u/KingCakeTheFruity

To give some context, Mowties is basically roguelite Monopoly. For quite some time I was only sitting in dev communities (like this one), until yesterday I got an obvious advice: go show your game to its target audience. Then I went and made:

• Post on r/deckbuildingroguelike, about why Mowties is tagged deck-builder although it has no deck building. Post link
• Post on r/roguelites, about how Mowties is roguelite Monopoly. Post link
• Post on r/digitaltabletop, about how Mowties is roguelite Monopoly. Post link

And well, players actually came! I saw the increase in wishlists deletes as well, I believe because I forgot to mention to tabletop community it is a single-player game. But anyway, even with posts getting very little views and like, wishlists were there!

So that's the story. What over communities do you think I should visit?
Btw, steam page

Mowties is a combo-crafting roguelite taking place on weird boards. Build unique properties and arrange them into combo cascades to beat an ever-growing payment! Manipulate dice rolls, break the game rules with legendary items, gain a tactical advantage with secret cards - and win another run!

The changelog from my last post here would not fit into a reddit post (by far), but visual highlights are:
- adequate background shader that does not kill readability of the map
- actually 3d map with shadows instead of dirty hacks
- glass-like panels for inventory and boss herald
- physical dice tray instead of the casino reels
- 1e9 of new juicy animations to make this all work coherently

You can watch the new trailer here: https://youtu.be/TL23opifgIA
And wishlist the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4832870

I stopped doing any promo after 2 weeks as it was far too time-consuming and started polishing the game for demo launch on 26.08. No coverage luck so far, but I've only just started contacting, 870 streamers are still waiting for their message!

Mowties: steam page

Due to playtest feedback I knew I had to make buildings pop out of their two dimensions and become "more materialistic". The problem was: I couldn't spend any more money on assets. Thus I decided to create a procedural solution! Here's a recipe for this type of obscure pixel art shadows:

1. Extract transparency, color boundaries, brightness, sprite edges <- columns 1 and 2
2. Group neighboring pixels of similar color in "solid parts" <- column 3
3. Order solid parts by z axis using dark magic of optimization, target is to get "as convex object, as possible". Then also increase each part's size a little, the closer it is to the player - the bigger it is. And, right, this actually breaks the pixel art work, I'm not even sure I like this yet. But such 3d vibes out of this! <- "Part Scale / Z" knob
4. Cast shadows from parts closer to the player view to parts under them and to the background - column 4
5. Build a normal map by fitting ellipses onto the z-layered parts - column 5
6. Apply sun lightning using this normal map: the sun-facing rims of pixels are getting light treatment, the shadow-sided are getting a bit more shadow to pop. Convex shadow map is needed at this step to avoid getting light-based zebra-texture because of the different solid parts getting individual rims
7. Use gpu to not be stuck with 1fps for this demo

That's basically it. Break up the sprite into fake 3d-parts and organize hacks to make it look a tiny bit believable. It surely makes the sprites not look so plain, but I'll think of more ways to make them even more materialistic now. Textures is the next step, I suppose.

How do you like this method? Any ideas / suggestions?

I wanted to build another prototype with wizard casting spells and decided that the best style for this would be a paper-like universe with paper-like magic vfx. So first things first I sat down and created a simple editor for this type of visuals 😄

You can layer out paper pieces one by one and cut holes in them, that's basically it. But wow, it produces so cozy images now! Decided to share this with everyone to check if its not only me liking this.

Edit: if you want to support my current game in development, wishlist it here: steam page

Hi! I'm building Mowties and my current struggle is that the capsule I got from the artists is:

1. Perceived as ai was in use
2. Confuses the players with cats and 3d sometimes

I have mocked up this replacement. What do you think, is it better than the current capsule? Need any feedback

I'll add a monitor later, but the goal is set anyway

That's my 14th day from the steam page release. I've got steam page and playtest live, and Mowties (my roguelite Monopoly take) is currently sitting at 92 wishlists. I believe, many of you are familiar with Chris Z. benchmarks page, and it says I need at least 100 wishlists to keep thinking about my game as a questionable success and not a failure at this point. The unlucky part is that this is 2022 data, and the current recommendation is ~150, but heh no way I could grab +50wl per day so lets just aim at 100 :)

Reddit algorithms please help me out to stay sane here!

Hi everyone! I've just released Itch page for Mowties - a a roguelite take on Monopoly where you build unique properties and arrange them into combo cascades to beat an ever-growing payment.

