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u/Balth124

r/gamedev r/conceptart r/cozygames r/IndieGameJoe r/CRPG r/gameDevMarketing r/indiegames r/Switch r/dice r/gamemarketing r/IndieDev
▲ 1 r/cozygames

Sort every set of dices in your 80s basement

A cozy first-person sorting game set in a cluttered 1980s basement. Find thousands of scattered dice, identify their sets and return each one to the correct display. Play solo or in co-op, choose a fantasy class and unlock magical powers that make sorting easier.

The coolest thing for me though is the vibe. We really wanted to have that nostalgic 80s basement vibe, where you and your friend where playing in the basement at a tabletop game with the sunset outside and the music in background.

If you like it make sure to wishlist it on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5061290/Roll_for_Order_Sort_Every_Set/

Thank you ^_^

u/Balth124 — 9 days ago
▲ 25 r/gameDevMarketing

Few case studies of two Steam Capsules we did for 2 of our clients. 1°: 70k+ wishlists in a month, 2°: 100k+ copies sold in a month

u/Balth124 — 10 days ago
▲ 6 r/gamemarketing

How important is the Steam Capsule for CTR and wishlists- A before/after comparison

Hi everyone!

As we all know Steam Capsules are a very important piece of the puzzle when it comes to increase your odds of success with your Steam game. A better capsule means a better Click Through Rate, which means more visits, which means more wishlists.

I've put here a couple of Before (left) - After (right) comparison we did recently with some awesome devs we have worked on.

Full portfolio here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/a0QAo9

If you are looking to do a make over of your steam capsule feel free to get in touch with me :)

Email: info@frostearthstudio.com
Discord: welby. (fullstop included)

u/Balth124 — 21 days ago
▲ 50 r/gamedev

How our 3D Platformer on Nintendo Switch sold only 36 copies in the first 4 days

Hi everyone,

I'm Andrea, founder of the Frost Earth Studio (a 4/5 people team) and developer of Tolem.

Tolem is a 3D platformer that we at Frost Earth Studio have worked on for the last couple of years. The main gameplay consist of having 4 different elemental transformations that you can unlock and use to take more advtange of the environment around you, to kill specific enemies more easly or just to improve your traversal perfomance. Besides platforming and enemies we also have 4 bosses, each of it different from the previous one.

Overall we are quite proud of how it came out, It took a lot longer than expected mostly because we don't have a budget, we don't have a publisher and it wasn't our main project so we could really just work on it on our spare time.

So at first we were pretty chill about it. The main idea behind Tolem was pretty simple. We wanted to make a "small" game specifically targetting the Nintendo Switch platform because we just recently had access to it and we want to take advantage of that.

We have some experiences having developed at least 3 games on PS4 and PS5 mostly in 2018 - 2024 range. Our previous experiences is that on consoles you had an increased organic exposure compared to Steam.

On Steam you have to do a lot of heavy marketing work. You need to have your Steam page up months (or even years) before the actual release, you need to grow your wishlists and join a lot of festivals, showcases and more.

On console the story was a bit different, a bigger entry barrier made it so that on consoles there were a lot less developers and games which quite often meant having lots of increased exposure at list at launch or during sale periods.

Well.. that seems to be an old story now.

We sent few keys to content creators, we made several press releases leading to the release day. Websites such as Nintendo Everything, Nintendo Life among many other Nintendo websites picked our press release. We got even some cool japanese coverage. Also on launch day we got few coverage from content creators such as 'Handheld players' (76k subs) as well as few smaller ones.

Our 'Coming soon' page already gave us some warning signs. We got 517 wishlists in a month with our 'Coming soon' page on the eshop (currently at 630wl). We thought it was pretty normal considering not many Switch players wishlist upcoming games, we just thought it as a platform cultural thing.

It was clearly a sign though. Because then July 23rd happens, more than 45 games were releasing alongside us and we got literally buried behind those games. we got 36 sold copies in 4 days which unfortunatly it's basically nothing.

