Interesting things happening this month. For one, “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” got accepted on Steam Greenlight. Cool!
“Drew” can now find her way home on Steam!
You would think I would have written about this earlier, but unforeseen work has kept me without sleep for the last few weeks. Greenlight passed my game almost four weeks ago, during the game’s availability on a “groupees.com” bundle. Yes, sadly I don’t think my game would have gotten through by now if it wasn’t for groupees.com, indieroyale.com and indiegamestand.com’s PWYW deal. In fact, you can see spikes in visitors during those exact dates using Steam’s chart…
Spikes occur when available on indieroyale, indiegamestand and groupees.
However, that doesn’t mean that these got me in the top 100 games on greenlight. In fact, I don’t think I came close. I was about 65% of the way there by the time I was accepted through. From what I hear, this isn’t uncommon. Steam does try to curate which games are allowed to pass, not purely based on attention. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that my game was in fact finished and ready for release? Maybe it had to do with the vote ratio from visitors? Maybe it was that the game looked different enough to be given a pass? Who can say… anyway, I am thankful that after about eight months, I can put my indie game on the world’s largest PC gaming store. I haven’t the slightest clue if I’ll get any sales from simply being on Steam, which is why I plan to write a post-mortem and general review on different internet outlets in February instead on January like I promised.
This is what my greenlight stats were at when I was accepted.
Also, I can’t talk about Steam’s developer process, as they seem very serious about that for legal reasons. I will say that they are generally pretty quick and try to make the process as easy as possible, even if it requires a bit more work than Desura might. The fact that “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” isn’t available right now is my fault, and I will have it ready for purchase soon… very soon… within a week or two, I think.
In other news, the Independent Game Fesitval has announced their 2015 nominees recently. I submitted my game under the student category (yes, I am a student), and am pleased to say I got a “honorable mention.” Not a nominee, but for me, the honorable mention is just as powerful. That’s all I really wanted. It gives me a little assurance, that while I certainly don’t stack up to the best (and I never thought I did), I deserve some attention for this unique game. It certainly makes me feel better when I didn’t pass the other contests I submitted to last year. And if it’s worth anything, I don’t know who the judges are, and I certainly did not bribe anyone, so while I’m sure some favorability is unavoidable at these types of events, angry fans should lay off about all those rumors.
Yes, January was a good month for me. And hopefully, February and March will be even better. If I can just get all that other school work off my plate…
(Also, my Facebook account will be dying soon, as they are removing all Business-pages from their site. I got so little out of the site that I will unlikely bother making a new account there.)
