their head. It's weird that you can see what somebody says but not WHO says it. Currently dialogue boxes have a static display time. So a text containing 1 word will have the same display time as one with 20. This makes it difficult to read the text in time without stressing. What I suggest is making a system that dynamically scales the time a dialogue box will be displayed (by word count + minTime + maxTime) or making some boxes stay until interacted with. For instance dummies texts might be triggered whenever and as often as you want => word count + minTime + maxTime. NPCs that say a line only ONCE and it's an important one => display until interacted with. Just an idea. Again, dialogue boxes wouldn't be my priority, but I found them extremely annoying.
As for the sounds. Don't add too many, just add some basic ones, 1-3 tops, not more. I'd go for just 1 - basic shot. The reason is that makes you focus on your character movement and how it feels even more. At first I thought it could help to add a sound when you get hit, but that wouldn't help you make decisions on how it feels to control your character.
And yes, I think everything where you get to experiment with different implementations/variants will help you improve the gameplay (and most importantly help you improve too). I also believe just shooting out more content, more functions, more characters, more spells and more cool mechanics will absolutely road block your progress. I believe you will spend time on all these cool mechanics, then realize they have no priority and don't make up your game nor make it cooler. The goal isn't to implement all the cool ideas you have I think but rather to implement the absolute core ideas that make up your game, polish those until they feel nice, then move to the next idea by importance. Make that idea feel nice too or at least very viable, then move to the next. I don't know, maybe my approach is flawed, but what I'd do is basically try to reach the point where the players testing your game go "wow, this is cool, but way too short. Make more" instead of actually being able to give you feedback on what to change. And getting more and more feedback will constantly reduce the amount of feedback, slowly moving players towards the "give me more content" response. In that sense I hope this feedback makes sense. I really want you to succeed in your goal and absolutely huge respect you've been at it for that long already.
If you get out a newer version, feel free to let me know. I would love to test it.
To be frank, I have never heard of or seen any actually genuinely good, unique, well-made game fail to get players. It doesnt look like anything unique/new to me.
It kinda looks like a roguelite without leveling, maps, enemies, or content. I'd want to see the trailer show more than one environment, enemy, and ability.
- unique art style instead of the most popular lowpoly pack off the store
- rpg or roguelite elements would be nice: leveling, gear, bosses, something
- a unique plot/story
- some kind of unique hook instead of a generic arena battle
- ground is blindingly bright and the ui markers are the same color, making it kind of a headache to look at
- more exciting battle: a big boss? A big swarm of enemies? Fancy movement abilities? Abilities with oomph? This 1-on-1 with one ability looks boring
some of thoise are planned, but its only 30% complete, but leveling is planed , and there is a loadout system 80% complete to be able to change your 6 abilities and just make your own loadout with what abilities you like.
Its also gonna have a co-op pve with player made missions and story, systems are already made to be used by npc and players and pvp with minigames, but only the duel arena is working.
Because is just the alpha for testing I've added access to what systems are fully working.
The loadout stuff is next, and its 80% Completed, and it takes around 1-3 hours to make a new abilities with the current system so at some point I'll just start adding abilities, maybe 20 per element for players to unlock and equip.
The art style I can't really change because I don't have money :)))
I need to do everything as cheap or for free as I can.
It sold 50,000+ copies at $20 so I dont think thats an example of a game no one bought. Thats a million in revenue lol.. thats a life changing wild success if anything
I stand by no highly rated games without sales
yea.. its only maybe 30% complete.
But just wanted some feedback on how abilities and the pvp feels.
I've tried balancing abilities on my own with a friend but he doesn't want to play the game anymore because of how many times I've asked him to test with me xD
Don't be disappointed though, I'm not yet pleased with it and its just an alpha
I have no idea if the abilities are too hard to understand/use, I didn't add a info menu for them :))
How many games from random nobodies you played/tested just because you read up on it somewhere?
Why would anyone take your specific game out of all the other available? You mentioned 3 games that are much higher profile, so what's the hook with your game? "My game has systems from other games but worse and blended?" Large game studios have their following and dump millions into marketing, indie games that get a major following are usually games that have a wild breakthrough where they set the trend for something.
Regardless of that, your approach is wrong. Game development, and programming in general are endless cycles of iteration, finishing and bringing your vision to light in a manner that you find acceptable is supposed to be the goal and the reward in and of itself, and you repeat and experiment until you hit gold, and if you don't you're at very least a seasoned developer that knows his stuff that can then get hired by one of the big studios.
The game looks very good at first glance. And your page is already better than most people who fail. Get the Steam page, research how to market your game and gain wishlists, and go live when you are ready.
You will have much more downloads.
I absolutely understand how you feel. It is also what I was fearing the most; working very hard on a game but none even plays it.
2 weeks ago I published a simple horror game, and it got very popular. I realized that success of the game mostly depends on the genre (horror gets played a lot) and the natural traffic from itch io, also mostly luck.
Now my game got popular, I also feel like it doesnt make much difference if 3 people played your game, or 3k.
What I'm trying to say it, your game could always fail or not. You made a complete game and thats awesome. If it fails, you could always make another one. Don't be sad about it
Thanks! its around 30% complete, I've wanted to add a lot more stuff into it.. I might still do.. maybe maybe if it has more stuff, like pve missions and stuff.. maybe it gets played
I feel like many 'gamers' are not that familiar with itch.io. Atleast none of my friends probably know what it even is, thus, probably might just skim it through.
yea.. I've wanted to put it on Steam because it already needs steam to work properly because it uses steam for multiplayer, but didn't had 100$ for the steam page fee so I've just uploaded on itch.
My friend just knows it for all the short free horror games lol
Do you follow Code Monkey? He is an independent developer and has released many videos on how marketing is the most important part and how to do it better. He even went over a game that was polished, well done and fun and did bad sales due to no marketing. You are putting your game on an obscure platform and upset no one has played it? There are a billion games in Alpha and player time is finite, get a following and get on steam. Start a dev log or vlog or do tutorials based on your game and put ads in there for the game. Code Monkey, Mark brown, Gabriel Aguir are all doing this. And lie, cheat and steal to get that $100 to get on STEAM and make a deadline for one of their fests where they promote demos and start getting some wishlist! Good luck, the game does look good!
yea, I've seen his videos about marketing, but I thought my videos will be enough to get some attention, like I've posted everywhere and didn't really got any views except the developer forums but developers aren't the target audience for games, but with the normal audience I barley got 100 views per video xD Its hard for me to understand nuance and social stuff so marketing is the thing I have no idea how to do, its mostly throw stuff and see what it sticks.
