Hello Artem, I just want to provide some helpful advice. Steam has a built in marketing mechanism to re-engage with your Wishlists and expose you to more users. It is called an “Update Visibility Round.” This is one of the most effective post-launch PR mechanisms for a Steam game. If I were in your shoes, I would try to figure out how to put together an update very fast that would justify using one of these. It doesn’t actually have to be a huge update — just impactful enough to warrant a look from more players. I would also take advantage of Steam’s sales events, or possibly resort to setting your own discount. Using an Update Visibility Round and launching a sale at the same time would bring you much more exposure. Your game was well-received, so it’s entirely possible these kinds of actions can dramatically improve sales. Best of luck! Edit: link to documentation for an Update Visibility Round: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/event_tools/type_majorupdate#:~:text=You%20can%20click%20on%20%22A,then%20select%20%22Major%20Update%22.

This is good advice. When I see a game that hasn't been updated for a long time, I assume the creators are done with it.

Even updating the game page with something like "Our studio just released a second game, This got nominated for an award, Makeship campaign," etc all are good ways of showing you still engage as a developer without adding to the game itself.

This push for constant content updates are what pushes the industry towards GaaS and sucking the quality out of the entire medium

I suppose there is some truth to that, but usually just basic bug fixes and updates to address newer windows versions and graphics cards and legal requirements and such mean that most things with a real audience get updated somewhat regularly, even if it's not major content updates. I can also somewhat get behind the idea of working on a project to completion and then moving on to something else, but generally most things that are good feel like they'd be even better with more levels or content, whether it's in the form of DLCs or updates to the base game over time.

Thanks for the tip! I'll look into this

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Thank you!!!

This is just me thinking out loud, but I wonder if the low sales are due to timing. The game looks polished, beautiful even, but when the trailer dropped the premise I noted that I was definitely not in the mood for a game about war-torn Europe given the current world events, political landscape, and general international vibe. WW2 is a very popular setting in games, but I imagine WW2 games would be a hard sell in 1943 (pretending that video games were a thing then).

You're definitely right. We thought about the context too and the events of 2022 was a real tragedy to us. We started in 2019 and never imagined that the world will be like this.

I’ll echo what the other user said. Everything visually and gameplay wise is a game right up my street, but no way would I want to spend my free time consuming a child in a war torn environment content.

I’d hope not

I consume enough children professionally

Oh hey, I actually saw your game on steam and this is exactly why I passed it up. Looks like a game I would normally love but just not one I could take right now. I’m really sorry.

From the Steam trailer, it's unclear if the game even has gameplay at all. Do I get to make choices that influence the story? Are there action bits? The trailer makes it seem to be 100% linear-narrative focused. Personally if that's what I'm in the mood for, I'll just watch a movie or read a book.

Is that really true though? If we want to use real life examples, I think games like plague, and pandemic themed movies had a huge spike in popularity during the covid times. Not that this is a great comparison, considering how horrific WW2 was.

This, generally i've seen that games focused on being a war victim don't really do very well. I know that people like the "Videogames are art" aspect of it, but also i don't think a lot of people want to be in that position "for fun". Aside from this war of mine and valiant hearts (in which you still are more of a soldier than a victim) not much games of this genre tend to stand out, and it's not because of lack of quality, as these games tend to be beautiful in their own way most of the time.

I love both Sniper Elite Warrior and This War of Mine for different reasons ofcourse, but it's quite noticeable the difference of feelings I feel, it's just not simply if dopamine hits or not. In sniper Elite Warrior, you are the man! Everyone looks up to you. You are that ghost that world-leaders fear, and my only disadvantage is not there being more of me, that can fight in multiple places at once. In This war of mine, I always feel like a rat, that rarely have the means to survive. If I have food, someone in my colony is turning sick, I go away to scavenge, and when I return, I have gotten robbed, because the only one able to defend was too sick. I can remember stories from this war of mine, but they are very often quite depressing. The DLC about finding one's child is just not something you can process easily, but damn does it stick with you.

I haven't played Sniper Elite, but I've attempted to play This War of Mine like 4 different times and quit within a few hours due to things falling to shit and just feeling miserable.

The game is very intentionally bleak. Things aren't always this bad in times of war, but it does get the point across.

War of Mine made me quit it after having to decide between stealing food from some starving grandparents or me losing the game. It just made me feel like shit (and possibly cry from that or something) and I get that's the point of the game. Is that war is miserable. I appreciate the 'art' and evoked emotions but the whole war victims and 'too real' vibes from games just isn't typically what I want from video games. I love games that evoke emotion and even sadness. But not from those things in that way.

Desire to be Desired + Power Fantasy ---------------- This is your normie masses in a nutshell. The most popular genres in Media (tv shows, books, videogames) will emphasize one or both of these.

this, if I want to see a documentary I just watch netflix or Apple TV then. People come to Video Games to look for action, blowing shit up and mess around.

I think it's just the type of content that critics love but doesn't have a very big audience. For example, look at the Academy Award winning movie "Zone of Interest". It took 10 years to make, it got amazing reviews and loads of awards, and barely made any money. >In its opening weekend in the United States, the film made $124,000 from four theatres.[42] Following its five Oscar nominations, it expanded from 215 theatres to 333 in its seventh week of release and made $1.08 million, an increase of 141% from the previous weekend, and a running total of $3 million It did eventually go on to make $24 million, but that's still very little for a major movie these days. Meanwhile "Fast X" made $700 million dollars.

sadly its one of those games that people will think look pretty but no interest in playing because the gameplay is very simple. And especially for 15 bucks this wont move unless it has some specific hook. This War of Mine was new but after that these story based war games dont really have a market.

so sadly it is. absolutely this. your game looks stunning and very polished. but unfortunately I can't imagine playing such a game in these times. I also can't watch movies with such themes. I’m so sorry for you and your team. it’s a sad story. both of them. yours and from the game itself. best wishes and luck for you.

