Announcing my new game - Solus - Survival/Exploration - Unreal Engine 4

Quote from Sprony

1 hour ago, Sprony said: EA is your release. I haven't seen a single game that managed to overcome this issue. That's why it's important to go all out in your first build. That's something that Darkest Dungeon excelled in, but even that game's official release was overshadowed by the EA launch. It seems as though you only have one window to make an impact, use it wisely.

The majority don't seem to care about the little ones and audiences are highly unpredictable. I can't use official numbers (confidential) but let me give you an example. I wrote about Bethesda probably announcing Wolfenstein: TNO 2, Prey 2, The Evil Within 2 and Dishonored 2 (already announced). All sequels too established brands that were well received and exceeded commercial expectations. Little to no audience response. I write about Fifa 17 switching to the Frostbite engine and it blows up.

The above is our region (Benelux), if you look at our sister site (UK) you can clearly see the change in demographic. The Bethesda rumor blows up and Fifa/Frostbite only gets a quarter of that traction. Like I said, it's unpredictable and complicated. COD, The Division, Destiny, Battlefield and GTA are all guarantees traffic magnets though, the rest don't even come close.

In regard to your review comment, no, it doesn't work that way. Review copies/keys are (usually) send before release. The review can then go up on release or a few days after. This is vital for every publication. The sooner you get it up, the more traffic it gets. That's why you sometimes see reviews based on beta builds and what not. It's all about the clicks. If you wait too long, people have read a review somewhere else and they are not going to bother, because they've already made up their mind.

Timing is everything. Let's take Solus as an example. You are releasing the full version a couple of days before the biggest gaming event in the world. It's impossible for the press to report on everything that's going on. The big titles are fighting for coverage and the little ones are praying to be noticed. Releasing the full game now, especially a game that's been in EA already, will get little to no coverage. Just to make sure I know what I'm talking about, I've checked the following sites: IGN, Gamespot, Polygon, Eurogamer.net, Destructoid and even Kotaku. Sadly, not a single word on the full release of your game.

I wish you all the sales in the world man, I really do. But if it hasn't happened yet, I don't think it will. Your best bet would probably be a good deal during the Steam sale.

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So much this. EA is your release. I have been telling clients this for years now. And not everyone believes this on the indie side. Once again:

EA is your release. Burn that into your brain.

This is looking great Hourences, congrats on release!

I just got Mirror's Edge 2 in the mail, but when I'm done with that I'll definitely give Solus a go! Congrats!

Quote from Hourences

54 minutes ago, Hourences said: We sent out keys a week in advance already to all the big ones, so we are aware of that. It is hard to cover every website and magazine out there however, so if a game cannot be reviewed because it would not bring in enough hits, that is sad to hear.. I am not sure if that is why we all got into this industry... Or if it was for the love of making and playing cool games? And we don't have many reviews yet, so if you are after getting people to read something they haven't seen before, I'd say now is still very much so the time?

It wasn't criticism, I was just explaining (in case you didn't know) how it works. I'm also not speaking for Eurogamer, I'm talking in general. Please, let's make that clear

The harsh truth is, it's business. They don't care why someone got into this industry. They have bills to pay and audiences to satisfy. It's not that it doesn't bring in enough hits, it's because it isn't worth the time from their perspective. You've got the E3 which means all hands on deck. I have no idea how long your game takes, but let's say 15 hours. That's losing someone for two work days plus the additional time to actually write the review and get it published. If it was for the new Battlefield for instance, that would be worth it because it has a huge following. But now it's for a game, that already has reviews up, that apparently isn't getting a lot of traction and for which you are going to be late. Trust me, your audience loves to bitch and moan if your not up to speed. So business wise, it's the smarter move to focus on the E3 because that is what your audience wants to read right now and they are paying your bills.

Again, I really want to stress out that I think your awesome. I've been following your work for, well almost, two decades now. I've read your book, I've played your previous game The Ball, so when I say I'm a fan, you know I mean it. I really hope I'm not sounding like a dick when trying to convey what I know.

What @Sprony says is very sound and probably more likely to be the case than my speculation.

Anyway I have a question @Hourences: was your EA release a proper release, or was it a beta? I mean if that was your way to try an episodic release, you might have shot yourself in the foot because my feeling is (and you said as well) that people buy EA if they're into that thing. So a person like me would have completely ignored your release because I would think it's a game that not only I have to wait for more content, but would also be buggy.