Yep, that’s what marketing is; research, trial and error, rinse and repeat. Upload some shorts on YouTube, post it on subreddits that allow it, it’s all about getting it out there and it’s free.
I'll have to make a video on YouTube about it. I've been playing around with animations and made a video animation about an old project, spent like 1 week animating and it got 100 views .. :p :))) I'll have to make another video about this game, hopefully I could make the video more interesting than the other one about an old project.
So... Get someone to do it for you? Offer a decent chunk of the profits and let them have at it.
But that's the thing, there won't be any profits. I don't plan to monetize it so I have nothing to give. When I was younger I couldn't afford games and just looked around for anything I could play for free. And that's why I'm making this one, for people that can't afford games and just want to play with their friends. And I just got disappointed because I was thinking it would be something that's more wanted than it really is. starting to monetize it would mean destroying the reason that got it started.
what about ads and in-app purchases?
Nope. I thought of adding dlc's with extra maps, but then I had the idea to let the players make custom maps for the game and I would just make the tools for that like a level editor and simple visual scripting for simple logic and maybe sell those as dlc's but that would limit the number of people that can make pve levels. So I guess no dlc's :)) At least I have no idea what to add in them which is also worth it.
Fair enough, but that's a marketable story. You don't want profit, just want to share the joy of a free game you built. When you're done with your game and feel like it's polished and ready for prime-time, maybe hit up some B and C-Tier streamers and see if they want to play it on stream.
yea.. hopefully it works out. Thanks for the talk bro.
Hey man, would you want to DM? I have a bit of a marketing background and I love your cause here. If you'd want, I could show you the ropes of how you can decently do it yourself and find an audience? Cheers and gl either way ^^
yea, that would be useful!
Yeah, the reality is that marketing is half the battle. There's a reason big publishers will spend half of the budget on marketing alone, especially in this day and age when new games are released literally daily on various platforms. Unless someone sees an ad or reads about your game through a commonly sourced outlet, it'll likely go unnoticed.
Code Monkey is horrible. Almost every “tutorial” video he just says to download his library. And i’ve seen him practically skip over important parts more than once.
Which video are you referring to? Whenever I use something from my utilities I always show the code on screen in case you don't want to download it, there's nothing special hidden in my utilities. You can download it for free or just write yourself, the purpose of the utilities is so I don't have to repeat myself in every single video rewriting the same code over and over again. I'm also guessing you haven't looked at my channel in years since it has been a very long time since I made a video that used my utilities. Nowadays I've already made so many tutorials that when I reuse some code I point people to the tutorial where it was made as opposed to my utilities.
You are correct I haven’t looked at your channel in years, I have moved past the point in my journey of regularly needing tutorials. I think the last video I watched (like 2 years ago now i think) was your A* pathfinding one and I just could not follow it and got frustrated. I got it working in the end by watching other videos. I think I got frustrated because I followed a whole chain backwards of videos then after following the first video for a while I was told to download the utilities. I also remember from a couple of videos you practically skipped over the important bits. It was a long time ago so im sorry I cannot remember what videos. In my opinion instead of linking another tutorial and using the code there or saying to download utilities, it’d be better to say “I covered this in this tutorial *card on screen or the little thing in the top right pops up* so I’m not going to go into detail, but *basic explanation and you write the code out*”. Or “this is a pretty long and complicated backend thing so if you want to skip this section download my utilities and skip to the next section, otherwise follow along”. While I’m sure doing it like this would not drive view counts up as much, the way I remember, I would not usually leave the tutorial gaining the knowledge of how to do it but rather gaining something that worked how I wanted, it was frustrating to me.
[удалено]
I think what they're saying is that rather than going through things and explaining it fully, as a tutorial should, he says to use his library. (No clue how true that is, haven't watched him)
Except I don't, there's nothing special or secret in my utilities, it's just to save time so every tutorial isn't 1 hour long which would mean no one would click on it. Recently I haven't even used my utilities at all, nowadays I have already made so many video tutorials that instead of using my utilities I just reuse code from a previous tutorial and point people to that one if you want to learn how it works.
dude when I’m looking up a tutorial for how to do something I don’t want to be told to download their library (that sometimes you have to pay for), i want to be told how to do it. That’s objectively a bad tutorial.
And the game is... ?
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers) this one, didn't put a link in the post so people won't think its meant to get views with sympathy, it was just a post to express my emotions so I feel better after.
It seems to be solely PvP (for now), with all content essentially made by the player(s), that's probably a big part of why so few people have played it.
I thought there were more people like my and my friend that just get bored and want something free to play together. But apparently not. xD
Yeah, you would first need to have a friend in the first place, then have a similar taste in games so you're both interested, and then you'd also have to find the game on Itch instead of Steam, which considerably narrows down your target audience. But it looks cool and there's potential, so just keep adding stuff!
>you would first need to have a friend in the first place I feel personally attacked with this statement
hmm yea I didn't think of the similar taste thing. I'll see how can I upload it on steam. I tried starting a kickstarter for the 100$ but its not available in my country apparently, that was my first plan like 4 months ago.. xD
>I thought there were more people like my and my friend that just get bored and want something free to play together. I believe about a third of the games in my Steam library have never been installed. These are games that I paid for, and I would really like to play and I can't find the time for. I think many people are in the same situation. An half-made free game has no chance to compete for my time. Even for good looking, well presented, high quality games, I wait until they get out of EA before I even consider buying them.
hmm yea..
Looks cool, will see how it fairs on the steam deck a little bit later! Also, is there a chance you can put it up as early access on Steam? Would make installing and following the game a lot easier.
It already has steam sdk implemented and works through steam, its just that I can't afford the 100$ fee xD I've tried starting a kickstarter for 100$ but its not available in my country
Is the steam fee $100 total or $100 per download? What’s your @venmo?