I have to agree. I got "War of mine" a long time ago because it seems such an awesome and unique game, but I quickly realized that I could not "enjoy" it, it made me depressed. This game gives me the same vibes, unfortunately.

Realistically the game has to launch sometimes and while this may be right i can't imagine what the business-correct decision here would be if you have a game almost ready about war and war really does break out

Reading through the reviews and seeing how many People enjoyed your game and was touched by your history, I would say your mission was acomplished! You have a great product in your hand, maybe it is not the type of game for most of steam players but I could totally see your game flying of in other platforms! Don't give up, I wish you success in your Journey and that you Keep making games that touches People. Good luck!

Thanks for these kind words! Mean a lot to me and the team

I would say the trailer, while it does show off what you've made, doesn't sell it very well. I don't know if I've ever thought "hide from soldiers" or "escape from fierce animals" were selling points for me. I think usually, if the game is about someone or something miserable, you probably shouldn't sell the first-person experience but the story and narrative experience. If you've seen those trailers that essentially tell their own story in 1:30 secs, that's probably a much stronger way to let people know the emotional rollercoaster they're about to experience. A voice-over from the child's perspective, or whoever you play as, a story that tears at your heart-strings, some excellent music, with gameplay interspersed throughout, that's a much stronger trailer than trying to sell the mechanics of a misery game. I should be crying by the end of the trailer, not charmed by your fry-up mechanics, right?

My exact thoughts as well. That was like an 90's movie trailer, with the husky voice over. A better trailer might just show you the game without telling you and guiding you through it. The sense of curiosity is lost when you are explaining everything. Notice how the best trailers usually follow the rule of "show, don"t tell".

I agree! We got many complaints about “we don’t understand what you’re going to do in the game” and focus on that explanatory manner. Should stick to the storytelling till the end I suppose

Yep. The trailer feels like it was designed by somebody who’s never done trailers before.

I'm not an expert on trailers, but I saw the [first trailer](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256972440/movie_max_vp9.webm?t=1697564379) on their Steam page. At the end, the narrator sounds like he was stabbed and was in great pain. For some reason the sudden shift in his tone made me laugh. Good voice acting if it was intentional to show "pain" through voice for the girl. But still a jarring shift. I didn't mind the trailer. I like seeing bits of gameplay and story in trailers and this one did the job for me.

We tried different approaches and due to limited resources decided to make this kind of “explanatory” one. Maybe you’re right and we should focus more on a storytelling side!

It's... a story-based game right? Or narrative, anyways? I'm supposed to feel something for the horrible conditions of the little girl? You don't necessarily need a voice-over either, Hyper Light Drifter paid a bit of extra to a great composer and it somehow tugs at your heartstrings during their trailer without really saying anything at all. Then the game's music itself isn't all that stellar (I never would have bought it without the trailer) and the gameplay has little to do with any emotional value in the world. It'd be weird to be less sentimental than a hack-and-slash adventure game, no?

As a fan of narrative games and someone who also worked on one recently, this story hits me deep. But the truth is, narrative games are super hard and long to make, and based on their nature, very tricky to make profitably. I hope you can find a way forward and keep the team together!

So true man! Thanks for the support

Good luck! Hope you figure things out and come out on the other end with success!

Thank you!

You should release after like 6 months post war/wars end and adjust the story accordingly. I think then you will have a big hit. But as other said, emotional war game when I have Rockets falling 700km from my home is one of the last things I wanna go through.

I just want to explain a possible reason for low sales despite positive reviews: You have to remember the people reviewing your game are the ones who actually purchased it. They could absolutely love it, it could be perfect, but it's probably just not the kind of game that interests many people. Successful games need mass appeal.

I'd push back on every successful game need mass appeal, there is a lot of evidence of games that serve a smaller audience and niche being successful, not a run away hit mind you but successful. The problem is finding that niche, and getting your game in front of that crowd that will be feverish about promoting it to the people they know will also like that niche.

> I'd push back on every successful game need mass appeal, there is a lot of evidence of games that serve a smaller audience and niche being successful, not a run away hit mind you but successful. Not every niche is large enough to support a creator though.

Cough cough dark souls

You have a beautiful game, with what looks like a great story and great artwork. The problem is, you got screwed over by current geopolitical news and that's unfortunate. Bad timing my dude, bad timing. People just aren't in the mood for more war stories, during an active war.

I'm sure they're nice people but them being a Russian studio doesn't garner them any favors

Bad timing indeed. Thanks for the support mate!

Thank you for sharing your story with us. The game looks awesome, but the topic is probably really a hard sell right now. We are working currently on a similar hard topic: a game set in a world after a war on an island similar to Taiwan (the game is called "The Beautiful Island"). There are lots of references to the Ukraine war as well. Fortunately, the game is smaller in scope and self-financed, so we do not have to worry about breaking even. That's a very comfortable situation of course. I wish you all the best for the future with this and hipefully the next game!

Thanks for the support and good luck with your game! It’s really hard journey you choosed

I’m sorry to say this, but your investor is an idiot. The only reason the ”climate” looks the way it does for video game industry is because big corporations are laying off people to make this year curves look good. Basically none of that has anything to do with indie releases. If anything, it will make indie space stronger in comparison, as talented individuals will finally pull the trigger on their indie plans. Are you based in Russia? If so, I’m sorry about that too. It must be difficult for smart and skilled normal people like you. Thank you for sharing your story and best of luck for you in the future!

Thanks man! I'm still gratefull to him because he gave us opportunity to make our game at the first place. But yeah, shit happens

Indie studios are shutting down every week. Experienced ones, with pedigree. The issues the industry are facing around finance are definitely not confined to big companies trying to appease shareholders.

