I don't know, the only thing I can think is just checking out me and my teammate's game demo and such, but that's about it. It's just we currently have creation of the game, a visual novel, under control, and marketing is what it is, slow, but steady on different platforms. We're kind of hoping our next game will be a little easier to market, but we're still doing our best with this one.
Was marketing slow on your first game too?
Game covers are definitely important, which is why I plan to have a new title screen and cover created not too long from now, at least before the final game releases.
I know quantity of games won't make a difference, I just feel that our next idea, which will use more traditional art, at least more so than pixel art, might appeal more to visual novel players. Plus, we'll have more experience advertising. While we did get quite a few players and some followers by releasing the demo and advertising, dev logs also helped get some eyes on the game, so we definitely will continue doing that in later games.
What strategies do you think might help you, other than improving your game covers?
We plan to finish development of the game in early 2023, to give ourselves a good amount of time to finish without rushing, especially as both me and my teammate are involved in either other projects, work, or school. Thankfully, most of the sprites we need are finished, so development now is creating backgrounds, CGs, the rest of the writing, and then programming it all in.
Twitch would probably work better if you instead ask some smaller game streamers to play your games instead, they already have followers so you just would have to find some that play similar genres.
Smaller streamers could give a chance, which is why I recommended them, even if they only have a few hundred watching that is still a few hundred that now know the game.
My game is just a visual novel, so I just need to know if the story is interesting, which I'm pretty sure it is and, due to it have a fair amount of choices, I know it is interactable enough to keep interest in it.
For your game, you'd have to compare it to similar games and see if yours can create the same "fun" feeling that other games feel, basically, just see if the concept both keeps attention and can evolve. Evolving is usually the big important part, if the concept can grow and change to different and new gameplay, then it is often fun, or at least interesting.
You will definitely need more than one tester, as one person's concept of fun can vary, people say strangers give the best advice as friends and family might not want to say anything bad about the game.
