IanHarlow

I made an example of controlling two players with on screen touch controls for someone else about a year ago.

Hopefully it will help you too

[quote:2iufx5x1]Sadly I still suck at promotion/marketing so its limited to a few posts on gaming forums and that's it. See how it goes, whether a good game can market itself or $$ for marketing is a must...

Even the best game won't sell if people don't know about it.

Having said that, personally I'm a bit wary of spending too much on marketing. We've tried it a few times - through a PR company and directly with major gaming sites - spending several thousand dollars each time and it's not really been worth it as we were lucky to break even.

I think the Kickstarter is definitely a good idea, but would suggest including some lower value pledges e.g. $1 = A thank you from the developer, $5 = A copy of Star Nomad 1, etc.

The best marketing we've had was being visible on Steam's front page, although that's post Greenlight and for us was mainly on initial release and releasing expansion packs so while "free" did take some work and persuasion with Steam. Opting into the Weeklong Deals and Recently Updated got some exposure/sales as well, so you could try those out for Star Nomad 1, which will also give exposure to Star Nomad 2.

Steam Curators are another way to get exposure. A kind word and a free Steam key to any relevant curator should hopefully get you a few reviews. One curator you might consider contacting is Space Game Junkie, you could give them a key for Star Nomad 1 and mention the Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns for Star Nomad 2.

— - no worries about not wanting to use bundles after your experiences, I think Indie Royale added us into a bundle once without our permission too.

If you do decide to use a bundle again, the most recent one we used was Groupees

[quote:3o7j55zc]So while an indie game can be brilliant, but if there's low replayability (for a shorter game), its unlikely to do well on Steam

I think a big part of success on Steam comes down to visibility i.e. being on the main page or the top of lists

Appearing as a Featured Item is the best, but in order of profitability the Steam promotions we've been in are:

Featured Item (as a new game and when we went free-to-play)

Weekend Deals (when a publisher pulled out and Steam needed to fill a slot)

Midweek Madness (when we released expansion packs)

Weeklong Deals (can opt in to the this every couple of months)

Seasonal Sales (general discount and community vote/flash sale)

Get in touch with your contacts at Steam and see what you can do to get your game featured in any of these bigger sales. It was only because we'd been asking them that they offered us a place in the Weekend Deals when a publisher pulled out, and that got us over 10,000 extra sales, sure it was at 75% off but it was worth it for the exposure and extra players in-game.

[quote:3o7j55zc]seeing great games fail is very disheartening for the rest of us who are making mediocre stuff compared to The Next Penelope or Airscape

It is disheartening, but I would hardly call your stuff mediocre

You can position the "turret box" to the image point at the dino's mouth before pinning, that way it will still "spit" from the correct place

Voted, added to my collection of C2 Games on Greenlight and posted an announcement

[quote:jjhq18vz]And if you need more visitors at some point join a bundle. Your game is great and with the votes from the bundle owners you'll get greenlit in notime

Agreed, this will definitely help get you votes.

Good luck with Greenlight.

You're welcome

I think there was an element of luck with us as well because we already had a following of over 20,000 people, there were less than a 1,000 games on Greenlight and there was a lot more traffic coming through to Greenlight because it was new and being promoted by Steam.

Now, even though the criteria is less and more games are being greenlit, it's arguably harder because you really have to drive traffic there yourself or be lucky not to be lost amongst the shovelware. There are some really great C2 games on Greenlight that seem to have been overlooked.

big Infinity - that's a good start, although making a good game that people want to play is my number 1 recommendation <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

Anyway, I'm part of small team that got our (non-Construct 2) game greenlit in the very early days of Greenlight - we got through on the 3rd round and were something like the 32nd game greenlit and one of the first greenlit games released on Steam. After 3 expansions, we re-released the game as free-to-play and now have a sequel in Early Access on Steam.

Looking at the stats for the current top 50 games, your goal would be to get just over 7,000 people to visit your Greenlight page and then get half of them to vote for it. Chances are if they are visiting your page then they are already sort of interested, so really it's all about traffic.

• Get yourself on social media - Facebook and Twitter - and make sure the information is up to date and accurate, with links to your Greenlight page. Tweet or post every few days on development/Greenlight progress or just an awesome screenshot to keep people interested. Use hash tags #greenlight #indiedev #gamedev on your Tweets. Even if you don't get many followers, it's good to have these so you can at least refer people to them
• Make sure you have at least one good gameplay video on YouTube to include in your Greenlight page. People want to see what the game is about. If a picture says a thousand words, a video says a million. And remember, 30sec of in-game action is better than 5mins showing off your fancy menus. If you need help putting together a trailer, consider using someone like Trailer Squad http://trailersquad.com/ I have no idea how much they cost but they say they are indie friendly
• If your game already has a following or you have a lot of email contacts, send out a newsletter asking them to vote for you on Greenlight - you can use something like Mail Chimp free if you have less than 2,000 followers http://mailchimp.com/pricing/entrepreneur/
• If your game is still in development, set up a Kickstarter (even if only for a small amount) and cross-promote with Greenlight so traffic from one goes to the other.
• If your game is complete, try to get yourself into a Greenlight bundle e.g. Groupees Build a Greenlight, current one is https://groupees.com/bagb30
• Put out a Press Release announcing your game/Greenlight, e.g. with Games Press http://www.gamespress.com/about_howtosubmit.asp - even if none of the big sites pick it up, some of the smaller sites might
• Contact games sites or "let's play"ers and ask them to preview/review your game
• Contact relevant Greenlight Collections and ask them to add your games. I have one for Construct 2 games http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =103535227

Hope that helps someone

glacierstudios

Add the Browser object

Add a Sprite to act as a button, then on mouseclick or touch of the sprite add the Action: Browser->Open URL in a new window

Set URL to:

"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Just got a high score " & HighScore

where HighScore is the variable where you store your high score

For more options with Twitter e.g. Follow, look here: https://dev.twitter.com/web/intents

zenox98

You should be asking yourself that question.

Valdarko's reply is 2 years old - Sun Jul 21, 2013 6:09 pm

Thanks for the new assets Kenney

Awesome as always.

Naji - You are 15 years old and have made a handful of not very complicated web-games, while some indie developers have had years of experience at major game studios working on big titles before going indie and releasing several complicated games themselves, so to them you are a beginner.

Personally, I've worked for over 5 years with an indie studio, with one major release on Steam (100k+ copies sold) and another game in Early Access and I still sometimes consider myself a beginner.

So, give it a few more years and have at least one major release (maybe something on Steam) before you worry about whether people consider you a beginner or not.

For now, don't worry what people call you, just focus on making games, learning new skills and improving the quality of your games to a commercial standard.

[quote:2kjk55sg]

Attach a Capx

As far as I know, this is unneeded

Scirra/Ashley need something to test. Not everyone has the problem you are reporting so it could be hard for them to reproduce. It doesn't have to be your full capx, just a smaller example that has the same problem.

[quote:2kjk55sg]Construct 2 Version ID

r201 (if that is the latest stable version)

Latest stable version is r206 (see footer of the website)

You will probably be asked to double-check you are using the right version. In Construct 2, go to File and click About and it will show you what version you have.