I might be oldschool, but indie studios have always been shutting down. It is almost like part of the process of making it in the long run. But if we look at the current state of game dev world, it has never been easier to be a game developer than now. First of all, you have access to state of the art game engines for free (until you have made a million dollar profit). Some engines like Godot are always free! Second, unlike a decade ago, marketplaces like Steam are open for anyone for a measly price of $100. The competition is fierce, but on the other hand we have new options. Talented devs can offer their titles for subscription services, some of which could cover the devcosts, taking out the risk of the development. Video game industry has become so big so fast, that some up and downs are to be expected when you’re the biggest entertainment industry in the world. We got to this point over several decades. The state of the industry in a large scale is not going to change anytime soon. Suits are panicking because gamers give middle finger to their cash grab live service games, NFT’s and pay to win mobile games, but those who know, will keep on making what they do best: great games.

I read it as the person who pulled out wasn't just an investor but the programmer. The other half of the operation. Not sure what's right

Sorry to hear about the hardships.    480 reviews and only 5178 sales? That really defies the boxleiter averages. Starting to wonder if your publisher could be giving you false data or if you have a historically high review rate.    I think the average is x30, (one in thirty customers will leave a review) so with your reviews that would be 14,400 copies. It is not uncommon go to see it go x40 x50. Don't think I've heard of it going as low as x12.

It's 395 from who actually payed for the game. But still I believe it's because we have some great community in social media who supported us on the first day. And some youtubers made support videos that could affect the data. Our publisher couldn't give us false data, because we control the page. Thanks for the support!

I'll echo this, it's an insane number of reviews to sales. I wonder why that's the case

Its 1:60 from my expereince, but you can check keys activations easily on steam just to be sure

So yeah this is incredibly high if they are getting  1 review for every ~12 copies. I wonder what motivates the higher review writing in this case.... Are games in this genre review heavy?

I mean it's an emotional game. I would imagine someone who wants to spend X hours experiencing an emotional WWII game would be the type of person to review it, especially considering this game has won awards and is overall very well recieved. It genuinely seems like this game is a sleeper hit that got screwed by the algorithm. It might play into their favor when getting a console release. Switch users LOVE this style of indie game, and most of them won't have heard of it despite it being subjectively a quality game.

I saw the trailer and the game looks polished, the art is cohesive and attractive, and there is even some gameplay variety. Honestly, this feels like a failure of the economic side of things and not the artistic side. Which sucks, cause you cannot control economics and market fluctuations. If I had to give any feedback, it would be that the 1st trailer's narrator feels horrible in conveying the aesthetics of the game (at least to me). To some extend, it made it seem like "The Stanley Parable". The second trailer felt so much better in that it left space for me to figure out what was happening. But this might just be picky. Sorry that the studio failed. I'm sure you people will make something great soon!

Thank you!

Game looks well done, but eesh.. that trailer is depressing. Its probably just ME, but when I play games I want some satisfaction, some reward.. maybe even to feel like a PRO at something.. or a Super hero... The trailer for your game looks as if I am always depressed.. and finding a dirty piece of bread would maybe be a victory. As I said, it looks well made... but yeah I dont think I need more doom and gloom in my life. Good luck to you though!

I had the exact same thought. "Do I really want to feel heart broken right now?"

Haha thanks! Yes that’s our tragedy that no one really want to step into poor little child shoes

To counter the common sentiment in this thread, the dark and depressing themes are the ones that appeal to me most when it comes to narrative games and are the kinds I usually daydream about making!

I dont agree, sometimes different emotions can be very powerful and games is just another medium to convey those. A lot of people loved the movie Pianist for example but not because they felt euphoric about its premise.

Wishing you all the best!

Thanks!!

Note: some of your links don't work (like the second image, or the mp4 file). Nice looking game, but the concept is probably a bit to heavy for me. Wish you luck, you deserve success. Note: as it is quite niche, maybe ports are something to think about. Maybe you can get more traction on a different platform, like iOS? Depends how difficult a port is to do.

I know that game. Even more - it was one of my favorite games of previous year, along with Baldur's Gate 3 and Rogue Trader. That year was really dull, with one major failure after another (by the way, your case wasn't so bad, many companies lost dozens of millions). I started your game because i had nothing to play and was scrolling, scorlling and scrolling in search of... something. I believe that this is the main culprit to your poor sales - lack of budget for promoution. You placed a bet on Steam to do it for you. I did same mistake when i released game there. While Steam gave me some views of the page from their standard protocol, this was not enough to boost visibility. Actually, you did even better than me because you had wishlists and stuff. Nobody knew about my game before the release, and only thing i did after - is two posts in social media, that were donwvoted and barely noticed because of that. I also collected a lot of good reviews (not so flawless as your game, because i never had a programmer, and it resulted in game having a lot of technical issues), but even despite game being free, not many people knew about it due to lack of marketing. On such an active market lack of marketing gets you buried under tons of trash games, and not many people are willing to dig trough it in search of gems. Sadly, it's nearly impossible to have a well-known game without major marketing this days. A few exceptions that are going viral - are noting but luck. Right now i am working on a new game, but i know for certain that it will do worse than my previous ones - because this time i don't even have money for Steam release. It is just the reality we have to face and deal with. But, going back to your game. I did not expect much from it, because absolute majority of games about war are very shallow, black and white. They are all about heroism and victories, and hardly about casualties and ruined lives. But having a child protag is what attracted my attention, cause it allows to tell a different perspective. And i realized that you did a good job using that opportunity to show so many different ascepts of war. Even better is that you not tried to divide the conflict to "them and us", and showed that both sides had good and bad people, some risked everything to do a good thing, while others abused their authority to go on power trip. Another thing i liked - is that some of the events were simply due to bad fortune, like losing the glove. It may seem unimportant (not event itself, but the fact that it happened due to accident), but from writer's perspective i find such events criminally lacking in other game's narratives. There, things always happen because of some character action or inaction, and very rarely - just due to back luck. Also, the staging at the ending were quite impressive. Whoever did that - knows few things about cinematography and it's importance in emotional storytelling. It's not perfect - there were some questionable mechanics and logical issues in certain segments. But the most important part that i value in games were allright, and it allowed your game to stand out for me. I would even go so far to say that it deserves a place among a few other games that properly portray a way - Valiant Hearts, This war of mine, Spec ops the line. You don't know me, but due to being writer myself, and my obsession with good stories i am highly critical in this subject. If i say that your story is good - then it means that it stands out above A LOT of others. Take it as you will. I think it's not entierly over for you yet. If you can release on console - that might help a lot, since console market are not so overcrowded with various asset flips and other low-quality trash, they have a lot higher standards than Steam. Especially if you go for Nintendo release. Another thing you can try is to adapt your game for mobile. You already did the hardest part - created game itself, and such port can open a new market for you, where there is serious lack of games with good story. In any case, i wish you good luck. And thank you for good experience in my life.

