Yeah I did but nowadays it doesn't really seem to do much and steam kind of hides their reviews on the store page anyway (since you have to actually click a special section to see curator reviews). It also doesn't count for your review score. Also, a lot of the curators ask for actual steam keys instead of going through the curator system but most of the time they just do this to get your steam keys and then they sell them on 3rd party websites at reduced rates. This also happens with people emailing your support email too. So I don't really bother with it anymore and I pretty much ignore any email asking for keys hah
It says that the variable "animationTag is undefined" do you know how to fix this. It might have been a part of the video I missed but I dont see any references to this variable anywhere else. Thanks, great video!
If you want to check out the example code I posted a link to it in the video description but here is the post. It gives the code for the script that I created in the video and then also has examples for the Step, Destroy, and Create event for the object that will have the animations for its sprite: www.patreon.com/posts/animation-system-50005839 I will say this was done quite a long time ago and I haven't used Game Maker in a very long time so I'm not sure what new options are available but I hope that helps you find the issue! :)
@@Blekoh Ah good to know. Maybe something to include in the video as I think you stated how many months you worked on a game, but not how many hours per week. That sets the income from those games more into context as well, as you werent earning really anything with those first few games
@@nubemuffin It was back when Gamemaker announced they were only going to offer GameMaker Studio as a subscription service and for people who had bought a one time payment license they wouldn’t get certain features unless they switched to the subscription tier. So I switched to Godot because I don’t like paying a subscription for software.
Yes they do both. There is an initial fee of $100 to create a store page/sell a game on Steam (You can technically get this back but your game has to sell over $1000 which I've never done hah). Then Steam takes a 30% cut of any sales you make.
Your last project looks sick, I think I'll start a youtube channel and start developing something too.. You inspired me a lot. Actually the fact you made more money while not marketing is mindblowing, and I think I would have a chance to turn my life around by following your path.
Congratulations on your Achievements since your first game!🎉.May I ask a personal question? Judging from the Profits of your games,U must have a main Job to make a living right?What is it and Do U recommend going full time or Part time for game development??
For most of these games I worked a full time software engineering job and developed them for around 3-5 hours a day after work. For the past 1.5ish years I've been working full time on game development (generally 10 hours a day, 7 days a week) by burning through my life savings (about 10 years of savings). Now I'm pretty broke and I'm struggling to get any interviews for jobs because of the work gap (companies usually don't like seeing any gaps between jobs and they don't count self employed game development lol) so I would definitely not recommended doing what I did haha! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh 10 hours a day and 7 days a week.Wow,No Wonder U made a lot of progress with your New Project.😅Take a break sometimes man.Your Mental health matters. Btw,tq for answering my questions.Hope U have a blessed day!
Hey @blekoh, your video really helps me as a brand New game dev(if I can even call myself that) to just start out and make stuff. When you talk about a 6month dev time how many hours per day would that be?
@@Daanvinchie most of these I worked on after working a full time job so I would work about 3-5 hours a day on them. Okashi Towers I worked about 10 hours a day 7 days a week but I don’t recommend doing that. Good luck with your games! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh Thanks for your reply! Are there any lessons worth sharing you haven't shared before? I've only just started out and I have limited time each day. Thanks in advance!
This is the first video I've seen of yours, it just popped up in my recommended and I was completely unfamiliar with your work before watching it. But man, Sacred Forest looks so unique, I've already wishlisted it and I'm gonna be watching the devlogs tomorrow when I have some time. Looking forward to seeing it continue development!
Great Video man, thank you for sharing your numbers. I wish you best of luck and success with Sacred Forest and all your future games. Keep on coding :)
If you got the boom after making it free, why not start with a free game and then after updating it add a small price tag for new players who download your game? That way you would get some positive reviews while it’s free and then hopefully be showed more in steam.
the video was super interesting to watch! How and why did you spend so much money on the marketing for your first game? good luck with your upcoming game !!
Well in 2019-ish there was just a lot less stuff on how to market a game (at least on youtube) and it being my first steam game I just sort of sent different types of Ads not really knowing what I was doing. Also, back then Google Ads especially would easily overspend your budget. You could set something like $20 a day and it would choose to spend $100 in a day because it decided its daily budget on Monthly amounts (where the average daily amount would be $20 but it would spend whatever it wanted to early on) whereas now there is more control on limiting daily amounts. So me being naïve I thought it would stick to a daily budget (because that is what you set in the dashboard) which I believe I set to $50 a day hoping to turn it off at around 4 days which I started it at the game release time but it definitely did not stick to that and because the analytics were delayed it spent $700 before I could turn it off.
