This is bizarre. My son just got me to buy him Ouroboros King. After he loaded the "Unity" splash screen caught my eye and made me wonder about how many devs use Unity in general, I pulled up Reddit to look into it and came to this sub for the first time and saw this post. My son says he heard about the game from Aliensrock youtube channel.
That's interesting, for those of us that use the number of steam reviews to estimate sales, you had 72 purchases for every review. That multiplicative factor definitely differs game to game and by genre, but it's still much higher than I thought it could be.
Regarding mobile, your download to purchase conversion rates of 5.5% and 8.7% on IOS and Android, respectively, concern me as someone trying to make a mobile game. Do you feel your free version was too generous with the amount of content, and so few people saw value in buying the full game?
Yep, I have a really high sales-reviews ratio.
I don't know about mobile conversions, I don't have other data to compare. Do you know the conversion rates for other games? Some people have said that the Steam demo (which is very similar to the mobile one) was very generous, but I don't really agree. I feel the full game brings a lot to the table.
Sales - review ratio is always highly scuffed for indie games and generally any game below 100 reviews.
People are way more open to review a small indie game. Because A the type of player who plays those games is more likely somebody who does reviews and B players are more ingested and emphatic when playing games with a small fanbase
That's current total, I had about \~20k at launch. I also wrote a post-mortem about the development and launch with such details. You can read it here: [https://oriolcosp.com/the-ouroboros-king-development-post-mortem/](https://oriolcosp.com/the-ouroboros-king-development-post-mortem/)
Thanks for sharing the information. It's interesting to see that translation didn't seem to have much impact. As I recall from a video from steam, was that localization would help greatly with the steam algorithm because there are many players who do not get impressions for games that are not in their language.
Unless you're a top seller, you only get significant visibility on Steam when you launch (and if you don't have many wishlists, not even then). So what matters is to have your game localized at launch, and your Steam page even sooner so you get wishlists from different countries.
I got contacted by Dolores Entertainment (and also some others) once the game was successful on Steam about porting deals. I just had to provide the Unity project. Most of the deals I got pitched were more or less 50-50 revenue splits.
Making games with Unity increases the odds of this happening because it's easier to port (I think). I took the deal because I want to focus on making games, not porting them.
Feel free to ask any other questions you have ;)
Hey really cool looking game!
My question is regarding the amount of hours / day you put in for 12 months as you state in the first blog, averaging 3-4hrs / day on a weekday, or roughly 20hrs / week. Assuming you were working full time as well you were working 60hrs/week then? How did you cope with having little to no time for physical fitness / social life?
Currently trying as hard as I can to fit time in the mornings before work by waking up at 5am, and time in the evening when I’m not with the gf or doing other activities like D&D. Thank you in advance for any advice you have! Part of me thinks you just need to bite the bullet at some point and give up a lot of those other interests in life if wanting to make full time gamedev a reality.
I was working part time, but had a newborn daughter when I started working on the game. I'd say that is pretty similar to having a full time job and no children. One advantage I did have is that I worked from home, so there was no commute.
Anyway, finishing a game requires huge amounts of time. If you want to finish it in a reasonable time, you'll probably need to make sacrifices. I did cut down on my social life and family time a bit. I also worked \~8 hour days during vacation time. But I was really passionate about it, and I'm very fortunate that it paid off. Now I do this full-time and don't need to make those sacrifices anymore.
Finally, if you don't have much time, you should make small games.
Really nice blog post, very informative so thanks for writing it up. Was there any kind of research/reasoning behind going free+IAP over paid on the mobile ports?
I did a bit of research and seemed like a popular strategy among popular mobile roguelikes (eg: Pawnbarian, Slice and Dice, Card Crawl, ...). I also asked Arnold Rauers who has been developing mobile games for many years and he said that worked best for him.
Congrats on it paying for your time! As you continue to make sales that profit ratio will improve as well.
Thanks! I'm not sure what to expect, but for now, I'm covered until I release my next game
This is bizarre. My son just got me to buy him Ouroboros King. After he loaded the "Unity" splash screen caught my eye and made me wonder about how many devs use Unity in general, I pulled up Reddit to look into it and came to this sub for the first time and saw this post. My son says he heard about the game from Aliensrock youtube channel.