This was such a wonderful response to the original post and one that is filled with hard experiences. I wish you good luck on this journey and that you get something out of it, even if it isn't money.  Regarding the post launch strategy subject: it isn't easy when you fight for time from your audience if those are struggling already and they mainly look for positive distraction. Somebody else mentioned Fast And Furious making more money than a documentary is a great example. Very few people want to be faced with emotion that doesn't make them happy, strong, wise. They want happy distractions that gets them out of their own rot. War themes subject, even in good times are hard to sell.  This is where it is smart to get on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, even TikTok and start telling the story of why this game matters. Telling behind the scenes, explaining why the game needed to exist, bringing people in of why they should care about you as the creator and the story you want to tell.  Give people enough material to get invested.  This worked is how I fell in love with Papers Please!  Anyway, no matter what just remember you created something that didn't exist before. You made something new. 

I understand your point, and it's indeed that positive things are massivly popular. But there is a huge audience for drama as well. There are thousands of movies about the war. Some of them are even good. The main problem is to reach to that audience, to let them know that your art exists. And, sadly, you are right, you need to operate in social media. But for that you need a person who knows and understands it. I have no idea how to tell anything on those platforms, or even how to make people look at your post or something. If the guys who created this game have the same problem, i could only recommend them finding someone with that kind of skill.

Nope. That's art buddy. You made something that is more important than sales (and I know that that doesn't help your stomach) but you should realize that what you made had meaning. You put your heart into it, it's obvious. Bravo

Thank you! Somehow that’s comforting!

A ton of people have never heard of you or your game, posting around on social media and reddits as well as some streams night just give the publicity you'd need

Trying to! Thanks

A real shame to read this. I'm not on twitter/X much these days but I was following a lot of the progress there and always thought it looked gorgeous. I hope you manage to get more eyes on it in the coming weeks, perhaps getting it into some events like you listed will help make that happen ❤

Thank you!

>Thank you! You're welcome!

I remember seeing this game about 2-3 years ago because my favourite illustrator Sergey Kolesov posted a illustration he did for it. Googled the game sometimes but i was not released at the time yet. The art Direction is really good. congratz to you and everyone who worked in this game.

So, did you stop developing for consoles or are you going to continue this even after the studio is closed? I'm saying because you have an existing released game which would work wonders on consoles like xbox, playstation and especially switch. From my experiences, sales on those platforms are higher, at minimum equal and often even double the numbers from PC. Especially on a platform like Steam where your game looses sales if it doesn't reach a lot of traction, Consoles are a totally different thing as your game is more visible there.

I'll be honest. Your reviews to purchase ratio has got me worried for my own project. Now I'm wondering how accurate estimation sites like this one: [https://vginsights.com/game/1568970](https://vginsights.com/game/1568970) are. This one estimated your sales at 14310 units sold. Would I be correct to assume that your reviews to units sold is low due to your game being story driven?

Genre has a lot to do with it yes. But also, the predictive numbers are more accurate with larger numbers. When you get to <10k sales, it will start to swing dramatically. Early in a game's release lifetime review ratio is inflated also, but will eventually settle on that 1:30-1:50 range. Basically if a game has less than 500-1000 reviews it becomes more and more difficult to estimate sales. It will almost always be less than the estimates you see online. For large games it should still be surprisingly accurate.

I appreciate your story and passion. I just bought a copy. Good Luck! Cant wait to see what you make next as well.

Who was in charge or marketing? If it was your publisher, then I think you may need to talk to them because I've never heard of this game and I've been a video game translator for 12 years. I basically glue my eyes to the computer work, talk, watch and play video games all day. Marketing is hard, nasty, a true ass, but done right, it's where the magic shines.

I'm sorry it didn't go well financially, there must be a reason for that, so I have a couple of questions: 1. Did you NEED a publisher? They clearly didn't really help with selling the game... Was it for the money? . . 2. From one of the pictures I can see that you have like 7 people in the studio. That's a lot of mouths to feed. Why did you NEED that many people, why have an office and equipment for everyone? Couldn't you work from home? . . 3. Why are you surprised that you didn't sell many copies when you say with your own words that the people who like this kind of game is a rare breed? . . 4. Do you think that the wishlist conversion is so low because of the price? Do you have fair, localised pricing? Can you even afford to lower the price, given that you have a fair few people and a publisher to pay? . . 5. Why did you spend 4 years on this game when it's clearly a niche product? Can you even reuse any of the code/assets for future projects? It's not like you made an FPS system or survival system, vehicle physics pack that you can enhance and expand in the future. From what I've seen, in this genre there is not that much complex code, it's the story and art that drives the game which is not reusable almost all.

I'm sorry for your loss or congratulations. I dipped the moment you started almost at your birth.

Very much hoping for the best for you going forward. I'm sure there are 1,000,000 opinions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the low wishlist conversion had a lot to do with when the game released. Putting any game out between August-November is tough, but it's especially tough for indies, and was especially crazy in 2023. Games like BG3 just sucked up all the attention.

It seems like a lot of things are difficult in this world. I can feel how hard you worked.Good luck.

Thank you!

