Puzzle Moppet (source released)

[xDan]

If anyone wants a free copy of the game:
http://garnetgames.com/puzzlemoppet/awarenessday/

[ent1ty]

I suppose the selling didn't go so well?

[xDan]

12 copies and... not counting :S

Though the actual download-to-purchase % isn't too terrible. It's getting press coverage that seems to be hard... I guess it's not the most original or polished game in the world though.

[ent1ty]

gently caress it i'm gonna be a rock star

[xDan]

I reckon the chance of success is probably similar!

[HerrAlmanack]

not to butt into this ocnversation, but if I may, I REALLY think you should lower down the price.... ..like a lot.;

also I have noticed one thing people like in media of ANY kind: other people.

I have life testimony of that. I grew up playing some games that were considered "bad". In retrospect, I can see they actually weren't all too great. However, those were some of the best years of my life! Why? I had my cousins to play with! I was with other people. Most humans are naturally social and have a need to be around other humans, or at least some entity that resembles, in personality, or physically, a human.

How can this be incorporated into your game? Add maybe some "helper". Or maybe a mysterious person who you see doing mysterious things around the levels, and you can't quite get to them. you really need to be doing the whole carrot-on-a-stick thing with people to keep them wanting more. I mean the game mechanics are nice and polished, the graphics are beautiful to look at ...but what else is there to the story besides a small paragraph on the website?

[xDan]

> but if I may, I REALLY think you should lower down the price.... ..like a lot.;

oh really? What price would you suggest? I did try lowering it to 9.95, there did not appear to be any more sales as a result. I think if people actually like the game they'll buy at the current price. If they aren't too bothered with it, they won't buy at any price, and even the act of getting out a bank card / entering paypal details becomes the barrier to purchasing. At least that's my theory, and other people have suggested the same.

With that logic, I should probably increase the price People who wouldn't buy the game anyway will be appalled at the cost, but those who like cold logic games might be ok with it. It's niche, it doesn't have mass appeal.

[I mean, so far, even giving it away free hasn't got all that much interest! Maybe nobody will want it even if it's free, in which case reducing the price aint gonna help]

you're probably right about the other things, but I'm done working on this for now. Such things might take me another 6 months and it could still fail I'll certainly bear that in mind if I make another game though....

[shadowslair]

IMO the price is affordable and fair. The game is nice, I like the way it evolved and took its way to the release point. I like the small site and think it`s all really sweet. Honestly, I`m a bit disappointed by the lack of interest and low sales, both as a "fan" and more as a collegue indie-dev-wanna-be. The main reasons for that are probably the weak "propaganda" of the game site and the reason there`s some decay in the puzzle games (maybe many people are lazy to think?!).
And for releasing it for free for 24 hours- I don`t know whether it will be for the good or bad of this project, but I admit it`s an interesting strategy. You can also try to put an offer in the site if someone wants to advertise and sale it himself through his site or whatever, getting some percentage of your income. This way you won`t spend money for advertising and if the sales are weak, these won`t be lost money. I dunno.

As for myself, I didn`t get a copy of the game for the main simple reasons I don`t have a card to buy online for some time (paying in cash, but will need to get one paypal) and the lack of time for playing games (which is actually a bad thing, because we need to play games and be in touch with many of the titles shipped each year- be them successful or not if we want to develop games).
But you`re wrong that nobody will want it even for free. I dunno about the others, but I`ll definitely get a copy if I don`t need to use some online transaction to play it when I have some time and will.

So, as a last note, you should be very proud you made such a nice game all by yourself. And this is your very first released game?! You kidding me?! You have my respect for what you`ve achieved and I hope one day I`ll get to the point you`re ATM. Man, keep it up and may the gameDev Force be with you wherever you ship a title!

[Innesoft]

I agree with shadowslair, the price is not the issue - it's just getting more downloads. I also think it's a mistake to give it away free (your 1 day promotion coming up) - what this does is devalue the product, nobody will buy it knowing they can get it free on a certain day. I would cancel this promotion right away, stick with your current price and start promoting.

Experimenting with lower prices only works when enough people know about it, otherwise you could lower the price to $9.95 and see no improvement, which can be discouraging.