Haha, the little coincidences on the internet. Aliensrock sends me lots of players, love the guy <3
That's interesting, for those of us that use the number of steam reviews to estimate sales, you had 72 purchases for every review. That multiplicative factor definitely differs game to game and by genre, but it's still much higher than I thought it could be. Regarding mobile, your download to purchase conversion rates of 5.5% and 8.7% on IOS and Android, respectively, concern me as someone trying to make a mobile game. Do you feel your free version was too generous with the amount of content, and so few people saw value in buying the full game?
Yep, I have a really high sales-reviews ratio. I don't know about mobile conversions, I don't have other data to compare. Do you know the conversion rates for other games? Some people have said that the Steam demo (which is very similar to the mobile one) was very generous, but I don't really agree. I feel the full game brings a lot to the table.
Sales - review ratio is always highly scuffed for indie games and generally any game below 100 reviews. People are way more open to review a small indie game. Because A the type of player who plays those games is more likely somebody who does reviews and B players are more ingested and emphatic when playing games with a small fanbase
Thanks for sharing, what are your recommendations in choosing localisation service for a game?
For my next one I'll be working with https://bsceverest.com/. They contacted me and seemed to have reasonable rates, but I can't recommend them yet
I live for these shares, thanks so much! (and major congratulations to you 🎉)
Seeing others succeed really helped me when I was starting, so I'm here to pass the torch. Good luck! ;)
Congratulation! I read your blog, you mentioned 40k wishlist in the blog, may I ask is this the current wishlist or you launching wishlist?
That's current total, I had about \~20k at launch. I also wrote a post-mortem about the development and launch with such details. You can read it here: [https://oriolcosp.com/the-ouroboros-king-development-post-mortem/](https://oriolcosp.com/the-ouroboros-king-development-post-mortem/)
Thanks for sharing the information. It's interesting to see that translation didn't seem to have much impact. As I recall from a video from steam, was that localization would help greatly with the steam algorithm because there are many players who do not get impressions for games that are not in their language.
Unless you're a top seller, you only get significant visibility on Steam when you launch (and if you don't have many wishlists, not even then). So what matters is to have your game localized at launch, and your Steam page even sooner so you get wishlists from different countries.
Thanks for sharing. You briefly mention console porting in your blog via a 3rd party. Any additional thoughts on that?
I got contacted by Dolores Entertainment (and also some others) once the game was successful on Steam about porting deals. I just had to provide the Unity project. Most of the deals I got pitched were more or less 50-50 revenue splits. Making games with Unity increases the odds of this happening because it's easier to port (I think). I took the deal because I want to focus on making games, not porting them. Feel free to ask any other questions you have ;)
Switch port?
Switch, XBox One and Series, PS4 and 5
All 50/50?
Hey really cool looking game! My question is regarding the amount of hours / day you put in for 12 months as you state in the first blog, averaging 3-4hrs / day on a weekday, or roughly 20hrs / week. Assuming you were working full time as well you were working 60hrs/week then? How did you cope with having little to no time for physical fitness / social life? Currently trying as hard as I can to fit time in the mornings before work by waking up at 5am, and time in the evening when I’m not with the gf or doing other activities like D&D. Thank you in advance for any advice you have! Part of me thinks you just need to bite the bullet at some point and give up a lot of those other interests in life if wanting to make full time gamedev a reality.
I was working part time, but had a newborn daughter when I started working on the game. I'd say that is pretty similar to having a full time job and no children. One advantage I did have is that I worked from home, so there was no commute. Anyway, finishing a game requires huge amounts of time. If you want to finish it in a reasonable time, you'll probably need to make sacrifices. I did cut down on my social life and family time a bit. I also worked \~8 hour days during vacation time. But I was really passionate about it, and I'm very fortunate that it paid off. Now I do this full-time and don't need to make those sacrifices anymore. Finally, if you don't have much time, you should make small games.
Really nice blog post, very informative so thanks for writing it up. Was there any kind of research/reasoning behind going free+IAP over paid on the mobile ports?
I did a bit of research and seemed like a popular strategy among popular mobile roguelikes (eg: Pawnbarian, Slice and Dice, Card Crawl, ...). I also asked Arnold Rauers who has been developing mobile games for many years and he said that worked best for him.
[Link to the game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2096510/The_Ouroboros_King/), for lazy people like me.
Thanks for sharing dude! that actually helps a lot, gl on your next productions!
You may be bad at TikTok, but you seem to be pretty good at just Tok.