And yeah you have a bundle of older games you developed, have you thought about creating a bundle to give a perception of a better deal? Something could be "for a limited time get The Ball for free".

Also about indie community, there have been examples of cross-promotion with NS2 and the guys of Overgrowth, and I think others. Maybe you can organise some sort of "adventure bundle" with some other devs.

Release windows are so difficult to get right, and maybe there's no "right" like you say, but yeah, I hope that with the next pushes it will bring players

I remember seeing that the Solus Project is bundled with the Ball on Steam for a little bit extra, not free but only about £3 more. Out of interest Hourences - how did The Ball do in terms of sales?

It's interesting to read everything you done to promote the game, all your contacts and still "few" people bought the game, compared to how much time you put into all "marketing stuff".

I've been thinking a lot about what you said there, that smaller devs should work together more to market each others games, if I understood you correctly. Though each time I start to think of different ways to help each other out, it kinda stops at me starting to "select" projects in my head that I like and people I want to work with. However, sometimes some projects might just not fit with ours very well, even if I like the developers and then there are indie-games that I rather keep at an arm's length, cause I don't like them and don't want our own products connected in any way.

Also, btw, I tried doing this once, just a small thing with another developer, just an cross-achievement thing, seems that guy didn't want to develop his game any more or whatever reason and we ended up doing our part but not him.

If I remember correctly, the whole Humble Bundle thing started with the guys of Overgrowth cross-promoting with Natural Selection 2… not like there was any thematically point of contact between the two.

Not sure how much it impacted NS2 sales but they ended up doing well, and the other guys are still in alpha but are managing a millions dollars worth of business now.

This is what a community does, help each other:

Quote from Hourences

On 16-7-2016 at 3:51 PM, Hourences said: Thanks Sprony for setting it up!

The summer sales helped quite ok. It gave us 2x the sales our actual release did about. We now reached our minimum expected revenue point so with a bit of luck we can push this up further over the coming 6 months to a medium good result. Big question is always how stable the sales are longer term.

250 000 people now have it on their wishlist, which is a pretty considerable number, so lots of people have seen the game now and are interested, but are still waiting. We are not quite sure if it is due to VR, or non VR. Hard to track that on Steam.

We are going to be building a free DLC level, for which I will invite people from the community and give you the entire game in UE4 to build with. I will post a proper post later but if anyone is interested in building a room with our assets and all let me know.

You're welcome!

When the times comes for the DLC level, please start a new thread in our 3D forum and let me know. I'll make it a spotlight feature so that it has maximum exposure.

It's looking great man! You've come a long way since creating Rankin! BIG congrats to ya!

So I finished the game the other week, honestly it does some things very well but other things quite poorly.

Spoilers ahead.

Spoiler

Pros

• The audio is excellent, spine chilling and keeps you on your feet even given one of the cons.
• World was interesting and the story was well revealed to the player
• Creepy events were good like the little children things and the head turning skeletons.

Cons

• The game was too long tbh, Took me 12 hours to complete and considering there isn't much going on that is far too long.
• The tower level didn't really act like a hub which is what I was expecting, was expecting to have to setup camp and come back often, never did, its essentially linear felt like a missed opportunity. Could of saved a lot of environment creation.
• Even though the audio made me feel in danger a lot I really never was in much danger. Literally just the orbs which I encountered 3 times I think.
• Too much free food and water safe points for dehydration or starvation to ever be an issue or require me to carry much at all. I think I carried a emergency ration through nearly the whole game.
• Having the torch as an item and not an on/off item is honestly annoying as hell. Having to put the torch away to drop a rock on a button is not something I should be doing. I really didn't feel it served a purpose.
• The text translation thing became tiring fast, I like the idea but it should of started at the beginning of the text and not required me to wait 3 seconds before I can even start reading, considering there are something like 500 signs that's 25 mins of waiting for text to translate so I can even start reading it. No thanks, I basically skipped most of the dialogue after the first 2-3 hours.
• Secrets seemed very random, I probably found about 1/3 of them, but found the green invincibility skull pretty easily. Meaning I didn't level up many perks and even if you did it didn't feel like they really helped much.
• Chests really didn't seem like they added anything considering you could only get a heal item or food from them.