Post by redonihunter in Where do you promote yourself outside of itch.io and how?

Viewing post in Where do you promote yourself outside of itch.io and how?

Please do not be insulted. But your game pages are ... bad. Really bad. Half a sentence description, one meager screenshot and a price tag with no demo version. Claim of standard assets but file size of 800MB. It looks like you do not even try.

The positive thing is, you did realease it, so I assume it is finished. That is a lot better than most games here. But why such an unappealing page.Did you not ask a friend to tell you honestly how it looks? Would you try even a free game with such a page? No, I did not watch the video. Why should I? There is no story pitch to read nor any screenshots to garner any interest whatsoever in your game. The game tags are as bland as they can get. singleplayer , pixelart, fantasy, 2d, turn-based. Well. it is a rpgmaker game, i get it. almost all qualitfy for those things. You are describing rpgmaker, not your game.

Your other game, ... , it is tagged single player and short and has one screenshot (of a character and not of the game). At least the pitch sounds mildly interesting.

I can only advise you to lootk at

https://itch.io/games/tag-rpgmaker?exclude=tg.horror

and watch the game pages of some popular games. Maybe you get inspiration.

This thread is about promotion. But imagine you do manage to promote your game page. It is a landing zone for any potential player you have reached on twitter or whatever. What do they see? A non commiting screenshot and a bland game description (oh, and a link to a video I did not watch, see above). What I am trying to say, you could have a really good game and lots of promotion, but with an uninviting game page you have a hard time convert those page views into players.

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TimelineMan1 year ago

Thanks for the input. I… Used to have a demo for the game I released. I accidentally deleted it while making an update and due to what was, at the time, poor file management, I lost much of what allowed the demo to exist.

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redonihunter1 year ago

I do not play rpgmakers very often, but i do know that they tend to be a lot smaller, like really small, under 100mb, and some even have a playable web version.

You claim to use standard assetts, that must mean to my naive ears, that you could export a version that does not require the assets to be bundled and just need the rtp installed. I saw such and it was like 10MB. Bundling them is of course better for some players, but why not offer both.

Your game has 800+MB. So I see three possibilities. Stuff is going on I do have no clue about. You packed a lot of unneccessary stuff into the game in a very inefficient manner. Or you do have content that is not standard assets, but you do not proudly make screenshots and advertise the fact.

But if I understood correctly , you do have inflow from the social media. Just not a lot of interaction.

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TimelineMan1 year ago

Sunset of the Elements is the Default RPGMaker MV package with the addition of exactly: -3 1.5 minute or so music tracks -4 sprite sheets -3 500 x 500 pixel PNGs If I had to guess, the reason a lot of RPG Maker games come out a lot smaller is that a lot of them either surgically remove the default package pieces they aren’t using, or they use entirely custom assets that allows them to remove the entire thing and come out to smaller file sizes.

you are correct about the state of my social media. It, like most forms of advertising, has a very low turnover rate. I believe marketing is considered “effective” with a 2% turnover rate? I think combined, everything might give me something like a 1.5% rate.

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redonihunter1 year ago

A quick google tells me, that there is no rtp and that your game should be around 400mb if you include all the assets without compression or removal of unused files. Are your additional files 400MB? Maybe the internet lied to me - again. So I shall do a quick reality check.

https://itch.io/games/tag-rpgmaker-mv

A couple people actually tagged rpgmaker mv. So lets have a look.

153 + web version, 270, 481, web no dl, 379, 188, 277, 116 + web, 112, 153, 400, web , 209, 210

Maybe you included windows and mac version or even html and android in the same archive? Or an accident happened and you doubled the files?

Anyways, I just wanted to illustrate what someone like me thinks when reading the infos given on your game page.

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TimelineMan1 year ago

I have to guess that my added files must have added the 400mb, though I’m not sure how. But yeah, my other, free projects are both under 400mb, though there are certainly other factors that might play in, such as the number of maps and events, though I have no way of knowing how much that adds up to.

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