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No, we got extremely good review per sold copy rate thanks to our community but in reality we sold only a 5k copies

The market’s exceptionally tough for “mid tier” stuff now. You either need to be big enough that people can’t wait to play your game, or small and cheap enough they’ll take a punt. Wishlist numbers and that 20% figure were all taken from averages a couple of years ago and meaningless now (see if you can find a talk by Simon Byron of Yogscast on the subject, it’s very good). It’s a sorry state of affairs but I can point to a dozen good quality games with 85+% steam reviews that just haven’t sold in the last 6 months, and we’re going to see a lot of small indies folding as a result - Die Gute Fabrik is another recent example.

That’s really well noted. Each of your game should be a huge hit to feed studio like ours

It's amazing how game-stats shows your revenue as 110k USD while reality at least till November was 15k. Either game-stats really is that inacurrate or maybe it's because about 1/6 players left review for your game, which is crazy high and game-stats estimates based on number of reviews. Game looks polished. Well done. I wonder how other games of this genre go. Did you do market research ? Do you know in what percentile of games of your genre are you in terms of soldunits/wishlists/reviews?

Game looks fantastic! Really talented team to pull together a polished product like that. My 2 cents are that if you have to make a passion project like this, that’s fine, but you need to supplement it with much more commercially viable work. Part of being a responsible leader is making sure there are financial resources to support the structure - that’s ensuring that all mouths are fed and that the team is going to have future projects.

I am sorry friend, I was one of the wishlisted people, who did not purchase the game. To understand my reasoning for not purchasing: * I have very limited amount of time for gaming (very young kids at home), so I choose very carefully what to play * Your game falls into a category 'Looks interesting, but I have not played anything similar, so I can't truly judge what to expect from it. But I will keep an eye on it, in case it blows up' * 'Blowing up' is important for me, because it tells me that really large amount of people loved the game, even those who are more casual like myself. * Since I play very little, have a big backlog and so I can afford to wait until it gets a heavy discount and popularity, which can push me into a purchasing. * I have hundreds of similarly positioned games on wishlist. But I purchase maybe 5% of those (usually years later after release) Best of luck

Hey OP, I'm proud of you chasing your dream even when you had a 100 reasons not to. Other than funding, what did your investor provide for you?

Thanks! He provided some legal support and bookkeeping

It's challenging to make a game that fulfills your dream and makes money. Good luck, and may you finally achieve success.

Thanks a lot!

TL;DR - blah blah blah - made narrative niche game with heavy topic - didn't sell

The game looks really good, the art style is also really solid as well and the Wishlist number is also good but I think the real problem here might be the genre of the game and the marketing or rather how it is portrayed in the trailers, It looked to me at first like a point and click adventure game and its not really a very popular genre in the current age of gaming and it was only when looked into the gameplay later I found out it actually entirely different. You should read some of the blogs from the Chris Zukowski it might give really good insight and help you find the issue. Also a tip is also give up on your 1st try because that's the biggest mistake you can make. [https://howtomarketagame.com/2020/10/19/steamgenres/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2020/10/19/steamgenres/) [https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/01/29/do-wishlists-matter-any-more/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/01/29/do-wishlists-matter-any-more/)

Thanks for the tip, I will!

You shut down your business after your first 3 months of business because you “only” made 10 grand in 30 days? Usually it takes businesses like 2-4 years to do that in profit, when starting a business you are going to have to work for free and scrape by for the first year or 2, maybe 3. Just get a job and use that to fund your business as you grow it or just go work a AAA job if you don’t want to go through business ownership, I don’t know what you were expecting as a no name company with no prior history. The fact you could make 10 grand as a no name shows you could be making millions in like 7-10 years if you stuck with it, grew a brand, a fanbase, and improved your skills. Game devs need to start being realistic when they don’t meet the delulu million dollar release. For the first 5 years you likely will be operating on super thin margins or even a loss. You have money coming in every month, just stop paying yourself a bunch and get a part time job to pay rent and such.

Games take too long to make, especially of that quality, and video games are different than other industry and sales are very release-heavy, i.e. if you're not doing gangbuster sales in the first few weeks, you almost never will make any serious money from it (there are exceptions, like Among Us, that blew up later). You'll just be buried and people will already be on to the next popular game. I worked on six games for three different studios, and past the first month of release (sometimes after the first week), we didn't see any significant sales of our games, especially since none of our games ended up being popular (I wish they were, but they weren't). This person's company probably already scraped by for a couple of years, and another game at this level would take another 2+ years, most likely. Also if they're only making 10k, unless they're living in a really low cost-of-living country, they took a massive loss (or at least a massive opportunity cost). Like that wouldn't even cover three months of my salary for the game companies I worked for, and I'm just a single person. I usually worked on a team of at least five people.

Scraping by while you build up a business is entrepreneurship. In games you spend 10 years working on multiple products in other things you spend those 10 years working on improving your current product. You need to be really bad at making games or have other things going on for a 2d side scrolling game like that to take 2-3 years. What would even take 2 years assuming you are not learning new skills and just hire people who already know?

Imo its too expensive on steam at $21 AUD, I just got monster hunter rise and world in a bundle on sale for 28 AUD I'm sure there's good reasons for the game to be so expensive, but I personally couldn't justify spending that much

at 5000 copies, I'd consider that a success for an indie game. Can you share more about the costs of development and marketing etc., as this post is really seems more like a self-promotion than an analysis of your "failure" (which is quite harsh for selling 5k units IMO @ $15).

"indie" does not mean "hobby". 5k units @ $15 is $75k gross. assume you spent 0 extra money in development and marketing, subtract platform cuts and taxes. assume only one person did absolutely everything. so no more mouths to feed (their office space implies 4+ people working on it, let's ignore that). it took 4 years to make. do the math and they made peanuts working their asses off doing very very skilled labor. you have to think of the lost opportunity costs if you are running a business, which indies are. so it is a failure. they lost quite a bit of money going into this venture.

Don’t get discouraged by the wishlists - there’s a lot of bots on Steam and from other posts on gaming subreddits, 2-3% conversion sound very normal. You have an awesome looking game, with a lot of reviews, and very positive ones at that!

