u/Pitiful_Climate8192

I'm completely out of marketing ideas for my game, POWER OFF 1.

It's a puzzle-platformer, but the deeper we get into development, the more we realize we've created a marketing challenge.

If you check out our Steam page, you'll probably notice the same thing we're struggling with. Some parts feel almost like a Point & Click puzzle game with exploration and environmental interactions, while other parts feel like a full-on platformer with movement abilities and action.

A few days ago I made a post about whether these genres can work together, and a lot of amazing developers convinced me that they absolutely can. That gave me a lot more confidence.

But I'm still stuck on one question.

When someone asks me, "What's your game in one sentence?" I honestly struggle to answer.

That's why I'd love your advice.

How would you market a game like this?

• Would you focus mostly on the platforming?
• Would you focus on the puzzles?
• Would you try to balance both equally?
• Or would you market it in a completely different way?

Here's the Steam page if you'd like to take a look before answering:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

We're also about to open our first public playtest to find out whether this mix of genres actually works in practice, and we're currently looking for playtesters as well. At this point I'm trying to attack every front: improving the game, testing it, and figuring out how to actually communicate what it is.

I'd genuinely appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Hey everyone,
I'd love to get some opinions from both devs and players because this has been keeping our team up at night lately.
We've been working on our 2D indie game, POWER OFF 1, for the past few years. As development progresses we're starting to realize just how difficult it is to combine all the genres we've chosen.
The beginning of the game is intentionally slow and relaxed. It focuses on exploration, Point & Click inspired puzzles, interacting with the world, story, and creating a cozy fantasy adventure atmosphere. The goal is to encourage players to slow down, observe their surroundings, and think.
But as the game progresses, everything changes.
Enemies start appearing. Combat becomes much more important. Platforming gets harder and requires precision. You unlock abilities like dashing, double jumping, and creating clones. By around the third level, the pace is dramatically different and the game starts feeling much more like an action-platformer.
The original idea was actually to build a game with two different "rhythms."
The 2D side scroller sections focus on platforming, movement, and action with lighter environmental puzzles, while the 2.5D sections slow everything down and focus on deeper, more thoughtful puzzles that challenge the player's logic rather than their reflexes.
To us, this has always felt like one cohesive adventure. We wanted to create something that gives players the satisfaction of solving difficult puzzles without sacrificing the excitement of movement, combat, and platforming.
But lately we've started asking ourselves a question that's honestly a little scary.
What is our game?
If someone asked me to describe it in one sentence today, I'm not sure I could.
If we show only the early game, people assume it's a cozy puzzle adventure.
If we show the later game, people assume it's an action platformer.
We haven't really had players experience the full progression yet, and now that we're getting closer to our first large playtest, we're starting to wonder whether we've made a fundamental design mistake.
So I'd really like to ask people who've been through this before.

Hey everyone,
I'd love to get some opinions from both devs and players because this has been keeping our team up at night lately.
We've been working on our 2D indie game, POWER OFF 1, for the past few years. As development progresses we're starting to realize just how difficult it is to combine all the genres we've chosen.
The beginning of the game is intentionally slow and relaxed. It focuses on exploration, Point & Click inspired puzzles, interacting with the world, story, and creating a cozy fantasy adventure atmosphere. The goal is to encourage players to slow down, observe their surroundings, and think.
But as the game progresses, everything changes.
Enemies start appearing. Combat becomes much more important. Platforming gets harder and requires precision. You unlock abilities like dashing, double jumping, and creating clones. By around the third level, the pace is dramatically different and the game starts feeling much more like an action-platformer.
The original idea was actually to build a game with two different "rhythms."
The 2D side scroller sections focus on platforming, movement, and action with lighter environmental puzzles, while the 2.5D sections slow everything down and focus on deeper, more thoughtful puzzles that challenge the player's logic rather than their reflexes.
To us, this has always felt like one cohesive adventure. We wanted to create something that gives players the satisfaction of solving difficult puzzles without sacrificing the excitement of movement, combat, and platforming.
But lately we've started asking ourselves a question that's honestly a little scary.
What is our game?
If someone asked me to describe it in one sentence today, I'm not sure I could.
If we show only the early game, people assume it's a cozy puzzle adventure.
If we show the later game, people assume it's an action platformer.
We haven't really had players experience the full progression yet, and now that we're getting closer to our first large playtest, we're starting to wonder whether we've made a fundamental design mistake.
So I'd really like to ask people who've been through this before.

