Horace Hagfish ( A color mixing and matching Sokoban-like) Coming Soon on Steam.

Hello all,

My game is finally "finished" and up on Steam. I haven't set a launch day yet but the latest build of the demo is available. It contains numerous tweaks and additional levels compared to the demo on the Construct Arcade.

I'd greatly appreciate it if all you busy developers checked it out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2600050/Horace_Hagfish/

Getting the game and demo up on Steam was more convoluted than I expected. If you make any errors, no matter how slight, you'll have to wait for Steam Support to notify you so you can fix the problems and resubmit your software and store-page content.

I found the following tutorial very helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwMPvEFFomE

Another thing that I didn't anticipate is your capsule art needs to be designed so that the demo banner doesn't obscure your logo or text. Not an issue if you aren't hosting a demo, but something to keep in mind if you may want to make a demo available later.

While I haven't heard of Steam pushing your visibility upon making a coming soon page, I did have a big spike in traffic the following day. A lot of this traffic was from within Steam.

Considering I had my nose to the grindstone while making the game I didn't do much to raise awareness that it even existed. I have been accumulating wishlists over the past 5 days ranging from 3-12 per day. My "marketing" efforts have simply been posting here and in a few Reddit forums. Strangely, I currently have more wishlists than I do demo plays. I would have figured people willing to wishlist would try the demo to see if they did indeed like the game.

As far as the demo goes, people tend to quit playing very quickly or keep going until they've likely completed all the included levels. There aren't many instances between those two extremes.

How has everyone else's experience on Steam been?

I just updated the demo here on the Construct 3 Arcade. It is identical to the version on Steam. It contains 10 levels, a more fleshed out tutorial at the start, an expanded hint system, and a few bug fixes.

At this point (a little over a week since the demo went up) my Steam traffic is pretty low. I must have dropped off some list of available demos or upcoming releases.

On the flipside, I noticed video of my game popping up on Youtube, and maybe TikTok (I don't use TikTok) and this was all unsolicited. So at least there is some organic interest in streaming the game. Which is surprising to me since 2d puzzle games aren't very entertaining to watch!

The stats on the demo have further solidified the love it or hate it response. Players either bounce off of it within a few minutes or the play the whole thing to completion. There seems to be almost no middle ground. That makes sense to me. Puzzles either click with you or they don't. I can play Dr. Mario until my hands bleed but I'm one of those odd people who gets bored with Tetris.

I think it's a very good sign that there are already gameplay videos popping up. I'm looking forward to playing the game. Best of luck with the launch!

The game looks nicely polished. The art is simple and crisp and sounddesign seems polished too. Puzzlegames are a bit of a weird niche and it's not easy to garner tons of attention unless you're about to make the next baba is you or talos principle. How many wishlists have you collected, some say the magic number is 10.000, although I think you can make do with less too. Getting reviews is also important once it's released, because steam won't really show your game off much unless you got 10 legit reviews, regardless if positive or negative. Legit in this case meaning reviews from non-gifted copies. So unleash your friends or bribe them if you have to :D

Puzzle games are indeed an odd niche these days. They aren't flashy and I'm not sure how much streamers like being on camera stumped by a puzzle. They're definitely a "try it and you'll see why it's good!" genre. So I think it will all just come down to word of mouth. If someone really enjoys a cheap puzzle game chances are they know someone else who'd like it too. It's an easy recommend since you aren't telling someone to drop $70 on a 40 hour game. You're saying "Hey, for the price of a coffee you can get a few hours of fun out of this and you can dive in for 10-20 minutes a session.".

I've had the Steam store page up since mid October. My zero budget marketing doesn't seem to have a big impact on store traffic. I'm averaging about 3 wishlists per day and only have 82 wishlists total as of this morning. So the lofty heights of 10k are definitely out of reach.

I've decided to move forward with the release since I don't think my efforts are going to increase traction and perhaps once released the game will popup in people's "more like this" queue if they've been shopping for similar types of puzzle games.

The other reason is to eliminate all the anxiety and apprehension I have about the launch. I've had trouble shifting gears toward the next project and I'm pre-emptively depressed that my game is going to sink like a stone in the Steam sea.

Well what can I tell you, you are literally describing word for word how my first big release went. No marketing, I was super burned out at the end and I just kinda pressed the release button because I wanted to be done with it. The result looks like this btw.

But I actually think your game might have a better shot at it. I certainly made some mistakes that I never ended up really fixing due to said burnout... which you seem to not make. So... good luck don't get disheartened if it doesn't work out.

(As for my game, I'm actually working on a big rework because I believe I can salvage it, so it's a weird blessing in disguise that it sold this bad :^) at least that's what I like to tell myself)

Many thanks for your encouragement! I love the graphic!

For the next game I'll definitely get it out in the open sooner and focus on a design with more replay value. I've got a rough design rattling around in my head but I haven't started a prototype yet...just lots of coffee stained notes littered around my desk.

Are you going to do the rework as an update to the existing game or launch it as its own game? I could see doing the same sort of thing in the future... Horace Hagfish VGA edition haha.

It's going to be an update that I hope I can get out with a little bit of fanfare as to draw attention.

perhaps once released the game will popup in people's "more like this" queue if they've been shopping for similar types of puzzle games.

I forgot to add, this is exactly why you want those 10 reviews. Your game will get a massive boost in how often it is shown to people in these queues. Here's an article about that: howtomarketagame.com/2022/01/25/why-your-first-10-reviews-are-the-most-important

It doesn't even matter if the reviews are positive or negative as long as it's 10.

Well... I'm pretty sure a friend of mine from middle school will review it! That leaves the other 9!

Have you looked into Steam visibility rounds? I've only read the official Steam documentation on them but I'm curious what developers think of them.

What is the game you're updating? Unless you want to keep it under wraps until the update is complete.

Have you looked into Steam visibility rounds?

No I haven't touched steam in a while apart from writing the announcement that I'm working on the udpate. I'll look into it.

What is the game you're updating?

Rimebeard. Please don't go out and review it, I actually want to stay low right now until the update drops. :V

Your secret is safe with me! The game looks great though. What were the issues with the released version and what are you planning for the update?