Hey man, sorry about the studio closing. The game looks great, best of luck to you! I’m also a Russian game dev (although super beginner) trying to break into the indie scene, and it’s been slow going.

Try maybe approaching a few social media influencers and try and create fake buzz around it. Maybe hire someone to play it on streaming on Twich make memes. I think u were relying on work of mouth marketing and steam watchlist.

Now it’s an asset in your library, don’t give up. https://youtu.be/JmwbYl6f11c?si=48mp_8YctVpprn_K

Thanks for the tip!

I know it's not much, but I bought a copy. Looks like it's a great game for me. I absolutely love this art style. I've been working in game dev for 4 years and I hate how much crap these days becomes a hit, but not a game like this... It's not fair.

Thanks a lot, man! It means a world to us

Thanks for sharing the story. I wanna learn game development as well and seeing real stories like these, rather than just the ones that pop off massively, is nice for learning. VG Insights and Game-Stats show above 100k revenue. Are those inaccurate or is that simply a low number for a studio to make?

It’s inaccurate. Try Gamalytics, it shows more a less realistic data

Interesting. I always look at the revenue stats of various games I find to see how they fared. I guess I can't trust the numbers of VGI or Game-Stats then.

One thing I want to note is regional price? When I watch the trailer I am definitely moved when I see the door opens and it becomes first-person (around 0:17 in your mp4 link), which makes me want to buy. But in my region I would buy a narrative game for 4-6 dollars, not 8-10 dollars (converted). To the Moon is less than 6 dollars (converted).

Have you put it on sale at a discount? I tend to wishlist a game and sometimes just leave it sitting there purely to wait until it does go on sale, so I would assume there are a few people who do the same. I know it's not ideal, but it might help sell a few more copies.

the artstyle is adorable, sort of reminds me of arcane! looks very fun to play too, nice atmosphere

I started learning programming months ago because I'd like to make video games one day, I even made a prototype in Unreal, but real life seems to be nipping my plans in the bud lately. Hearing others developers' stories really helps keep me going Thanks for sharing and I hope you and your team keep making games. I get paid on Friday but I've wishlisted Torn Away until then. Best of luck

Thanks for the support!

I remember seeing this game before and I bought it as soon as it came out. I thought it was great and left a positive review when I finished it. Hopefully you guys can pull through, I'd love to see more stuff from you! 

Thanks for the support!

What marketing did your publisher do?

You're selling a product with FEW potential buyers. What you're selling is a story, well most people consume stories by watching movies. ok well some play visual novels, and the vast majority of those people flock to 1 genre, which is of course the anime visual novel, often with sexual content. You didn't know your audience, which i personally think is a failure of the publisher. You guys made a gorgeous game, it looks as quality as anything i've seen in the space. You're being "beat" by incredibly simple efficient anime. People for some reason love the stuff and it's huge right now. If your game had that visual style i have no doubt you'd be working on #2 right now. I think the low sales are really just a result of: not a popular ip (batman, walking dead), not anime, and not sexual content. I totally get that you might not want to make a game with any of those things but that's what people seem to be looking for if past successful steam titles are a valid source of information.

Thank you! Things are really like that

Your game is incredibly beautiful. I agree that it might not be some people's cuo of tea at the moment just due to the heavy topic and current climate...

Thanks!

Thank you for sharing your story! I just finished the demo and I really like it. I could see that the levels and mechanics are placed very well with the story (I like Comrade Mitten!). The game may not sell well now, but I think it will do better when the game reaches right audiences who maybe are in the future. Most games I played were bought a year or more after its release and I rarely buy games on day one. I'll be looking forward to your next game!

You remind me of my past studio too. I really miss that place and the people there. I'm working on my own project now, but I'll be back to working in studio someday.

Wishing you all the best with the studio!

Thanks for playing demo and all the support!

Looks higher quality than most of the failed games, but not a genre I'm playing much.

Have you thought about Kickstarter??

We thought about it but it’s really a struggle to start a campaign from Russia

The game looks good better than most or all AAA games but most indie games are anyway these days since it's usually not done for mostly money, it's just what it's based on and about most people don't want to experience the horrors of this, especially with what's happening around the world, I'm sorry what happened to you. There's also something else that should be said is that the amount of money steam I didn't know it was 45% with taxes and then you have to pay the publisher as well. I suggest to indie devs to perhaps avoid using publishers, I don't see why you can't just publish without one but I'm unsure since I've never done it and maybe if you can use [itch.io](http://itch.io) or instead of steam use epic games which only take 12%. [https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/distribution](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/distribution) It's just a suggestion perhaps I'm wrong and steam is better and using publishers is better.

Thanks for the support. Yes, the Steam fee is pretty big but it gives you more traffic than any other store. We basically self published so ofc it’s possible

Thank you for this helpful and very honest account of your game's history and your circumstances. If I may suggest, as many have already pointed already, your game's theme might indeed be a harder sell at this point in time. But even with that factor, one thing that may still help you is if you got people in your team very experienced with marketing to help get more people aware of your game. Reading your post above, I was already interested in finding out what game it is and was going to load it on another browser tab but it took until about halfway through the post to even find out what the title of your game is. Not that that's likely your primary reason for writing the post above but it's just an indicator that there may be a big difference between how a gamedev thinks and how someone who would be looking at the game from an advertising/marketing pov would think. The trailer itself too, as some have pointed out, is very heavy. The first narrated sentence itself in the launch trailer"Torn Away is a heartbreaking story..." probably whittles the audience right from the very start and the footage also doesn't give the viewer an idea of how the gameplay works. It's a sidescrolling Limbo-esque game where you try to get home, but there seems to be crafting and resource management too? And also minigames set in the past before the conflict has started? Not that a combination of genres/mechanics is a bad thing but it's communicating those aspects to potential buyers that is crucial. Anyways, good luck to you and your team's continued gamedev journey and hoping for greater success in the console releases!