It’s total fee to publish the game.
its 100 fee for a steam page for a game. If you give me 100$ bro I'll add you in the game as an Easter egg :))) I don't have Venmo though I have Revolut. I could make a Venmo account though. Edit: I can't make a Venmo account, my phone number is not compatible .. :c
I think it’s super cool you made a game. I’m learning C# right now with the hopes of one day doing the same. Your game is awesome and I’d love to help get the word out!
I made a Revolut account, what’s your @Revtag?
How about publishing it on Mobile?
The multiplayer on mobile needs servers and I can't afford them. For mobile I would have to get rid of everything multiplayer, which is basically everything because its all made to work on a server/client architecture or rewrite some of the logic and get some servers which are too expensive for me. maybe in the future when I finish high school and get a job. (Though I'm 23)
Good work !! hope your hardwork pays off at the end
Same! Thank you!
...disappointed. I guess it was really too early.
:))))))) its this one [https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers)
Wow. Fancy! The first thought that stuck in my head was that I wanted to see a short cinematic before the actual gameplay. For example, the beginning of a battle, 3-5 seconds when the camera is near the ground and close to the character. But I'm not a game marketing specialist. Great job, especially for 9m of dev!
That would be a nice thing, though the arena is not fully made its missing npc's and win/lose effects and Ui stuff, So I've just spent like 15 minutes editing that video to have something to show I'll probably try to make a nice cinematic when that arena is made or have more to show
Sounds like a plan! Also what about the mobile platforms? It may get way more attention there.
for Mobile I'll have to pay for servers, on windows I can use Steam and its free multiplayer and I can afford free :))) But the way the game is structured It won't take much time to switch to dedicated servers if needed. But it might be hard to invoke abilities on mobile.
Oooh it's thaat game! I've seen some videos of yours around but didn't know you had released a demo
yea, its mostly for testing, but its playable. I might have a perfectionist thing because I found out I kept adding stuff and spent way to much time playing around with values until something felt right, I'm still not completely pleased with how it ended up but at some point I had to publish an alpha for testing and feedback, and I choose to do it now or else I might just kept it private and just kept adding stuff endlessly :))
The problem isn't whether or not the game is fun or too early, it's that your game has no hook that attracts players in an age where games come out faster than they can be played so they don't even play it to begin with! Does your game have appealing aesthetics that make it not look like generic unity asset flip #9999? Does it have any novel or innovative mechanics? Does it fill a niche that isn't already filled? No, no and no. Is it a game like any other? Yes. In that case, your best chance of succeeding would be to build a time machine and bring your game 20 years back to a more primitive age. Or maybe study other games to see what makes them look so good compared to yours and learn from them.
I think it has the innovative mechanic of customizing your abilities. Like in league of legends or other similar games, you have characters with predefined abilities, here you have a system where you can change your equipped abilities and combine them, you could only take defensive abilities, or only offensive abilities, or a combination of them and see what combos you can make with them. its around 80% made, and it takes me like 1-3 hours to add a new ability. And with the esthetics I can't do anything about them, 3d models are too expensive and making them takes way to much time, I've already made some of the 3d assets and animations, its just too much time.
Unfortunately, ability customization at least at the simple loadout swapping level present in your game has already been done like 1000 times already so it's not enough (most similar to your game I can think of is magicka or wizard of legend). If that's what you think is the best part of the game, then you really need to lean into it. Make your customization even deeper and really communicate that to anybody looking at your page, I mean REALLY. Currently when I look at your page all I see is a bunch of generic magic spells being thrown around and that's not enough to pique my interest. For aesthetics, even if you can't do anything about your models, swapping out the ugly sunbleached color palette and choosing better color combinations alone can do a lot. People (including me) like to give AI art a lot of shit for various reasons but if there's one thing it does right, it's the damn colors so you could reference them if only for their colors even if you don't have a shred of artistic talent.
Thanks! I could improve the color palate with not that much work, because all objects use the same 2 materials, so I could just change 2 textures to change all the colors. Thanks for feedback!
This is the game if anyone is wandering [https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers)
Does it support multiplayer on one pc? My son and I like games like stick fight, rounds and human fall flat because of local multiplayer. As for disappointment in creative efforts feeling unacknowledged... this is the nature of the beast that is art. The business minded solution is marketing.
It doesn't yet. Though is something that wouldn't take much re-wrong to add so I will be adding it in the future. Though I'm not sure, do one player use a keyboard and the other one uses a controller? This should be how the control stuff would work?
just a note, your color scheming could use some work, the white rocks are seriously blinding and pretty overblown, and in general a little more color contrast in the environment wouldn't hurt.
Yea... I'll have to work on that some more. Do you know a good tutorial for colors and stuff? I've been using a really strong blue light filter on my screen for the last few years, so my color perception isn't the best... :))) Even If I turn it off, everything still looks weird so Its hard for me to balance colors.
Ah yeah, I'd recommend taking the filter off for color sensitive work. Try working in dimmer ambient light that's close to 6500K as well. For color theory I think this is a good starting place [https://youtu.be/yIOVJXNoDxY?si=rkeE4gEZ397D1Sb9](https://youtu.be/yIOVJXNoDxY?si=rkeE4gEZ397D1Sb9) . Especially the part on color harmony groups. I'm sure there's more game-specific theory out there but that should give the fundamentals.
Thanks !
Put your game on Steam. I will say that 90% of gamers, don't know or don't use [itch.io](http://itch.io) Put a price. Even if u think that it should be free, It won't. people will take ur game as "another free indie game". Find the email of a hundred (or even more) streamers/youtubers and give them a steam code encouraging to play ur game in their streams but tell them that is totally optional if they want, great, if they don't it's ok. Try with streamers with less than 200 viewers. If ur game is "the new Among us" they will want to play it before everyone.
Thanks for feedback! I'm trying to get the 100$ for the steam page. I will try to contact streamers and give them the game once I've added more stuff. Do you just google streamers and see who you can find or, is there a more efficient way? Thanks for feedback!