If you'd like some context, here's our Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/
The trailer probably does the best job of showing the contrast I'm talking about... although that's also part of the problem we're trying to solve.
One thing I'd especially love to know:
After watching the trailer, if a friend asked you "What kind of game is this?", what would your answer be?
That single question has become the biggest discussion inside our team lately.
Please don't hold back. I'm genuinely not looking for compliments. If you think we're trying to combine too many ideas, I'd rather hear it now than after launch.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate any honest thoughts.

Hey everyone,

I've run into a really weird bug and I'm not even sure where to start looking.

When my character moves to the right, everything is perfectly smooth.

But as soon as I start moving left, the whole screen starts jittering/shaking. It almost looks like the camera is fighting with something, but I'm not sure if it's actually the camera or if it's the character movement itself causing it.

I've attached a GIF below to show exactly what's happening.

Has anyone run into something like this before? Any ideas what could cause it or where I should start debugging?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone,
I'd love to get some opinions from both devs and players because this has been keeping our team up at night lately.
We've been working on our 2D indie game, POWER OFF 1, for the past few years. As development progresses we're starting to realize just how difficult it is to combine all the genres we've chosen.
The beginning of the game is intentionally slow and relaxed. It focuses on exploration, Point & Click inspired puzzles, interacting with the world, story, and creating a cozy fantasy adventure atmosphere. The goal is to encourage players to slow down, observe their surroundings, and think.
But as the game progresses, everything changes.
Enemies start appearing. Combat becomes much more important. Platforming gets harder and requires precision. You unlock abilities like dashing, double jumping, and creating clones. By around the third level, the pace is dramatically different and the game starts feeling much more like an action-platformer.
The original idea was actually to build a game with two different "rhythms."
The 2D side scroller sections focus on platforming, movement, and action with lighter environmental puzzles, while the 2.5D sections slow everything down and focus on deeper, more thoughtful puzzles that challenge the player's logic rather than their reflexes.
To us, this has always felt like one cohesive adventure. We wanted to create something that gives players the satisfaction of solving difficult puzzles without sacrificing the excitement of movement, combat, and platforming.
But lately we've started asking ourselves a question that's honestly a little scary.
What is our game?
If someone asked me to describe it in one sentence today, I'm not sure I could.
If we show only the early game, people assume it's a cozy puzzle adventure.
If we show the later game, people assume it's an action platformer.
We haven't really had players experience the full progression yet, and now that we're getting closer to our first large playtest, we're starting to wonder whether we've made a fundamental design mistake.
So I'd really like to ask people who've been through this before.

If you'd like some context, here's our Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/
The trailer probably does the best job of showing the contrast I'm talking about... although that's also part of the problem we're trying to solve.
One thing I'd especially love to know:
After watching the trailer, if a friend asked you "What kind of game is this?", what would your answer be?
That single question has become the biggest discussion inside our team lately.
Please don't hold back. I'm genuinely not looking for compliments. If you think we're trying to combine too many ideas, I'd rather hear it now than after launch.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate any honest thoughts.

Hey everyone,

I feel like this is one of those questions where everyone is going to have a different answer.

We've been working on our 2D puzzle-platformer, POWER OFF, for quite a while now (it's already on Steam), and up until this point we've animated literally everything in Adobe Flash/Animate.

It's been great for us, mostly because it's what the whole team knows... but lately we're starting to feel like we're the last people on Earth still using it.

So I'm curious... what does your pipeline look like these days?

Have most teams moved to Spine?
Are people still exporting sprite sheets?
Is anyone actually using Moho 14 in production?
Or is there another workflow you'd recommend?

We're mainly looking for something that plays nicely with Unity and doesn't make our artists or programmers hate each other.

If anyone has gone through the same transition, I'd love to hear what you switched to, why, and if you have any regrets.

For a bit of context, here's our Steam page if you want to see the kind of animation style we're currently working with:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

Thanks in advance! We're at that point where changing our animation pipeline is a pretty big decision, so hearing from people who've already been through it would really help.

היי לכולם!

אנחנו סטודיו אינדי קטן שעובד כבר תקופה ארוכה על משחק פאזלים ופלטפורמה, ולאחרונה השקנו את עמוד הסטים שלנו.

באנו לכאן לא רק כדי לבקש ווישליסטים, אלא בעיקר כדי לקבל ביקורת אמיתית מאנשים שאוהבים משחקים.

