If you're not familiar with cookie textures then I highly encourage you to start using those. They can really add a lot of atmosphere.
If you want to check the full game and wishlist here is a Steam page - https://store.steampowered.com/app/5249980/Looks_Like_You/
Comment on this post to get a chance in obtaining a Village Merchant copy. I'll pick random 5 winners on August 12th. Good luck!
Recently I reworked my trailer to make it faster-paced and to include the latest content I've added to the game. I'd really appreciate any honest feedback on what still doesn't work so I can still update it with better changes.
You can check the game here - Village Merchant
Simply comment why would you like to obtain it until August 10th and I will give the codes to 2 best answers!
I recently released my first commercial indie game called Village Merchant on steam. It wasn't a complete failure, but it definitely didn't performhow I hoped, so I wanted to share some numbers and lessons in case they're useful to someone else.
Launch numbers
One thing worth mentioning is that I launched during the Steam Spring Sale which I highly regret now.
Normally that sounds like a terrible idea, but we happened to be in Popular Upcoming at the time. I thought that delaying the release would mean losing that visibility. For my justification, during the last day before premiere project gained about 1500 wishlists, while we built the whole thing for rougly 9 months to reach those 9k.
What I did wrong?
Like every indie dev I was posting some reels on social medias to gain attention, some went viral, some stood at 1-2k views. To be honest even the viral ones didn't convert wishlists as I would like to.
Because of multiple aspects I wasn't able to make make new reels for social medias right after the premiere and this could be one of the factors that sales went down pretty quick.
While I tried to make the game as different as possible in this genre - in a good way - on the premiere it probably wasn't the most competitive one, so that's the harsh lesson, that you should put as much effort on the premiere as possible. Even though the game is far ahead from others in the genre in terms of graphics, this wasn't enough for the players.
We started the steam page with no trailer nor demo. When those were added wishlists went up like crazy, about 10x more on daily basis than before - so please make sure you have at least trailer included when launching the steam page, as it makes the game much more believable.
Overall, I don't regret making the game. Releasing a commercial project taught me more than years of reading marketing advice ever could. While the launch didn't meet my expectations, it gave me a much clearer understanding of what I'd do differently on the next project—and hopefully these lessons help someone else avoid the same mistakes.
Now a question for all you who were in my position -what ended up making the biggest difference after release? Better updates? Steam events? Influencer coverage? Or was it mostly about having a stronger hook from the beginning?
You can check the title here - https://store.steampowered.com/app/4018170/Village_Merchant/