We live in the best time for marketing your game

Hi everyone. I would like to encourage and motivate all the game developers, who a little bit sad and lost - "why marketing game is so hard today". Maybe it's unpopular opinion, but I think we are living a best possible time when game marketing is extremely easy and available. For some cases it's a matter of several posts and literally clicks. The main misconception is that many of us pointing and blame "marketing" while actually we blame "results of marketing", but not a marketing itself. We refused to admit insanely huge marketing possibilities instead. All the social media services, culture of bloggers & influencers - world can't be designed better for a game development. People scrolling social media apps 24/7, people spend 24/7 sitting near by the screens and playing video games for other huge amount of people watching it 24/7. With all of that happening here and now, I clearly don't understand what we (indie game developers) can complain about. Let's say "thank you" to all of these people! If you are creating a game - think about all these public tools and services here for you. For Free. Just look into this situation from an observer point of view. We live in a best time to marketing your game.

P.S. marketing results of my own game I would consider as "far below expectations", but its does not changing my opinion about a great state of game marketing.

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u/bulbabrew — 5 days ago

Who doesn't love tea? Everyone loves tea.

Hello, cozy gamers. Two humble indie devs (bro and sis) are speaking. We happy to present you a Harmony of Tea - a relaxing puzzle game of a simple logic: arrange the tea on the shelf to match the composition from the cards. You play as a courier delivering tea from a small village in Yunnan Province to Shanghai in ancient China setting. Along the way, you visit provinces and collect different varieties of tea. Each province is represented by a shelf with a unique puzzle to solve.

We are very happy, that Harmony Of Tea demo is finally available on Steam. It is hard to imagine how fast the time flies. Somewhere around November 2024, I bought an iPad and started learning vector art. Before that, I had only a little experience with pixel art. Back then, my sister and I had already completed our first mobile game for iOS and were looking for a new challenge. Steam, of course. Our skills weren't up to the task of starting with a game like "Carto" (although we really wanted to), so we decided to try something "smaller." What a naive indie creators, hehe. "Only" a year and a half later we able to release a demo with 3 levels our of 9.

The curved trajectory of our game was influenced by "Unpacking" and "Potion Craft". We weren't able to manage a shop simulator or anything like that, but one day the game concept came together into a logical resolution. It turned into a match-making puzzle game. Something less creative than "Is This Seat Taken?", but still very much cohesive and styled. Fun fact, but at one point of time, main characters of our game were animals. But we back to humans quite quickly 😄

Speaking to you, our lovely cozy gamers: please, try to move some tea on shelves here and there. And let us know, how bad or good your experience is. Thank you!

u/bulbabrew — 7 days ago

Гармония Чая - игры для любителей головоломок

Всем привет! Вашему вниманию предлагается небольшушенькая головоломочка созданная на годо.

Выглядит как весьма атмосферная и очень простая игра - все так и есть. Нужна винда, процессор мощности картофелины, мышка, пальцы умеющие в драг-н-дроп действие, а вам за это красивая картинка, чайный вайб, залипаешь и ставишь банки согласно карточкам. На сие творение ушло без малого полтора года исканий и предубеждений, а большую часть времени заняло рисование и перерисовывание одного и того же, только хуже лучше. Все потому, что тернистый путь инди разработки услан замысловатыми пригорками непонятной субстанции, разочарованием в юнити и полным непониманием того, что вообще происходит.

Если кому интересно узнать, как игра работает под капотом и как собрать на коленке что-то подобное - дайте знать в комментариях. Я не поленюсь и распишу самое "веселое" для тех, кто начинает или уже начал свое геймдев движение и движется примерно туда же и так же.

А для всех тех, кому понравилось видео и было бы интересно оценить сие творение на ПК - велком поиграть в демку в стиме. Еще не запылилась. Буду невероятно рад вашему фидбеку и вишлистам. Спасибо!

u/bulbabrew — 8 days ago

From rough draft and several iterations to a released Demo version

A development journey of "Harmony of Tea" puzzle game that is still going on. Just recently reached a big milestone - Demo available on Steam.

u/bulbabrew — 9 days ago
▲ 7 r/youxi+1 crossposts

一位以中文为母语的人帮我翻译了这款游戏。

试玩版可在Steam上体验。

《茶之和谐》是一款轻松休闲的益智游戏,玩法简单:将茶架上的茶叶按照卡片上的图案排列。

如果您喜欢节奏舒缓、轻松休闲的益智游戏,欢迎来玩。

希望您喜欢这款游戏的翻译。

u/bulbabrew — 8 days ago
▲ 64 r/ComfortGamers+2 crossposts

Interactive Menu is a new trend?!

The language selection is limited to only seven options, which means that if I want to localize the game for more countries, I'll need a larger shelf :-)

Demo is live now, so you can try this fancy menu and other screens of the game on Steam.

u/bulbabrew — 5 days ago

What is your favorite element here?

A cozy and warm art style for a relaxing puzzle. Old good hand-drawn art with zero AI.

u/bulbabrew — 30 days ago