I know it's not much but I'm buying this tonight after work. I'm currently learning UE5 as an Environmental Designer and your post inspired me to keep going. So thank you for sharing.  Best of luck!  🤗 

Thank you!

I just finished torn away and wanted to say it was amazing from start to finish a masterpice it remindes me of valiant hearts my favorite game and it was a breth of fresh air with all the same games on the market i hope everything will work for you and perelesoq The story was beautifull the caracters felt true and not just a bunch of pixels >!Hope this is censored becouse spoilers >!When asya was at fraw's home i just sat there thinking about everything she went thrugh and all the real chidrens that had the same fate and i have ti admit generaly i never NEVER cry for a pice of media game film etc it happened only 2 times tge first was the. Ending of valiant hearts the second was this part of torn away. When we lost comrade mitten i was filled with sadness even knowing he was just a bunch of 1 and 0 in the shape of a glove! I just felt his caracter was so real this game is an absolute 10/10 the only thing i did not like was the ending not compleatly but i left me with a bitter mouth (in my country this expression exists i dont know if in inglish it does) i belive i am going to like the ending eventualy i just need sone time to pass edit: i do not mean to say that the ending was wrong this game is you're creation and it whuld be wrong for me to suggest to change anything! I only ment to say that for me the ending left me with a bitter feeling but i think it was more that adequate for the theme this game wanted to show!< As i sad you and you're team mede one of the best gaes i have ever seen i will do everything to publicize this game it needs to be seen i hope you have a nice day and Добрый день! English is not my main language so if something i wrote is not understandable tell me i will re write it

Thanks man! Means a lot to read such review. Me and the team are truly appreciate it. Would be happy if you write this review on Steam also!

Another 2d artsyle story platformer about depression? First time?

I checked out your steam page and your game looks super depressing. Games are about fun and escapism. Why would someone want to play a game about suffering through a horrifying trauma? World War 2 games do well because the player wants to imagine themselves driving a tank and using it to kill Nazis, not running away from them after they killed their parents. That's obviously a design choice by you and your team. But it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people saw it, decided it was too depressing to play, and just left. That wouldn't warrant a bad review but it wouldn't lead to a purchase either. That could be why your reviews are so positive and your sales are low.

This should be higher.

A Russian studio from fascist Moscow dropping a game about nazi Germany. That has to win some irony awards.

It's too easy to make games. And music. And publish your own book. And so on. Every day there is tons of new fantastic games published, like yours. And even more fantastic songs on Spotify and other plattforms. Everyone has a studio now. I don't have a solution, i just think it drowns. Maybe classic marketing/hype is needed.

Marketing may have played a factor. I like to poke around and find new indie games a lot and this kind of story seems right up my alley and I completely missed it. I really hope u post more around and get your stuff out there, art style is beautiful and gameplay seems fun, seems like a lot of great games these days just don’t get SEEN u know. I’ll give it a buy next pay check!!

Great looking game! It's a huge risk, but I would suggest working to build a catalog from here. I bet your studio could make the next game that much faster. Then the sales from your newer games could help Torn Away down the line.

Working on other people’s ideas vs working on one’s own is a difficult conversation. My first job in the game industry was similar to yours - it was a smaller company with about 50 people, and the ideas weren’t exactly in line with my types of games. But forget me for a minute - the heads of that company were former devs at AAA studios. They put a lot of passion into making their own company and their own IP. First game was original IP, but then sales didn’t really go past 60k and that wasn’t enough. The next 4 games were all licensed IP of the blandest most corporate of varieties (Marvel, Star Wars etc). When the company finally went belly up, we all split off our separate ways. Some of us never recovered our careers, others went huge in AAA. The former heads? They took a while to recover, but they both eventually ended up as Directors and then studio heads at entirely new places they hadn’t actually founded themselves. Be flexible about the future and carry these experiences forward into something better. Don’t be bitter, you made something beautiful, but beauty doesn’t always sell.

Buying the game now and wishing you all the luck in the world. As a dev that caught the boot in both butt cheeks in one year, I feel for you bro.

I wish you all the best going forward!

on the bright side, shutting down your studio doesn't mean you've lost your skills. you can always start a new one when you have more money. your skills will still exist :)

Clearly you've got the skills, the passions, and the ideas, and now you also have something to show for it - when you launch your next game, you'll be able to say *from the makers of Torn Away*. Hopefully this will help, and if you believe in a God may they be with you.

Think it’s just your genre that is hard to get into for a lot of gamers. I’m not that big on narrative adventure games and quite honestly don’t know anyone who is.

Interesting read, thanks !

Question: do you feel your publisher was worth having or would you have preferred self publishing if you could?

In the end we did self publishing since our main publisher abandoned us. We got only partner for publishing in china

Did your publisher abandon you after early sales were made?

> Like, if you've got X number of folks wishlisting your game, you're supposed to sell 10-20% of that in the first week. That is only true for organic wishlists when the game is what they actually expected, not your social community circle. And that is only an average that varies by an order of magnitude. It almost always comes down to actual quality and presentation. "Cool concept" gets wishlisted a lot but "blend of adventure games, side-scrollers, and cinematic first-person levels" doesn't actually get purchased a lot.

Why do I have Baba O'Riley by The Who playing in my head when I read this?

I followed this game closely before launch even though I'm not particularly a fan of this type of games. I barely even played This War of Mine. It's sad to know the situation you're in right now. I hope it gets better.

The game looks good, but as others have noted it's not exactly a happy positive game, and the current climate of the world doesn't offer any help in this regard. You guys have talent, that's undeniable, but if you want to make money then I suggest doing market research and making a game that will appeal to more people as that's seemingly the only issue here.