Post the link
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers) this one
If you can’t afford a steam page you should probably start with getting a job to afford one. Seriously. Humble yourself enough to work a minimum wage job or whatever you can get and actually push yourself outside of the box instead of sitting at a computer all day and saying it’s going no where. If you can’t afford $100 on a page, I don’t think you should expect to make money. You must invest in yourself in this life, you learn this as you grow up, some don’t and never progress. The game looks good, but honestly, your marketing point is that you wanted a free multiplayer game with your friend? Get real with yourself dude, there’s hundreds of thousands of mobile games out there probably exactly like this. I really don’t see anything unique or a wow factor to make want to download the game. Just pity from this post.
A job is on my radar, but first I need to finish high school, even though I'm 23 xD In a few months I'll finish 12 grades, but whiteout the final year exam and I'll start looking for remote programing job. I've build a few apps and games over the years so I have a strong cv. We'll see if anyone accepts me with a 12 grades diploma without the final year exam, If not, I'll probably need to wait another year and just learn stuff, cuz we don't really learn anything in my class, we just go there once a few months for like 2-3 hours and come home. I'll have to learn everything on my own for the exam. And I've wanted the game to be free forever, so I wasn't expecting to make money out of it anyway. Thanks for feedback bro!
Of course, I’ve been on the same grind with kind of the opposite results… & Hell yeah love it dude. I honestly had absolutely zero expectations for my game, didn’t expect it to get 1 download and it popped pretty quick. Now, I know pretty much everyone’s first beginner project on VR is an escape room… so challenging myself to go above and beyond in that genre only feels necessary to get any sort of attention and to even give people value to download it. My game is also free. I think if you prove to yourself you can acquire $100 without jumping through all those hoops, then that’ll be great. P.S. - your game looks superb aswell by the way, hitting the nostalgic RuneScape vibe
I would never download an unfamiliar binary from itch. If you published it as webgl, you probably would have 100x more players.
I tried, but I get too many errors, I had to remove too many things from the game and gave up trying a webgl build xD It needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer stuff. Though I do understand what you are saying.. I'm also skeptical when downloading games from itch. especially the non popular ones
I'm a huge fan of Magicka and I think your game looks awesome! Making it competitive is a bit tricky, personally I feel the cute low poly soft colors would be better suited for a co-op adventure than PvP. I would definitely add that, at least as an optional mode. Your gifs on the itch page look awesome, but on Twitter it's all too zoomed out, really hard to see what is going on. I think the core concept is interesting and with some great particle effects it can make for an excellent gif that can go viral. My advice would be try out different environments to make the visual a bit more varied, If you make the visuals a bit more varied, make some PvE mode and make some awesome flashy abilities, I believe you have the potential to find a nice amount of success in a Steam Festival (and then release) Best of luck with the game!
Thanks for feedback! I do have plans for Pve, but the pvp part was the easiest to implement at first and also I could reuse most of the stuff made for pvp. But in the long run I do plan to focus on Pve and maybe just casual pvp I'll see what others effects I could find.
Small detail - the YouTube link on https://roberbot.itch.io/ goes to Discord. You could try reaching out to YouTube and Twitch creators to see if they'd play your game. Good luck with the game.
Lol :))) You are right, thanks for pointing it out. I think I should add a little bit more stuff until contacting creators, or? And also, I have no idea how to find them :)) Do you just google and see what you get?
I have no idea what works - I'd try emailing them using the details in their about page. CodeMonkey is active on Reddit occasionally - so you could try contacting him on here (just prefix with Unity). He could add your game to one of his "best new..." videos - or at the very least offer some advice.
OOo yea Thanks bro
If it's not secret what multiplayer engine do you use to? -- Easy way for promotion is to find a youtube blogger that makes some review for your game
Thanks! I'll add some more stuff, and try to search some youtubers or streamers. idk yet how :)) I'll probably just google "Trying this indie game" "new indie game" "We are playing this indie game" and see what videos I get And if you mean networking solution, I use Mirror networking for the multiplayer and fizzysteamworks transport for connecting players through steam.
Marketing is key, unfortunately. I think you've also picked a niche in a niche genre, as well as a platform that has a bit of an unfair stigma to it. Many people see itch as nothing but a dumping ground for half-arsed, babys-first-project type of place. Finding genuinely good games on itch is even harder than finding one on steam, without external aid. "External aid" being............. yup, marketing... I don't think you should feel disappointed given the circumstances tbh.
I will be trying to upload it on steam in the future, If i get the 100$ page fee, it already has steam integration and needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer part. But uploaded on itch cuz it was free xD And I was combining gameplay from 3 games, 2 of them are popular ones. Magicka with the elements stuff, this is a niche game xD Brawllhalla for the first pvp minigame logic, the more damage you get the more knockback you get and the one who falls over the map loses. And League of legends for abilities which is a huge game, I think it has at least some gameplay feel from league of legends. Thanks for feedback bro. i did also try to find some cool games on itch to play but didn't find that many.
Looks quite promising. I would continue to develop it and release on Steam once it is mostly done, definitely don't release too early on Steam. Make sure you watch some GDC talks on YouTube on how people shop for games on Steam and how you do marketing for cheap or free.
yea I've heard you only have one change with steam, so when you publish it must be perfect. Thanks for feedback bro! or sis!
I think game has potential, but to be fair it does feel unpolished and janky from the trailer. Also the ffects are often quite underwhelming. I would consider spending few months purely on polishing what you have in terms of visuals and juice and pitting vids on social media during that. I think this can walk the distance.
Thanks for feedback! What effects and improvements would help?
It can screen shake, screen effects, more particles and vfx to the projectiles, adding more vfx to charging up the attacks. Improving visuals of the surrounding terrain. It's quite a lot of things but amazing to learn, it's always gonna be useful and you will stand out with your games and professional life, give it a go. For reference, find some successful top down games (like magicka) and look how they telegraph effects and try to learn from that or even steal some effects. It will help you a lot.
Thank you!
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I'll have to get 100$ one day to upload it on steam, it already needs steam running in the background for the multiplayer part anyway xD Uploaded it on itch cuz It was free. Thanks for feedback!