We didn't have massive expectations, but we definitely weren't expecting only 36 copies at launch.

We're very bummed right now. The very few people that have tried the game seems to have liked it, but we just can't get enough people to buy it. We'll surely try with sales going forward, right now though the hit on our morale was quite hard.

So, long story short? Even on console you may want to have longer marketing campaign, you want to create a lot of buzz and even if the game doesn't seem a good fit (such as 3D platformers for Steam), you may still want to release it on as many platforms as you can to increase your overall chances of success.

Right now we're working to release Tolem also on Steam, but we're already moving to other projects within other genres, hopefully trying to get some good traction way before release.

Update: Thank you for all the feedbacks! I do agree with a good majority of those, mostly talking about how the Trailer could have been better and also how the visual quality was lacking in some regards. So to anyone that gave constructive criticism I thank you truthfully.

The downside is that I also got a lot of harsh comments, downvotes and assumptions about how we worked or even simply how I wasn't "receptive" to the feedbacks. I just want to reiterate that I'm indeed receptive to feedbacks and that I think we worked ethically and as best as we could, but that in the end still that wasn't enough in this specific case as many pointed out and we lacked on several aspects. I think every person and every team deserves to have the right to make some mistakes along their journey.

reddit.com
u/Balth124 — 25 days ago
▲ 53 r/gamemarketing

We designed the Steam capsule for a game that sold 100,000+ copies in its first month. Here’s why your capsule matters more than you think

I want to start by saying that the developers of Tabletop Tavern are amazing, and they sold more than 100k units in its first month.

The main reason the game sold more than 100,000 copies in such a short time is that the game itself is genuinely great. A strong capsule cannot make an unappealing game successful on its own, and I would never want to take credit away from the developers and all the work they put into it.

That said, your Steam capsule can play a major role in determining how many people actually click on your game in the first place.

While working on our own games, we ran several informal A/B tests using different capsule designs. The difference in click-through rate could be surprisingly large. In one case, games receiving a similar number of impressions during the same Steam festival saw significantly different traffic, with the stronger-performing capsule generating roughly three times as many store-page visits.

That does not mean a better capsule will automatically triple every game's traffic. However, it showed us just how much the first visual impression can affect whether someone stops scrolling or moves on.

This becomes especially important during Steam festivals. Players may be browsing through hundreds of games, and your capsule is often the only information they have when deciding which store pages are worth opening.

Once they click, the rest of the Steam page has to do its job:

Does the trailer communicate the game quickly?

Do the first screenshots show its most distinctive and exciting features?

Are the tags accurate?

Does the description use strong GIFs and clearly explain the experience?

All of these elements contribute to turning visits into wishlists. But the capsule is usually the first step: before your page can convince someone to wishlist the game, the capsule has to convince them to open it.

That is why I’m very proud that we had the opportunity to work with developers such as TJ, the developer behind Tabletop Tavern, as well as the team behind Village51, which was also covered by Indie Game Joe (thank you for featuring it!)

I’ve included some of our work and would be happy to hear what other developers think about the designs and their own experiences with capsule art.

For anyone currently looking to give their Steam page a visual glow-up, we also offer Steam capsule and logo design as a single package, with pricing intended to remain accessible to indie developers.

Full Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/a0QAo9

Email: info@frostearthstudio.com

Discord: welby. (including the full stop)

u/Balth124 — 1 month ago
▲ 23 r/CRPG

Writing an RPG is HARD - Glasshouse devblog

Hi, it's Andrea from FLAT28, developer of Glasshouse.

It's been a while since my latest post on this sub, and everytime it's a good experience so I thought that our latest devblog was a very good moment to make a post!

In our latest devblog we talk about our approach to writing our cRPG, the challanges and learn experiences we did over the years. We also briefly talked about the Neowiz Indie Quest contest that awarded us 70.000$ and few sneak peaks of what's coming ahead.