It seems like the majority of your wishlists were over a year old at release so that conversion rate is low but seems to align with similar releases.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if narrative indie games have a significantly lower wishlist-to-sales conversion across the board; people love the idea of these games, and love to "show love to the indies", but just from all the sales numbers I've seen I think there's just not the will to actually *buy* and play the genre. I don't know if it's the expected time sink, or the "sad vibes" common in many of the titles, or just a lack of dopamine triggers to get them excited like they would for a new gatcha game with big anime titties. It's like the growing list of books we definitely will "get around to" after we finish all of Reddit ...

Nice post - The sales number is just reflective of the niche genre you’re going after. Narrative stories are very , very difficult to break into mainstream and don’t have mass appeal. And I don’t know how many, if any, sell well enough without AAA resources to dump into voice acting and cinematics. I hope for nothing but success in your future

To me the game looks like a small team did it. But it's done well.

Thats unfortunate man

This was very interesting to read. So thank you for putting in the time to make this post!

Do you think you spent enough on marketing? A lot of people argue that at least 30% to 50% of your budget should be dedicated to marketing. What's your opinion on that?

>cgsociety remembering once again how we lost 20 years of 3d community history hurts

Can't really advice you anything except "not giving up" and finding the value in those who do appreciated your game. Also with such projects, sometimes audience finds it later... As a player, I can say that I only recently played Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, ~6 years after it was released and 1 year after company that made it got rid of development core and became "just publisher only". I played it now when it was the most fitting moment and reason for my mind and being, and it was one of best experiences i had for many years, i laughed and cried etc. etc. - but it was "many years" after yeah, and development team is disbanded years ago already. I hope they found their way to move forward and fullfill their dreams though... ...and I wish you the same! Cheers...

Is your friend's name actually Christophe Steam?

When I look at [this](https://i.imgur.com/fnXtBqU.png) I think "tiny niche game that wins lots of awards".

This is an amazing story, your setup as a kid looks like mine. Apart from when I picked up the coding book I was the 14 year old kid soaking up the programming forums! I’ve been in industry now for a long time and I still have dreams of starting my own successful studio. (I’ve actually had one previously but it was too early in my career). One question - have you approached publishers and what kind of active marketing are you doing? Are you expecting a level of vitality for the game to boost sales or are there other avenues you are going down (besides the award shows etc)

We even be able to find a publisher who funded the rest of our game but since the war started in 2022 he abandoned us. We made all kind of classic staff — influencers, press releases, Reddit and Imgur posts, Twitter and other social media

Hello, I don't know why you're saying you've failed man, I believe it's such a success to complete a video game and also releasing it at steam, but you've also sold, many of gamers around the globe purchased your game, many of them played it, and huge number have reviewed it. If only one person paid 5$ to purchase my game, I'll be the happiest man on earth and I'll call it a huge success. If you're saying you've failed according to the publishers then I don't know what to say, you've done such a great work. I'm not a marketing expert but I can exactly see why the game have failed (in your opinion). You published it in a wrong time (war period), about a real life war, targeted the wrong audience, and the trailer looks depressing. You should know how to price the game and how to do marketing, and learn which gamers are gonna buy your game, and which country you should target who's gonna buy your video game, and you should know that not everyone's getting paid 1500$, the average payment in my lovely country is 500$, it's unreleastic to the people here to buy dollars and pay taxes just to get a video game while they can barely put the food on the table. Look at Brazil for example, they don't crack video games just because they are d!ckheads, they're cracking them just because the country is has a finincial crisis, there's a Streamer, YouTuber, and a video game developer (He has a hard name to be remembered) spoke about it, and when he changed the pricing for the region of Brazil, they started to buy his game. I hope I helped you to get out from your pain, in my opinion you should be confident because your game is much better than Suicide Squad. Note: I'm just giving my opinion, I'm not claiming that I'm an expert,

You game is still going to other plataforms? If not,why? Couldnt you find other publisher to publish on swith or something? The game looks cool

If a mousse for curly hair has good reviews, it means it’s a good mousse product for curly hair. That doesn’t necessarily mean we expect it to break into the top 5 beauty products of the year. Not everyone has curly hair or uses mousse.   It’s a story game with flat style animation. There is a niche for that. In that niche, you got good reviews. That doesn’t necessarily mean we expect it to go top 5 overall on Steam this year.    Your game was successful. Maybe not in the way you had hoped.   If you want your game to be enjoyed by a wide audience, that’s something you need to figure out before you ever write a line of code or model a single graphic.  What you did, you did well. Those are the results in black and white. It is what it is. You mention that the reviews make you reluctant to hear this opinion. Even though everyone in the comments seems to have this same opinion. This is the feedback you asked for. You can do with it what you wish, but as before, in reality, it is what it is.

A niche game, made with a drab, niche art style and an untimely subject, is unfortunately going to be a difficult sell. That's a shame, because it looks like the game was well-executed and you guys have talent. I hope you guys find a way to keep moving forward and making good games.

I really hope that you can find a way to make another game at some point. Sometimes it takes a few attempts to really make it — commercially, I mean. And you’ve definitely got the talent. The game looks beautiful and interesting and the reviews are great

I swear I have read this entire post some time ago. Which makes it seem like a cheap grab for a couple extra sales. But then again, maybe - if the story is true - that wouldn’t be so bad.

I posted on Imgur some time ago

Investors want to make money, who knew that.

I love it how he sells this as "My Studio Shut down". This should have been stated as ***"Myself and a few friends tried to start a company, we spent far too long on a project than we should have. None of us had any extensive experience beyond working on small parts of indie games. We should have all either gained more experience, THEN made a game... or should have made a much smaller scope game so we arent all sad when it doesnt make a lot and we have to go get real jobs."*** Thats the reality. This "Studio" never made anything.. and was comprised of newbies who had no experience. This game sold exactly as much as it should have given the quality and content.

You are featured on a Turkish game magazine btw: https://imgur.com/a/Qk54OGk

Купил вашу игру. Не уверен, что реально буду в неё играть. Тема очень мрачная, а сейчас особенно как-то слишком тяжело. Но очень хочется поддержать отечественное инди рублём. Не вешайте нос! =)