נשמח לשמוע:

• האם עמוד הסטים גורם לכם לרצות לשחק?
• מה הרושם הראשוני שלכם?
• האם משהו בעמוד לא ברור או חסר?
• מה הייתם משפרים, בין אם במשחק עצמו או באופן שבו הוא מוצג?

אם המשחק נראה לכם מעניין, נשמח מאוד אם תוסיפו אותו ל-Wishlist. עבור סטודיו קטן כמונו כל Wishlist באמת עושה הבדל גדול.

עמוד הסטים:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

אבל יותר מהכול, נשמח לשמוע ביקורת כנה והצעות לשיפור. אנחנו באמת רוצים להפוך את המשחק לטוב ביותר שהוא יכול להיות.

תודה רבה לכל מי שייקח כמה דקות להסתכל ולהגיב. ❤️

חשוב לי להדגיש למרות שווישליסט מאד יעזור לנו להתלבט ביקורת טובה חשובה הרבה יותר כדי שנדע בכלל אם יש טעם להמשיך

eryone,

We're a small indie team working on our first Steam game, and we recently ran what turned into a very expensive learning experience.

We purchased traffic through a mobile gaming ad network to see whether we could drive Steam wishlists.

The results:

• 35,000+ visits
• Traffic from dozens of countries
• Thousands of visitors from Egypt, Turkey, India, Russia, and France
• 0 wishlists directly attributed to the campaign

Not low.

Not disappointing.

Literally zero.

At first we thought our tracking was broken.

Then we started digging deeper.

Our current theory is that a large percentage of users were viewing the Steam page from mobile devices, many of them likely without Steam installed or without any real intention of wishlisting a PC game.

Now we're trying to understand whether:

• Mobile gaming networks are fundamentally bad for Steam promotion
• The countries we targeted were a poor fit for PC games
• Our Steam page is failing to convert
• Or whether this kind of result is completely normal

The part that worries me most is something else:

Could large amounts of low-intent traffic actually hurt Steam visibility algorithms?

If Steam sees tens of thousands of visitors who immediately leave without wishlisting, following, or engaging, are we potentially damaging future discoverability?

I'd love to hear from developers who have experimented with paid traffic.

Have you ever seen results this extreme?

What traffic sources actually converted for you?

And does anyone know whether Steam's algorithm cares about conversion quality, or only wishlist volume?

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

Any feedback is appreciated. At this point I'm less interested in marketing tricks and more interested in understanding what actually happened.

I'd love to see what you're all working on right now show off your game.

What's a system, mechanic, or technical feature in your game that you're especially proud of or excited about?

For us, one of the most exciting systems in Power Off 1 is our animation pipeline.

We have an amazing animator, and I wanted to preserve every detail of his work without having to recreate or modify animations inside Unity. To achieve that, I built a custom system that imports the animation data directly and injects every frame into Unity exactly as it was created.

The setup combines the Flash-to-Unity workflow with a custom framework that drives almost the entire game through timelines. Instead of using traditional state machines for many gameplay systems, the timeline itself acts as the state machine, giving us extremely precise control over timing while keeping the original animation quality intact.

As a bonus, it also helps us optimize memory usage and maintain visual consistency throughout the project.

What about you? What's the coolest system you've built recently that you're excited to show off? 🚀

Hi everyone,

I'm a indie developer working on POWER OFF 1, a 2D puzzle-platformer set in a broken mechanical world where you play as a small robot trying to restore power to the machines around him.

I launched my Steam page recently and somehow managed to reach 195 wishlists, which is exciting but also has me second-guessing every decision.

Right now I have a problem:

I don't have a proper trailer yet.

I do have a temporary gameplay trailer made from actual game footage and existing levels, but it currently has no sound effects, no music, and no voice-over. Just gameplay.

I'm trying to decide whether I should:

• Upload the trailer now and improve it later.
• Wait until I can produce a much more polished version with proper audio.

My gut feeling is that having some trailer is better than having no trailer at all, but I'd love to hear from developers who have already gone through this process.

I'd also really appreciate feedback on the Steam page itself:

• Does the game concept come across clearly?
• Do the screenshots communicate what kind of game it is?
• Does the capsule art catch your attention?
• Would you wishlist it based on the current page?
• What's the biggest thing you think is missing?

