Working on a game for over 2 years... and now I'm scared to share it.
This isn't self-promotion. I won't be mentioning my game's name or linking any social media—I just genuinely want to hear your thoughts.
I've been developing my indie otome game for over two years with my younger sister. It's our dream project, and we've put our hearts into it. I handle the development and writing, while she creates all the art.
We fell in love with otome games through anime like Diabolik Lovers and Uta no Prince-sama, but we couldn't play most of them because of the language barrier and the cost of consoles and games. Later, mobile titles like Ikemen Vampire, Mr. Love: Queen's Choice, Tears of Themis, and Love and Deepspace made the genre much more accessible to us, and that's what inspired us to make a vertical mobile otome game from the very beginning. It's now about 75% finished, so changing platforms isn't really an option.
Recently, though, I've noticed that many indie otome fans seem to immediately dismiss mobile games, especially if they assume they're gacha games.
Our game isn't gacha. It's free to play with optional in-app purchases, and over 90% of the content is completely free. It has full routes for every love interest, unique gameplay mechanics, a new choice system, and a lot of features we've worked incredibly hard on.
Seeing so much support for indie otome games on Steam and itch.io, but much less for mobile, has honestly made me afraid to start sharing our game. I'm worried people will ignore it simply because it's on mobile.
So I'd love to hear your honest opinion: Would you give an indie otome game a chance if it was on mobile, as long as it wasn't a gacha game and respected the player's time and money?
Thanks so much for reading!