I'd love to hear any feedback on the game! As the demo is planned for mid August, I'm looking for both devs and players to play the game and give ANY ideas on how to improve the gameplay or presentation in ANY way. I also hope you'll get some fun combos along the way :)

Playtest in browser: Itch page
Steam here: Steam page
Community: Discord server
Press kit: impress page

And even if you won't leave any feedback after a play-through - thank you for your time, as people playing my game is THE reason for me to develop it.

Hi! I'm solo dev behind Mowties - a combination of engine-builder where you put properties next to each other to get synergetic combos and a well-known Monopoly base where you roll dice and move around the board in hope to land on your most profitable tiles.

The playtest is going to happen on the next week, so follow the steam page to get notification if you are interested!

So during the last party before I move to another country my friends and I decided to try ourselves in shooting marketing videos, and oh my god, it was hilarious - trying to speedrun the filming process on a smartphone as there were so many other things to do. I unironically recommend this as an activity for a group of people trying to have some fun!

And yes, Mowties runs on Steam Deck! Don't mind the lags, already optimized them out :)

If you are interested: Steam page to wishlist

Hi guys! I have just gathered cosmic insight about Reddit!
In this message links are the posts, not just subreddits

TLDR: people like to read not just about the games, mechanics, design, but about the stories behind them. So tailoring posts as stories liked in a particular subreddit is the way to go. Here's my path discovering this:

1. Made the announcement posts for the game some days ago: in r/ godot for 7 likes in the first day (while I got 50 and 100 likes with the same game before, when posts were not just about the game, but about the godot in game), and in r/ IndieDev for 4 likes in the first day. That brought me to 12 wishlists (I suppose ~10 of those are from my friends)
2. Made a post in r/ Games Indie Sunday, got 33% upvote ratio and 0 wishlists. Once again, the post was purely "about the game"
3. Cried for a bit
4. Made a post in r/ SoloDevelopment about my story, not the game! Just with a link to steam page in the end of the post. Got #1 post of the day for like 12 hours, 330 likes on 50k views and 60 comments (including my answers), about 45 wishlists from this. Felt great, it was the first point in all the dev process that someone showed interest in my game!
5. Just for fun I made a post in r/ tea the next day; it's not connected to promotion, just a life story post type. Lol, #1 daily in the subreddit once again, 650 likes on 30k views. Zero wishlists as I didn't include any links, just wanted to farm karma, but this tells me the (I suppose well-known here) conclusion, once again:

Do not try to sell your game, if its not a viral type as you know it. Usually, people around would like to hear your humane STORY of being indie, not just another gameplay gif without a physical author.

What is your experience with reddit and other platforms? Stories-driven wishlists rule or gameplay converts better in your experience?

Btw, if you'd like to support my game anyway, wishlist here: Steam Page

Начиналось все в 5м классе с текстовой дуэльки для меня и моих друзей, а теперь, спустя 6 лет вышки и 2 года работы программистом, наконец-то реализую свою мечту.

Как, чорт, делать этот ваш маркетинг...

Вишлисты можно складывать сюда: steam-страница

So I'm building Balatro x Monopoly game about building a board of properties and manipulating dice rolls to max out the money, and there's a huge genre of this type, like:
- Luck be the landlord
- Balatro
- Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
- Dice a milion
- Gambonanza

They all are roguelikes just enough to be called roguelites: randomness that the player bends with their decisions and builds, luck manipulation to beat another payment. But these 45 years of evolution bring us to such a different vibes than the original Rogue provided!

If you are interested, wishlist my game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4832870/Mowties/

I spent 4 years visiting this place. Started as amateur tea tries with my girlfriend one of our first dates. Today she is my wife and we are discussing our future with her - before flying to another place in a couple days.

Do you have such places, deeply embedded in your life?

The first thing I made when I started learning Pascal in 5th grade was text-based pvp duel to play with my friends on informatics. And ever since I've being thinking about releasing a REAL game on Steam. Here it goes, I announced my first full-scale project on Steam just two days ago!
The journey is just unbelievable: understanding, that I finally can do this, took 6 years of studying computer science and 2 years of being SWE and then MLE. Worth it! Btw, resigned just today to pursue my dream even further ahaha
Wish everyone such a feeling of going to their dream!

Wishlist the game here: steam page
The trailer on youtube: announcement trailer