I'm looking for honest feedback, even if it's brutal. I'd rather fix problems now than discover them after launch.

Steam page:
POWER OFF 1 Steam Page

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to look at it. Every piece of feedback helps a lot.

Hi everyone,

I'm a indie developer working on POWER OFF 1, a 2D puzzle-platformer set in a broken mechanical world where you play as a small robot trying to restore power to the machines around him.

I launched my Steam page recently and somehow managed to reach 195 wishlists, which is exciting but also has me second-guessing every decision.

Right now I have a problem:

I don't have a proper trailer yet.

I do have a temporary gameplay trailer made from actual game footage and existing levels, but it currently has no sound effects, no music, and no voice-over. Just gameplay.

I'm trying to decide whether I should:

• Upload the trailer now and improve it later.
• Wait until I can produce a much more polished version with proper audio.

My gut feeling is that having some trailer is better than having no trailer at all, but I'd love to hear from developers who have already gone through this process.

I'd also really appreciate feedback on the Steam page itself:

• Does the game concept come across clearly?
• Do the screenshots communicate what kind of game it is?
• Does the capsule art catch your attention?
• Would you wishlist it based on the current page?
• What's the biggest thing you think is missing?

I'm looking for honest feedback, even if it's brutal. I'd rather fix problems now than discover them after launch.

Steam page:
POWER OFF 1 Steam Page

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to look at it. Every piece of feedback helps a lot. 🙏

Hey everyone,

We're a tiny indie team called Two Percent Studios, and we've been working on our first game, Power Off 1, for quite a while now.

A few days ago we noticed we're getting really close to 200 wishlists on Steam, and honestly, seeing people care about something we've been building from scratch feels pretty surreal.

Power Off 1 is a 2D puzzle-platformer set in a broken mechanical world. You play as a small robot exploring abandoned machines, solving puzzles, uncovering secrets, and trying to bring the world back to life. We're also experimenting with a card-based battle system that ties into the adventure and progression.

Everything is being built by a very small team, and we've put a huge amount of time into creating the hand-painted steampunk-inspired world ourselves.

To celebrate getting close to 200 wishlists, I wanted to share a short clip from the game.

If it looks like something you'd enjoy, a wishlist would mean a lot to us:

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

Discord:
https://discord.gg/68J9PyxaP

And if you're curious about anything, feel free to ask. I'm always happy to talk about the art, gameplay systems, technical challenges, marketing struggles, or just indie game development in general.

Thanks for taking a look

Hey everyone,

I recently received a marketing video for my game from an external company we hired to help with promotional content.

The problem is that I quickly noticed some AI-generated imagery had been mixed into the video.

This bothered me because one of the things we're proud of is that all of the art in our game is hand-crafted by our artists. The game's visual identity is a huge part of the project, and I don't want AI-generated content being associated with it.

So I ended up re-editing the video myself. As you can probably tell, I'm a programmer, not a video editor, and the result is... let's just say "less than professional."

Still, at least all the AI-generated material is gone.

What really got me thinking is that a trailer is relatively easy to review. You can usually spot AI-generated images or animations if you look closely enough.

But when outsourcing artwork, concept art, textures, marketing assets, thumbnails, or promotional illustrations, it becomes much harder to verify what was created by an artist and what may have been generated by AI.

For developers who work with external artists, agencies, or contractors:

How do you handle this?

• Do you have AI clauses in your contracts?
• Do you request source files and work-in-progress shots?
• Do you simply trust the people you work with?
• Have you ever discovered AI-generated content after delivery?

I'm genuinely curious how other teams are dealing with this, because it feels like it's only going to become more difficult to identify over time.

Also, if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

Since this whole situation happened while working on marketing materials for our game, I'll leave the Steam page here in case you're curious about the project:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

And if you like what you see, a Wishlist would mean a lot to our small team.

We've been building POWER OFF 1, a puzzle-platformer set in a strange mechanical world.Curious to hear what platformer fans think about the movement, visuals, and overall feel.

Steam:https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

One of our goals with POWER OFF 1 is to create puzzles that are easy to understand but satisfying to solve.

We'd love feedback from puzzle game fans.

Does this mechanic look interesting?

Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

We've been developing POWER OFF 1 in Unity and wanted to share one of the mechanics we're currently working on.

We'd love technical feedback from other Unity developers:

• Does the mechanic read clearly?
• Is the visual feedback strong enough?
• What would you improve?

Steam Page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/