Congratulations on the release. I’m happy to purchase even though I’ve already been playing the free version.
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Thanks, I appreciate it!
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I don’t know if I saw this thread when it was originally made (or if I did, I must have been so swamped as to not register it) but I’m also planning to purchase your game, because I have fond memories of testing along with its creation process, and indeed I’ve never fully played through the finished version, and yes, too, because I appreciate your huge positive contributions to the IF community.
Tangentially, I’ve also had ideas of releasing a future version of Prince Quisborne that includes art of the gameworld and other illustrations to help visualize certain areas, although I never thought about whether I’d offer both a free and a paid version, but it’s an interesting idea!
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Thanks!
And I think a lot of people would want to buy an enhanced Prince Quisborne if you could solve the marketing problem. It’s good content!
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Purchased! Are there graphics in the Windows versions that aren’t present in the gblorb?
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They should all be in the gblorb. Thanks for the purchase and thanks for asking! If anything is missing, let me know and I can fix it.
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Just updating this with sales numbers, since I feel like it would help people to get more info on this.
I was told my multiple people not to release Never Gives Up Her Dead on steam. Art costs are prohibitive, and since the game was previously released, it would be hard to build up a following or do the longterm advertising that would be necessary for a successful game release.
I did it anyway, especially once I decided to do cover art myself (the cover art is very plain, but that’s because the fancier art I tried got a poor reception and I’d rather go with the one that’s easier to reproduce).
So I set my hopes appropriately. I thought, if I can get $1000 at launch, that would be great. Barring that, 50 sales would be great. Barring that, getting back my $100 investment would be good. In any case, I hoped for a ‘long tail’.
The doubters were right, after 10 days, I only had 12 sales, which is on the low end. On the other hand my investment of $100 is completely paid off, so I now have passive income, whatever size it ends up being in the long run. If its the same as itch, the two together will be more profitable than investing $8000 in a high-yield savings account during the same time period. So I think it was worth it.
I definitely undercut my sales by both not advertising or building up a lot and by offering a free version. But that’s for a selfish reason; when I was super poor I always felt frustrated I couldn’t play commercial games, so I specifically only added features to the Deluxe version that I personally don’t care about in games (extra images and hyperlinks) so that anyone could get the free one. I also saw commercial games get less IFDB ratings and reviews, so leaving a free version for that was also a motive.
So, I definitely learned that what everyone said about advertising was true. But, I have reached the point where putting it on Steam was profitable, and of course I deeply appreciate everyone that supported the game!
Uploading to Steam was a real pain. It made me appreciate Choice of Games a lot more for doing that for all the authors and keeping up with it.
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My estimate from my own experience that even a game that sells very slowly on Itch will sell faster on Steam. Maybe not a lot faster. But some. And the long tail is real. Mostly because if you start off with no marketing, you have no momentum to lose!
Uploading to Steam was a real pain.
It sure is, but it’s not out of reach for a solo hobbyist.
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I appreciate your work with Lectrote, it was completely central to the upload process! And hearing about your experience is helpful
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I double dipped! I’m always happy to support community members putting out good work. Hope the long-tail proves out for you
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Your review basically doubled sales, thanks so much for it!
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