This is inspiring. Even if you didn't make a living wage, you still published your games. I'm coming from the art side, learning development now. I'm taking Godot classes and an animation class. Hoping to make some beautiful zen style games like Flower and Feather, but more on the 2D side kind of like Gris, because at the end of the day I love to draw. Thank you for sharing your experiences and games.
Love the mechanics in SF!! Also looks beautiful. Do hope the game challenge scales, and content is there too in the form of progressively harder monsters and quests. Can see myself buying it at some point, which is rare for me to say theses days
Well the actual game only uses about 2GB of RAM but at least in windows 10 that puts the total usage (with just running the operating system at least in my testing) to about 8.6GB so 12GB is sort of the next step up if someone used the minimum either 3 x 4GB sticks, or 1x8GB+1x4GB. Although, recently some laptops are coming out with some pretty strange amounts of RAM like 10GB 👈👈🤖
Sacred Forest looking good. Hope it will go better than previous games. Also, KIRO is looking pretty nice. Maybe I expected better numbers overall, especially for KIRO. I'm preparing to publish my first game and I have no expectations since I didn't market it huh 😅
Man I sure hope I hope Blekoh reads this, small chance but here I go: This video is awesome, the information you disclose is pretty damn useful for someone like me who is thinking about doing this as a hobby or maybe full time. I appreciate you doing this for all of ous out here. If you are up for it, I have some constructive criticism that I think it may help a lot.: Sacred forest looks like a blast to be honest. The only thing I would like to suggest is something I'm sure you're aware of in some level. I would suggest to try and see how to lower the dissonance between pixelart and a full 3D enviroment, it all doesn't add up as well as I think it could, if I put myslef in a player role, I can already tell how my eyes doesn't know how to process the way the caharacter is a part of the world. It tickles a unncofortable part of my brain and I am sure your aswell, but you probably tought nothing else could be done or something but boy do I have a solution for you, I do appreciate the art and idea, I am no game dev yet but I Am an artist, and I believe you could REALLY but I mean ABSOLUTELY benefit from something as simple as implementing normal maps in your character and having the lights interact with the character, It is the equivalent of a technique that has been used in cinema and game history to implement sprites and 2D art into 3D or real-life scnearios. I believe that for all the work you've done, creating normal maps for every character animation, shouldn't bee too much of a hassle, and I bet my ass it would make the character feel SOOOOOOOOOOOO much smoother and in harmony with the game world. If u're willing to try something I would like you to try this at least with ONE animation, test it on the character and run around the map seeeing how the lights interact with the chara, If the normal maps are well made, I believe you will be suprised af.
Love this. Would like to know when you say took 1.5 years etc is that full time or alongside a job, would be great to know how many hours of work. Thanks
@@mattallenclosedforum9505 most of these were working about 3-6 hours a day after working a full time job. Okashi Towers was about 10 hours a day 7 days a week working on it full time 👈👈🤖
this is something that feels relatable and achievable. But how did you manage to go for so long without generating profit? That is the scary part. I am not a game developer maybe someday I will try doing it. but I would really like to know how you handled the hardships and keep yourself motivated, or if your family is financially rich to support you for all these years then that's a different story.
Oh, man, I love that I found this channel! I've been following Sacred Forest for a while, and it's easily one of my favorite devlogs here on RU-vid. I love your vibe with those videos, and this was a nice, laid back and chill update. It really paints a picture of how brutal the market can be, but also how much you can learn when developing these smaller releases. I can't wait to try out Sacred Forest. As for projects, I'm making a medium-sized project right now in Unity. At it's core. I want it to have a character-action feel, but with immersive sim elements. I'm currently prototyping systems, abstracting logic where I can so I can try to have more mingling of systems. I'm also trying to build a library of animations to accommodate custom characters, but when I tried extending my rig in Blender with some extra bones for hair and clothing I got some weird bugs and now my rig won't re-generate, so that's been put on the back-burner while I remake my rig with Rigify. It's been an interesting time, haha.
Before making them free you should update the description and it possible code to reflect this newer game. Might convert some free players over to wishlist for new game
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