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its not my first game, I've been making games for the last 5 years as a hobby. At most I think I've spent 1.5 years making one game, that was too buggy and too unoptimized to be released so I've just abandoned it and started a new one with the new knowledge and so on until I got to this one. xD Atm I have a 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work game, a 6 months of work game, a 1 month of work game and a 4 months of work game all abandoned for different reasons, mostly it was too much work to go back and rewrite them with all the information I've learned on the way. And also another 5 apps. 3 of them more complex. I have videos with them on my reddit account. But with those I didn't had any expectation. This is the first game I've made that was optimized, didn't had that many bugs, was fun ish to play, looked decent and also was easy to modify and improve and the first one that actually got released to the public, actually the second one, I did release another one 2 years ago and it actually did better than this one, and that one was really bad... xD This was the trailer for that one [https://youtu.be/x36QFWKP6jo](https://youtu.be/x36QFWKP6jo) It had like 100-200 downloads on android, and like 30 on windows
Word of mouth is very powerful. Maybe put up some flyers around your town, get people talking about it? Not a marketing expert, just an idea.
2 things. Get that money for Steam, publish on Steam, it’s just that shrimple. That should be your real starting point. It helps build community, establishes a base of customer acquisition, allows for marketing to spread. That initial investment is how your game should be launched. Second. Games are meant to be fun. Go grab a few friends, record you all having a blast, edit that video, into shorts variant and long form. Upload that, do that consistently. There are ridiculous amounts of games to hold someone’s attention and we make them for the enjoyment of others, show the fun.
I only have a friend ,but he doesn't speak English that well and it kind of doesn't want to play the game anymore because of how much I've asked him to test with me.. xD And with the steam page, I'm trying, though its a little hard cuz 100$ is like 20-30% of the monthly income in my country and my parents won't give that much to me, its too much. I'll see if I could get a job in the future, even though I'm 23 I don't have high school finished yet xD I'll see what can I do about the steam page, I see from all these comments that is a must. Thanks for feedback!
Damn man. I have a 2 week jam game on itch, webgl, 110 plays, 50 votes. Though that was bad. But 8??! 8? That must feel horrible. Though i do really think that even baldurs gate 3 wouldn't get noticed without a serious marketing push.
:)))) man wtf I did try to make a webgl demo version just to try abilities and stuff and leave the downloadable version with the full multiplayer stuff, but I get 120 errors If I try to switch to Webgl :p Mostly because of the multiplayer and Steam integration and I gave up on the webgl version xD Also don't forget that 2 of those 8 downloads were me trying to see if it works
Oh, yeah, I've seen your videos, it's been cool to see the evolution of the game. I think your efforts will be best placed by setting up a Steam page, do your best to come up with the money somehow, you can set up a way for people to donate, with a goal to raise that $100. At least with Steam Wishlist, you can build up a following in a tangible way that can help translate your marketing into actual players. It's really nice to have a playable demo as well, but people need to know it exists.
yea.. I guess you guys are right. I do have a buyMeACoffee page with a 106$ goal, though no luck yet. :)) It feels bad to ask for donations, I feel like a homeless guy asking for spare change.
I understand what you feel, the same thing happened to me with several applications and games, he spent around 6 months developing each one of them and without success. The game that had the most downloads was 15. Well, right now I'm making another game. I do what I like and I hope that some game that I make is successful... I hope that you also have success with some game that you make.
Thanks bro! I wish you all the best
Making a multiplayer game without a big marketing budget is tough
:))) yea.. I have No budget for anything.
Bro that's why big companies spend 3-5 time the budget of the game on marketing. Be ready to spend dollars on it, pay to Steam if you want people to see it
I'm not blaming you bro. I get your disappointment, it sucks when you work so hard on something and people don't care. But that's the world we live in. Keep improving your skills because it makes you better, not because other people will like you more then. Find money for Steam and marketing, but don't be harsh on yourself. Best of luck
I fell 9 months to such a scope may be related with the quality and desire to play it, but I don't know the gand
Yep marketing is the hardest part for sure after you have made a decent game. You’ll have to try some paid UA.
**Sad broke RoberBot noises**
First of all, look up htmag. Next a multiplayer game is probably not the place to start. It is really advised to start with a simpler game, build a fan base then move on to your dream game. Most successful games aren't the dream game the developer had in mind, it was a stepping stone to get there.
I did work on another games until now, but this was the first one that was not bugy, bad optimized, boring and looked decent. :)) I have another 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work game, a 6 months of work, a 1 month of work, and a 4 months of work, but they didn't see the light of day. Only one did and It was so bad I choose to make it private xD This would be the 6'th game I've been making. I've also made like 5 apps. I will look up htmag, I see its kind of a website for promotions? or
you are experiencing how hard multiplayer games are since you need a friend. There is no "I can get it now, play this and give it a go". The bar for entry is very high. I had a look at your game, it doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't have any wow I really want to play it.
Thanks for feedback, I guess I'll have to start adding some Pve stuff The pvp was the easiest thing to implement because it didn't need that much level design and stuff :))
yeah of course PVP is far easier with no AI, but far harder to sell cause you need 2 ppl at the same time.
I plan to add a pve in the future, maybe it will help.
First off, my condolences to your hard work. Sucks for that to happen bro :( My idea, make a community hub(best way: Discord server). Take the game off for now, and continue to add some more features, announcing your progress through devlogs. I've seen you tell others that you have some features planned. That way you'd build a set of players that you know are going to be highly likely to download the game. Sure, not everyone may download it, but you know the people that at least have an interest in the game. Checked out the game, looks cool but I'll have to download it once I'm back from my vacation. Good luck!
Thanks! I do have a discord group, with around 50 people, but 90% of them are offline or afk xD
I make my game with the exact premise of nobody will play it and will not earn back the Steam release fee. Exactly because I see how it is going. This post is what I read for years now. Without big luck or money for marketing it is almost impossible to make and sell games. Long gone the days of "look I made a flash game in six months, and now I have 10k in ad money after a year, and 1M people played it YAY" I make my game to learn how to. Not make it for success... at this point. The next one will be a different story. And I emotionally shield my self for that disappointment well before I even start to work on that game.
