Life with a Steam page

Hi all,

Another successful month development-wise, though classically it was a touch short of my intended goals, but I am getting better at creating objectives.

Marketing wise it was a bit of a bummer, but not a surprising one. HowToMarketAGame.com has a number of benchmarks that somewhat measure a successful Steam page launch. It seems that the minimum expected wishlists received in the first two weeks is 100. I unfortunately only managed about 33, and that was with a moderate Twitter funnel so expect about 10 or so of them are fellow game devs. Also, the wishlists per day have stabilised at about 1 a day. Again this is not a high number. 

But let's be realistic, I am a solo dev and this is my first game. I did not put a ton of time into the store page (including the trailer and screenshots), the UI is still basic and the game is not at a stage where I can demonstrate a lot of features (because of the rebuild, but 0 regret as that was the best decision of this journey). I could have waited to publish the store page but I have already kicked this can down the road multiple times, so I set myself a hard date and just went for it.

There is always a silver lining though. With a relatively low uptake, I was able to make the decision to remove multiplayer as a release feature. I will put in the code design to have it implemented later, this means I can concentrate on a positive single-player experience and release day will be a lot less stressful

Things I actually accomplished:

• Dice have health and experience that change with battles
• Battles are actually implemented (though the dice don't look like they roll yet, the number just appears)
• Dice rolls have modifiers, currently only based on health and experience but the groundwork is there to extend it
• The store page is translated into every language possible via the Steam UI, and I have templates and scripts available to easily change it
• I have a Tik Tok and Instagram presence

Things I want to get done in August

Primary

Development:

• Finish the Dice features (nearly done)
• Dice show as 'rolling'
• Movement limitations
• POC of a new AI design

Marketing:

• Create a YouTube Shorts account
• Update the trailer with the dice feature
• Post on TikTok/Insta/shorts about the dice feature