1. I tried this on an older machine, and the default settings didn't work (no FBO for fullscreen effects, although shaders worked) - if this game appeals to people on older machines, which it might.. you could have a problem, - make sure it detects older hardware and disables FBO stuff instead of just crashing out.
2. If you don't have a PAD file yet, get one made and distribute it to portals/PAD farms - these sites are garbage but they'll get you some downloads, which will convert to sales
3. As a BMTMicro vendor, finding affiliates is hard.. as I said in PM, I like this game and will be affiliating it from next week-ish.
4. Don't offer it for free before people know about it!!!!!
5. Don't get bogged down tweeking the price - if price was the issue, you'd have a low conversion rate - which you don't. You just have a low download rate.

That's my 2p

[soulless]

Just don't give your work for free, you already have a demo for free.

The problem is this game doesn't look that good, I explain, the game is good, a very good one, but you know it only when you play it. The video on the page doesn't incite to download it.

Just promote your game and make people sees how good it is even without downloading the demo or buying it.

Don't know if you did it yet, but you could start sending emails to those indie review sites (even the ones that are little known), also those who makes indie games reviews on youtube.

[xDan]

> And this is your very first released game?! You kidding me?!

well, it's my first real attempt at a finished *commercial* game. I've made a whole lot of prototypes, mini games, and unfinished rubbish stuff over the years though..

Thanks

> I would cancel this promotion right away, stick with your current price and start promoting.

Since nobody is really buying it anyway I figured I won't have much to lose. The idea of giving it for free is mostly to get some press... hopefully then I'll still get some traffic from these sources after the promotion is over. And also perhaps the people who do get it free might play it and recommend it to others.

It's a bit late to cancel it really anyway, since some sites have wrote about it... I'll just see what happens there.

I've done basic promotion stuff, sent out a press release, and contacted a fair amount of gaming sites, but most have ignored me, the few that didn't are very low traffic ones. Maybe I'm just bad at pitching it

I'm not really sure what other promotional stuff to do.

I do have the possibility for people to affiliate it, but I haven't had much luck finding anyone that wants to. (apart from you Innesoft, thanks ). As far as I see most sites that affiliate games just grab the catalogue from BigFishGames and that's it..

I do have a PAD file, I gave that a try at one point but gave up after I didn't get much results from it. That was an earlier version of the game though, maybe I need to bump the version number and resubmit..

> I tried this on an older machine, and the default settings didn't work (no FBO for fullscreen effects, although shaders worked)

Hmm, I thought Irrlicht would just silently fail, guess I need to look into that...

@soulless,
thanks.

> Just promote your game and make people sees how good it is even without downloading the demo or buying it.

I guess I'm failing at that... Hmm.. Well, I'll certainly try and contact some more people.. Youtube reviewers is a good idea I haven't looked into, thanks..

[xDan]

Breaking news!

Puzzle Moppet for Mac!

Download here: http://download.garnetgames.com/PuzzleMoppetTrial.dmg

Testers wanted... nay, needed.

(I'm especially interested if bloom/glow works for anyone, since it doesn't for me, but I've a feeling this cranky old macbook simply doesn't support FBOs or whatever it is)

Also any Mac people want the full version just let me know

edit: ah, I should probably also say, I think it will only run on OS X 10.5 / Leopard upwards. Not certain though, so by all means try if you're on something earlier..

[xDan]

Update: Puzzle Moppet is now freeware...

http://garnetgames.com/PuzzleMoppetFull.exe
http://garnetgames.com/PuzzleMoppetFull.dmg
http://garnetgames.com/PuzzleMoppetFull.tar.gz

Maybe one day when I can be bothered I'll make it open source too, but I can't be bothered just yet

[Mel]

Awesome game. It reminded me to a Genesis/Megadrive game called light crusader. It had some puzzles like the ones in that game, but also, some battles. That could be a nice idea for a new game

[Virion]

I've done basic promotion stuff, sent out a press release, and contacted a fair amount of gaming sites, but most have ignored me, the few that didn't are very low traffic ones. Maybe I'm just bad at pitching it

I'm not really sure what other promotional stuff to do.

I've been doing this for some time now for my own game. It's not so easy to get any attention from any game sites. For my first press release, I sent out 30++ emails to different game sites and only 1 of them actually wrote about us (not really write, but copy paste my entire e-mail on their website). After few updates of the games and keep releasing news (especially on indiedb website, you can try that too), there are now 4-5 websites wrote about my game (and 10++ websites which copied/linked the news from those 4-5 websites), including indie game magazine ( http://mobile.indiegamemag.com/gah-waa-cha/ ) Not really a big success yet but at least it's getting better. Need to try harder I guess...