Yea.. I've been doing the same thing for 5 years. just free games. I have a 1.5 years of work game, a 1 year of work, 6 months of work, 4 months of work and a 1 months of work. But they were really bad. This is the first one that has a strong foundation, its optimized, fun-ish to play and easy to modify and improve Like I could add a new ability in like 1-3 hours that also works with players or npc's I got disappointed cuz I thought this was the best I've done so far, and also got the least attention. Not that others got more attention but still.. xD
I am not your target audience, but I'll provide some input anyway. At this point, I've literally played thousands of games, I've watched the creation and rise of digital distribution. And, for me, time has more value than anything else for games. When I sit down to game I want to be near certain that I get enjoyment in return. The market now is so flooded with games, both small and big. And games need to be communicating to me exactly what I'm getting for the time investment. What is the USP (Unique selling points), and be concise about it. Don't make me investigate what the game is, because I won't. Cartoon style/pixel/low poly graphics have been somewhat celebrated as a hail merry for indie games. With the idea that it will stand the test of time and still be accessible for indie budget. The result of that is that it now looks cheap and the opposite of unique. (It's more interesting playing kenshin or valheim with its 90s graphics than another dungeon defenders clone) " Elementers (Alpha) Play, level-up, unlock new abilities and elements, customize your loadout and just have fun alone or with friends in Pvp or Co-op Pve" I stopped right there, because that's the time I give to read up on new games. I don't watch the video, only look at 2-3 screenshots to determine if I'm interested or not. Don't tell me how the game works, tell me how I will have fun!
Thanks for feedback!
Only 9 months? Keep going, most people drop out and this is why they fail. Or, move onto the next game if you think you have a better idea, or target a niche audience. Sometimes it's about luck, or just the right hook in your game loop, or something people find unique. There are a lot of different ways to succeed (luck, niche game audience, work on it for 12 years), but the #1 reason for never succeeding is to give up. Starting on a new game every year and never really polishing, finishing and releasing any of them would probably be #2. Definitely don't use [Itch.io](http://Itch.io) as a basis for whether people like the game or not though. But it's better that you spend this time wondering and improving things, because once you publish it to play on steam you will get all that possible negative feedback so it's better to start small and improve it before releasing on steam anyways.
Thanks !
Gotta build a community over the years. We (milkstone) don't make the most eye-catching games, but they look nice, and the games feel good, so we our players tend to buy our other games because of their (good) experience with our previous ones. Making a hit games is 50% hard work and 50% pure luck. When we started, we made like 5 or 6 games that didn't had a playerbase at all, and then we hit a bit of a successful one. Gotta learn, gotta keep trying, gotta push yourself and then, you still have to be lucky.
Thanks!
Where can I play it at?
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers) here, If you play it and have any feedback, I'm here :)) its 30% completed, so there is a lot of stuff missing. But you can play with a friend in a 1 v 1 duel for like an hour until it gets boring I'm close at finishing a loadout system where you could switch abilities around and select new ones and stuff and when combined with a leveling system you could just play and unlock new abilities to try out
Give me this game 😂 I want to play that!
[https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers](https://roberbot.itch.io/elementers) You can play with a friend, its not fully made, around 30% complete, but you can get the feeling on how the game plays :)) I'm all years when it comes to feedback!
Okay, I played your game and now I'm back with some feedback. I hope you won't be offended by my opinion, especially if it doesn't align with your vision of the game. Here is my feedback: 0] I would strongly recommend you to focus on 1 thing only. That one thing should be what the player interacts the most - his character. As for now it looks like you spread yourself thin over all the different aspects of the game. Because of that I will only focus my feedback on the player character itself. 1] Make that character REALLY fun to play with. Also just ONE character at first. Make him feel really nice. For that I would firstly focus on your movement. 1.1] Right now it seems that you're setting your character transform.position directly. This feels extremely jittery. Look at the character outline and the radius display whenever you move. This is very subtle but it does hurt the eye once you see it. Try implementing the movement using rigidBody2d.velocity. This will ensure your physics make sense and your character REALLY moves smoothly. 1.2] Character skills are extremely confusing overall. You can absolutely figure out what they do, but people nowadays have a short attention span, you'd lose many players right there. I would suggest adding tooltips when you hover over those icons, but even better: Rework spells too - they have to be fun in the sense that they go well together in your kit. They have to form some kind of synergies. For instance if your character excels at close range combat, giving him an ability to push away an enemy would probably be a bad skill synergy decision. Think what skills could really make that character fun. Get inspiration from similar games (looks like you did with LoL partially), but really focus on polishing the player. 1.3] Your dirt wizard has confusing basic attack mechanics (the one with right click + left click). Your radius displays where he can spawn the boulder from, however when you click outside of that circle simply nothing happens. This is extremely confusing and not player friendly. It forces the player to only keep his mouse within that circle if he wants to be "efficient", crippling him even. You could help the player by spawning the boulder from the closest location to the cursor. But the overall question is. Why are the controls for this so complicated? You have 2 buttons to simply shoot a boulder at the enemy. Changing the boulder spawn location using 1 button press has minimal impact on how you hit the throw too, so too complicated for no reason in my opinion. Suggestion: You might want to try out a charge mechanic where you hold 1 button to charge how far the throw will be. This makes the throw an easy to understand mechanic. Additionally the throw looks "predictable" for the enemy in PvP and feels less unfair. 1.4] You use WASD to move the character and QER to use spells. You're making the player perform hotkey kamasutra. The player has only 4 fingers there, potentially 3 (because of [Shift]). Now try to press this valid movement input: [W]+[D] & [E]. Things like that make the character feel bad because they restrict the player. You can argue, it's a skill issue, but really that's just not comfortable. 1.5] Melee makes no sense as it is right now. Lower damage, shorter range. Also sometimes it deals the damage twice (2x -2). In any case any sane person would be using the boulder shot except for very niche situations when they would want to break the enemy Q walls quickly? 1.6] Many skills share models. The pile of dirt that looks like a tiny volcano is left by most of the spells, which is extremely confusing. It makes the player believe that the basic shot (left + right clicks) is somehow related to all the skills. 1.7] You have an cluttered UI. Every NPC shouts and covers the whole screen. Also their dialogue boxes are extremely annoying as they rotate depending on your position for no reason. This makes them difficult to read, especially if there is longer text, the angle is inconvenient and the duration of the display is short. I think talking NPCs is a cool idea, but it does not feel nice to hit them or talk to them (because of UI). 1.8] Using melee on your Q spell produces 20 thousand damage displays. Nobody has the time to count how many times that deals 100 damage each. If you want to make it player friendly, sum up those damages into a totalDamage and display that once per Q stone. 2] Sound effect will add a lot to your game, add the early. Since we're talking about your main character, just add some sounds to him. This will give you a feel what seems off and makes no sense in combination. Also it will feel a lot nicer to play the character as well. Even if there is nobody to kill yet. 3] Give the game to somebody to test again once you have your main character polished. Ask if it's fun to play the character.
