NOTE: If you dont want to hear my life story skip to the last paragraph. Right, I have recently taken the plunge into the world of shareware/indie game developement but I am finding it hard to get going. I have released two games so far, one of which has a lot of bugs which need to be ironed out before I can really hope to make money on it (I should not have released it, but i was anxious to launch my first game). The other game however is much better, virtually bug free, fairly well polished with nice 3D DX9 Graphics, addictive and incredibly fun. I thought getting some good affiliates would be fairly easy - how wrong I was. Three weeks after contacting several affiliates (reflexive, alawar, bigfish etc) about my new game only one has replied, Alawar. They said the game was fun, and looked like a commercial quality product, but they couldnt accept it. Their reason was that the only space shooter games that sell are the 2D top down vertical scrolling ones. Surely as there are 100000s of these games they would welcome a bit of originality? Well, im now stuck. The game has made 2 sales and I estimate that I have had roughly 220 downloads (calculated from used bandwith as i am currently the only host of that file) But these 220 sales have taken almost 3 weeks. Without an affiliate or paying for some kind of advertising Im going to have a hard time reaching a decent download rate. So here is what I need: An affiliate who is willing to take a gamble on my game. Im hoping there is a few of you hiding somewhere on these boards. If there is and you are interested please take a look at the game and email me. http://www.jaggedbladesoft.com/archwing/ - Game Info contact@jaggedbladesoft.com - Email Thanks for listening, -Neil

You game is similar to a game on the GBA called Iridon3D. Your design can also be traced back to Tempest. I acutally have a similar game using the Tempest design. It's not that orginal, though there's very few games like it if any at all.

Acutally based on your figures your game is doing allot better then most independent games. Based on some info gathered from www.dexterity.com forums, 1% is about the average download to sale ratio you should be getting.

What you should do is use a program like sharewaretracker and submit the game to download sites. When submitting games most sites have an affiliate option which will allow them to sell the game for you.

Also if you sign up with more then 1 payment service, you can also take advantage of the affilate programs they offer. BMT and RegNow all have a very good affiliate program where you can offer your software to other sites.

As for your game..

-The install dumped a bunch of URL shortcuts to your website, which is pretty bad. You should put them in a folder.

-Your using DX9. Most casual gamers won't have that. But based on you game genre I'm sure more hardcore gamers will want to play it so you might be ok.

-I couldn't really get a good feel of the depth of the game. The background space image is static.

-Ships don't have any patterns? It seemed like they float in and just stay in position and shoot?

-The asteroids moving into the camera is annoying, for me anyways.

-When I started a new game the mouse cursor disapeared until I typed in my name. That felt kinda wierd.

-Also before the game starts, I was at the upgrade screen. I click on shield and it went into the control config??? I was confused by that, and exited out until I realized I had to choose a control setting before the game would start.

I didn't play the game for that long. It didn't draw me into the game. But based on your 2 sales to 220 downloads, your off to a great start.




John


Endboss Games

[edited by - z3lda on June 10, 2004 11:58:03 PM]

I echo z3lda. The URLs were immediately dragged to the recycling bin. I''m a bit of a prude when it comes to my desktop -- I only keep a small number of icons on there myself. Most folks have their screen nearly full with desktop icons. You don''t want to upset them.

If you want to make them a "captive audience" consider either having a game launching that has a great big "BUY!!!!" button on it that leads to your website. Either at launch, or on exit. (Some games even go so far as to ask you if you want to purchase it. I tend to find that very annoying.)

On the game itself, I gave it a shot and I also have to agree, it didn''t just reach out and grab me either. I think speeding this game up would improve its gameplay a lot. Make the ships move faster, the bullets move faster, give it more of a action-oriented goal. It just moves way too slow for my tastes. Also, make sure you add some kind of "progress" indicator -- I played for a few minutes and then just quit because I felt like there was just more of the same. It doesn''t necessarily have to be an actual progress meter, but give the player some kind of visual change. I had no idea if I was at the end of the level and might get to see some cool 3D cutscene or if this was it for the game.

Two sales out of 220 downloads isn''t bad. I really can''t help you with metrics comparison, as all of my games are freeware, but that sounds pretty good.

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- 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris
[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]]

Thank you very much for your input guys. The things you are saying are all things that I''m trying to work around. As for the speed of the game and difficultly it is hard to win both ways, a lot of shareware gamers are middle aged adults who dont play many games. On the other hand as my game is action based maybe trying to target that audience is pointless. I just dont have enough experience yet to really know. The game does speed up and get much more fun in later episodes, and much more challenging.

I like the idea of a progress indicator, the game does advance, there is a lot more to do than just that stuff on the first stage - but i could see how you could think it was simply an endless repetition.

About the ships not having patterns, they dont. But they are most definately not static, you were probably killing them too fast to see them combat you correctly ^.^ Again its a matter of not trying to make it too hard, in later stages you would notice their AI.

I am going to try your suggestions and try and fix as many of the problems you guys mentioned. Thanks