If you're into cRPGs, if you already knew Glasshouse and wanted a bit of an update that may be a good reason to jump on our devlog and give me your thoughts ^_^

For those that didn't know anything about Glasshouse:

Glasshouse it's a Feudalpunk CRPG, with Turn-based combat, set in a lockdown apartment block at the dawn of a world war. You'll need to investigate the mysterious triple murder next door, fight the Political Conspiracy, and make terrible choices before the flatmates do it for you!

Thank you :)

youtube.com
u/Balth124 — 2 months ago
▲ 8 r/indiegames

We've been working on this game for more than 2 years, in our spare time. We poured thousands of hours into it, more money than we'd like to admit and we're finally launching TOLEM on July 23th.

Hi there,

I'm Andrea, one of the dev of a small 4 people team behind 'TOLEM', a 3D platformer/adventure game announced just today. We worked on it for two years in our spare time. We were (and are) kinda broke but we were loving so much what we were doing that we couldn't simply stop.

More than 2 years after we managed to get TOLEM out of the door. Yesterday we had our 'Coming Soon' page launched and the game is going to be released on July 23 2026.

I took those screenshots yesterday morning as that was the first time I tried our own game on my Nintendo Switch 2 retail and I can't express how weird and exciting it felt to see our cover art and our game running on the switch, on our library alongside the other games we play (yeah, i know.. very small and humble games, right? 😂)

If you want to check out what's Tolem is about you can do so (and wishlist, that always helps) on our Nintendo Eshop page.

Eshop America: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/tolem-switch/
Eshop EU: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Tolem-3128022.html

Let me know if you have any questions, curiosity about our journey or the game itself :)

u/Balth124 — 2 months ago
▲ 34 r/IndieDev

We've been working on this game for more than 2 years, in our spare time. We poured thousands of hours into it, more money than we'd like to admit and we're finally launching TOLEM on July 23th.

Hi there,

I'm Andrea, one of the dev of a small 4 people team behind 'TOLEM', a 3D platformer/adventure game announced just today. We worked on it for two years in our spare time. We were (and are) kinda broke but we were loving so much what we were doing that we couldn't simply stop.

More than 2 years after we managed to get TOLEM out of the door. Yesterday we had our 'Coming Soon' page launched and the game is going to be released on July 23 2026.

I took those screenshots yesterday morning as that was the first time I tried our own game on my Nintendo Switch 2 retail and I can't express how weird and exciting it felt to see our cover art and our game running on the switch, on our library alongside the other games we play (yeah, i know.. very small and humble games, right? 😂)

If you want to check out what's Tolem is about you can do so (and wishlist, that always helps) on our Nintendo Eshop page.

Eshop America: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/tolem-switch/
Eshop EU: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Tolem-3128022.html

Let me know if you have any questions, curiosity about our journey or the game itself :)

u/Balth124 — 2 months ago
▲ 61 r/Switch

We've been working on this game for more than 2 years, in our spare time. We poured thousands of hours into it, more money than we'd like to admit and we're finally launching TOLEM on July 23th.

Hi there,

I'm Andrea, one of the dev of a small 4 people team behind 'TOLEM', a 3D platformer/adventure game announced just today. We worked on it for two years in our spare time. We were (and are) kinda broke but we were loving so much what we were doing that we couldn't simply stop.

More than 2 years after we managed to get TOLEM out of the door. Today we had our 'Coming Soon' page launched and the game is going to be released on July 23 2026.

I took those screenshots this morning as that was the first time I tried our own game on my Nintendo Switch 2 retail and I can't express how weird and exciting it felt to see our cover art and our game running on the switch, on our library alongside the other games we play (yeah, i know.. very small and humble games, right? 😂)

If you want to check out what's Tolem is about you can do so (and wishlist, that always helps) on our Nintendo Eshop page.

Eshop America: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/tolem-switch/
Eshop EU: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Tolem-3128022.html

Let me know if you have any questions, curiosity about our journey or the game itself :)

u/Balth124 — 2 months ago