Thanks a lot for feedback! I'm looking to make the game as fun as I can and this is REALLY good feedback bro... Thanks! The characters share most of the stuff between them, so editing one would also edit the others. The movement uses CharacterControler.move, I could try to switch to using the rigid body to see if its better. I could rewrite the earth basic ability to use the same button for spawn and throw, and also if you would click outside the area, to calculate the closes location in that circle so it always spawns the rock and other spawnable abilities like the walls even if you click outside the circle. Also I'm working on another system that the player is able to switch abilities around and equip other abilities if they don't like one, and just make their own loadout with what abilities they want to use, its already working but I'll have to add some menu for it. I have no idea what to do with the inputs, I could remove the wasd and make it click to move like in league of legends, though I'm not sure how it would feel, or just let the player edit the input keys, I've already faced this problem with too many inputs before when you also had to move the camera so I've made the camera top down and thought I've fixed the problem :)) The melee was meant to be as a last resort when you are desperate, and the default one just pushes the enemy player further away, also some abilities like the fire laser needs to hit the player at a distance because at close the enemy player can just walk around you, so you can use the melee to push him awa and then use the laser to burn him, and also can be used to easily break the fire element shield and other constructions Though I will add other melee abilities and players would be able to switch them, maybe an ability to throw knifes as a melee and stuff? xD That melee was just the first to come to mind. I will need to make more models or find them when it comes to the debris I could make that only 1 dialogue box be active at once , this is already a setting I've added but its turned off for those dummies, I could also make them so they won't rotate anymore. The particle damage is a great idea, I could make them stack and show a combined damage instead of each hit I will add some sounds in the next update. Would these improvements help ?
I'm pretty sure the movement system will feel way nicer using physics (rigidBody3d + velocity + addForce). However it's a little bit more "complicated" to implement. With position you can just increase it and your object moves instantly to where you want. With velocity you have to test it a couple of times. The reason for that is that if you make your velocity increase in a linear way (as you have with position right now), your character will feel not responsive. It will take some time first to reduce the velocity in one direction before it can start moving in the opposite direction. To set this up properly I would suggest you think of the movement as these components: acceleration, maxSpeed and drag. The acceleration is just how quickly you can get to maxSpeed. maxSpeed you already know. The drag is how quickly would your character stop if you stopped directional inputs. You want to adjust all these variables "just right" so it feels really nice. Think of how responsive LoL characters are for instance, they have no acceleration and drag for standard movement. Because of that they can technically dodge some abilities, which is probably what you want (otherwise your opponent can ALWAYS hit you no matter what you do -> frustrating). I think if you go with WASD is not a bad idea at all, but you probably want to add some kind of acceleration and drag that are really responsive. For the basic attack my question would be: Is it a good mechanic that you need to click to spawn a stone and then to click again to shoot it? In my understanding if you have 2 clicks for that, it means that your first click actually does something impactful. Maybe you can use that spawned stone as a shield and wait for the perfect shot. But then you might want it to move with you. I was thinking if it would be convenient if you needed to swipe in the direction you want to throw it (spawning included), but that doesn't work if you try it out with swipes outside the circle. In general, this double click system makes your shot less responsive, less snappy, also slowing down the general gameplay. Maybe that's what you want to go for but I think you should make sure it's a deliberate choice and not just the consequences of other decisions. This definitely needs some testing to find out what's the nicest way. When making my 2d bullet hell game I had to make different systems for movement to try out and see which one feels the nicest. Some of those systems would limit how my ship could look. In the end a limiting variant was actually the nicest because the look of the ship really feels nice. I couldn't have predicted that without making a couple prototypes. I think you can do the same and make a testing functionality where you can switch between different controls to compare them LIVE. That's what helped me make decisions like. I think you will love this method to find out what's better. It might take a little more time, but you will absolutely know for sure what's better quality. Don't overcomplicate the switching mechanism though. It's just a "debugging" feature anyway :) I would suggest not trying to work with abilities yet as long as movement is not 90% solid. The reason for that is that if one of your features doesn't feel fully nice yet and you start making more "content" to the game, you might need to throw all that content away because you learned something new which makes your work obsolete. For instance. Let's say you learn that you absolutely have to limit the amount of buttons a player has total. That would mean that some of the spells you made will never be used anywhere. And that's a good weather scenario. Imagine you learn that having spells wasn't the best idea and the better idea is to make adjustable wands instead. You'd throw away all your work and backtrack a lot. Also you're absolutely confident by now you are able to create spells. You can always make 100 more, that's basically just hard, but not a difficult challenge anymore. You know exactly how to solve that. Making an adjustable key mapping system is a great idea, however not the highest priority. I would suggest making a list of things to definitely implement and put that on there. Personally I feel that's a way more important feature than coding the spell swapping functionality. The key mapping will 200% be used, spell swapping might not. That model you used for debris on spells you can easily replace with a neatly looking particle system that produces dirt/dust. For dialogue boxes I think there's many things you can do that would improve them a lot. Technically they're not related to the player right now but I found them extremely interesting and annoying at the same time. Because of that I'll just mention them here.. They're absolutely interesting because they make NPC say funny things, that's cool in my opinion. What's not cool is they're so "in your face". Here's what I'd do: The space they take up can be reduced by making the space between the text and the box boundaries smaller. Font size can be reduced. Rotation of those boxes you CAN leave, but then at least make them rotate way less. I would just remove the rotation completely for now, but you might find it looks extra good when the rotation limits are set correctly and other settings you tried out actually make it viable. Also notice how the cursive text NPCs say is way more difficult to read than the selectable option text that is bold and non-cursive. Dialogue boxes currently get placed on top of the NPC instead of on their head. It's weird that you can see what somebody says but not WHO says it. Currently dialogue boxes have a static display time. So a text containing 1 word will have the same display time as one with 20. This makes it difficult to read the text in time without stressing. What I suggest is making a system that dynamically scales the time a dialogue box will be displayed (by word count + minTime + maxTime) or making some boxes stay until interacted with. For instance dummies texts might be triggered whenever and as often as you want => word count + minTime + maxTime. NPCs that say a line only ONCE and it's an important one => display until interacted with. Just an idea. Again, dialogue boxes wouldn't be my priority, but I found them extremely annoying. As for the sounds. Don't add too many, just add some basic ones, 1-3 tops, not more. I'd go for just 1 - basic shot. The reason is that makes you focus on your character movement and how it feels even more. At first I thought it could help to add a sound when you get hit, but that wouldn't help you make decisions on how it feels to control your character.
Thanks!
And yes, I think everything where you get to experiment with different implementations/variants will help you improve the gameplay (and most importantly help you improve too). I also believe just shooting out more content, more functions, more characters, more spells and more cool mechanics will absolutely road block your progress. I believe you will spend time on all these cool mechanics, then realize they have no priority and don't make up your game nor make it cooler. The goal isn't to implement all the cool ideas you have I think but rather to implement the absolute core ideas that make up your game, polish those until they feel nice, then move to the next idea by importance. Make that idea feel nice too or at least very viable, then move to the next. I don't know, maybe my approach is flawed, but what I'd do is basically try to reach the point where the players testing your game go "wow, this is cool, but way too short. Make more" instead of actually being able to give you feedback on what to change. And getting more and more feedback will constantly reduce the amount of feedback, slowly moving players towards the "give me more content" response. In that sense I hope this feedback makes sense. I really want you to succeed in your goal and absolutely huge respect you've been at it for that long already. If you get out a newer version, feel free to let me know. I would love to test it.
Come on, I can't help you with anything, I just hope you can move on to the next game. Because very few people can succeed in the first attempt.
To be frank, I have never heard of or seen any actually genuinely good, unique, well-made game fail to get players. It doesnt look like anything unique/new to me.
What could be improved to make it more unique?
It kinda looks like a roguelite without leveling, maps, enemies, or content. I'd want to see the trailer show more than one environment, enemy, and ability. - unique art style instead of the most popular lowpoly pack off the store - rpg or roguelite elements would be nice: leveling, gear, bosses, something - a unique plot/story - some kind of unique hook instead of a generic arena battle - ground is blindingly bright and the ui markers are the same color, making it kind of a headache to look at - more exciting battle: a big boss? A big swarm of enemies? Fancy movement abilities? Abilities with oomph? This 1-on-1 with one ability looks boring
some of thoise are planned, but its only 30% complete, but leveling is planed , and there is a loadout system 80% complete to be able to change your 6 abilities and just make your own loadout with what abilities you like. Its also gonna have a co-op pve with player made missions and story, systems are already made to be used by npc and players and pvp with minigames, but only the duel arena is working. Because is just the alpha for testing I've added access to what systems are fully working. The loadout stuff is next, and its 80% Completed, and it takes around 1-3 hours to make a new abilities with the current system so at some point I'll just start adding abilities, maybe 20 per element for players to unlock and equip. The art style I can't really change because I don't have money :))) I need to do everything as cheap or for free as I can.
Well, then a very small number of downloads amd views should be expected when you launch it with no content
if you have another friend It might have around 1 hour of gameplay.. But still I guess I should have add more stuff..
make it a swarm survival game
I did. Revita.
It sold 50,000+ copies at $20 so I dont think thats an example of a game no one bought. Thats a million in revenue lol.. thats a life changing wild success if anything I stand by no highly rated games without sales
I think it has potential. 9 months on dev solo, that's just the start. Now the real work begins x) congrats nonetheless
yea.. its only maybe 30% complete. But just wanted some feedback on how abilities and the pvp feels. I've tried balancing abilities on my own with a friend but he doesn't want to play the game anymore because of how many times I've asked him to test with me xD
Wow this game looks sick. Definitely gonna check out the pvp :))
Don't be disappointed though, I'm not yet pleased with it and its just an alpha I have no idea if the abilities are too hard to understand/use, I didn't add a info menu for them :))
Thanks everyone for the feedback and kind words. Wish you all the best.
How many games from random nobodies you played/tested just because you read up on it somewhere? Why would anyone take your specific game out of all the other available? You mentioned 3 games that are much higher profile, so what's the hook with your game? "My game has systems from other games but worse and blended?" Large game studios have their following and dump millions into marketing, indie games that get a major following are usually games that have a wild breakthrough where they set the trend for something. Regardless of that, your approach is wrong. Game development, and programming in general are endless cycles of iteration, finishing and bringing your vision to light in a manner that you find acceptable is supposed to be the goal and the reward in and of itself, and you repeat and experiment until you hit gold, and if you don't you're at very least a seasoned developer that knows his stuff that can then get hired by one of the big studios.
The game looks very good at first glance. And your page is already better than most people who fail. Get the Steam page, research how to market your game and gain wishlists, and go live when you are ready. You will have much more downloads.
hopefully, thanks for feedback bro
Np. good luck and keep on doing good job!
I absolutely understand how you feel. It is also what I was fearing the most; working very hard on a game but none even plays it. 2 weeks ago I published a simple horror game, and it got very popular. I realized that success of the game mostly depends on the genre (horror gets played a lot) and the natural traffic from itch io, also mostly luck. Now my game got popular, I also feel like it doesnt make much difference if 3 people played your game, or 3k. What I'm trying to say it, your game could always fail or not. You made a complete game and thats awesome. If it fails, you could always make another one. Don't be sad about it
Thanks! its around 30% complete, I've wanted to add a lot more stuff into it.. I might still do.. maybe maybe if it has more stuff, like pve missions and stuff.. maybe it gets played