itch.io

Thank you~~

Does the typical game being a game which plays in browser, rather than a game which requires a download, make you want to play it more?

Not really. I don't typically try browser games that I don't like the premise of. I wouldn't want to play a browser game just because it's a browser game.

If it helps, I tend to look at premise first - how it looks, feels, and what it's about. If there's a browser version available for something that's caught my attention, I'll play it there on the fly - it makes it easy for me to just scroll down and write a comment for it. If the game requires a download, I probably won't play it for the time being until I can either find time to sit down and install it, or play other bite-sized browser games with a similar premise first before coming back to it... if I remember to, that is. 😅 If I'm on my phone, I will only play browser games.

Of course, the download-required games would need to be from publishers I know and have an amount of trust in, such as particular developers I've chatted with (either from the same writers' group or game jam), folk from the same fandom or a reputed publisher like Y Press Games. Large, long, and graphics-heavy games tend to be better downloaded, but for safety reasons I do try to ascertain that the developers are genuine first before downloading them.

I feel browser versions of games make them more easily accessible on mobile devices or people who're casually browsing for something quick to play, which in turn makes them look more desirable as a whole statistically. Ease of access can be quite a draw, but I personally find first impressions - thoughtful synopses, nice cover images and screenshots, attractive character profiles - to be more successful in getting me to try them out overall.

Thank you so much for the update! I've tried it out and it's great! I hope the developers will start tagging them so they'll be easier to find in the future. Bless~

I was more or less looking for the latter - Victorian-related stuff, which may or may not be in the name or description. For example Victorian-inspired games, assets, comics, etc.

Hi leafo, thanks for letting me know!

Sure, here's the query in question: https://itch.io/search?q=victorian

    do I have to make do with these platforms I don't like

Well, for me personally, the beauty of being a hobbyist is that we don't really have to make do with any platform we don't particularly like - we can just leave off it and concentrate on developing things we enjoy, without the need for any external promotion at all. Unlike the folk who've spent money developing stuff and must make it back, I don't think I've ever suffered a loss not being on Instagram, Tiktok or Facebook. 🤔

Though, if it helps, you can try Reddit if you like. Granted, it is a big platform, but it's also discussion-based and the scope of our posts are usually only limited to a certain sub unless someone decides to cross-post it, so you can just hang around the small communities and post there. There are numbers involved, as per most platforms - karma - though that's negligible at best and doesn't hinder discussion or feedback in general. I've gotten some good feedback for two of my fangames there. The only original story of mine that got a number of visits from there was "The Swordsman Who Lost His Nipples", though, so I can't vouch for it 100% when it comes to serious stuff.

Alternatively, I'm also on Tumblr, which is smaller and more intimate than, say, Twitter. An interesting part of Tumblr culture is that folk who reblog our posts also tend to add "micro-comments" in their tagging system, making their reblogs a lot more personal. The site is slow and laggy at times, but the upside is that you can post pictures and format text there. It's customizable too, to a degree. In terms of promotion... just like Reddit, I've only seen my fangames do well there. My original stuff kinda gets ignored. (EDIT: I do see writers use Tumblr to get their works out, though. Maybe give it a go to find other writers there?)

That said, I do tend to prefer engaging in fast-moving platforms like Twitter. Twitter as a platform is exciting when it comes to speed, and I get to respond very quickly to other people's posts too. The best bit is that most posts are short and concise, and that facilitates rapid-fire replies, which adds to more replies from folk who see them in their own timelines. For folk like myself who're restless and like chatting others up, it's a pretty nifty platform to be on. My experience on Twitter has been good, even if I've slowed down lately due to login issues. I don't get too many clicks for original stuff there, but my fangame posts did balloon up like crazy.

As far as I know, though, self-published original games, art and stories can be pretty hard to promote on social media, even on the slower ones. Your best bet may be to join a Discord server and reach out to fellow developers. Some developers have a following that's comprised mostly of other developers. If it's "genuine" non-dev players we want, it's market research that we'd need to do before even making our game, let alone promoting it. That part's just as tricky as finding the right social media platform for it.

Good luck!

Thanks for the update! Gave it a spin and I love it~ I love that typo tolerance too! It does help when you can only partially remember the name of something you're looking for.

Quick question: Will the search function have a pagination system, such as a "Next Page" at the bottom of the page for searches with a large amount of results?

I did notice a cutoff after a certain amount is displayed, and there's no Next Page link to click on, meaning I can't browse further than the initial page of results. It's not affected by auto-loading as a setting either. I checked and searching by tags has a pagination system, while searching by keyword (using the search bar) doesn't.

If not, it's fine too. Thanks again! 🙏

If it's a music jam you want to join, there's the OST Composing Jam that's featured to start next month: https://itch.io/jam/ost-composing-jam-7

It seems to be an annual thing that runs through every July of the year. Here's a link to the one hosted last year and the one prior.

Good luck! I took a look and there are prizes there! 🤤 Well, the prize itself is a feature on the playlist, but that counts, right?

No problem! I felt like I really needed to mention the visuals because they were moving - it's small, but it's also an extra step that shows the love that's been put into presenting it. The browser version seems to work on Firefox. I imagine any players having problems with it may have been using Private Browsing, which might cause an overlap of minor errors when you're selecting options. You can try advising them to swap out of Private Browsing first and see if it works better.

....Of course Lan Wangji of all people would remember those rare rules and bring them up. 🤦 What is wrong with this man, LOL 😂But I love this version of him that you've written, he's pretty cute that way!

Aww, thanks for giving them a try! Gotta love ancient Rome too - culture from that era's pretty interesting. And thanks for mentioning others in the fandom! I actually made a feature post in late 2022 linking to MDZS fanmade games, and when I saw a browser version pop up for yours I made some time to try it out (downloads can be difficult for me). Thanks for  making a browser version! It's definitely made your game very accessible! I had a good time with it, bless~

Sure, I'll consider that if I ever get stuck!

I took a look at your game page. If it helps, you can try doing these things to see if your views and download stats improve:

1. The part where you mention that your game is a virus scares me quite a bit. 😨 Try making sure it's not potential malware first., maybe...? If it triggers virus warnings, it's not a good sign.

2. The title of your game seems to have a typo. First impressions always count in marketing, so it's pretty important to make sure we don't have a typo in our title!

3. Maybe update your game cover thumbnail to make it look more dynamic. Perhaps add the title to it in a very nice font? It would make the cover look more complete.

4. Your blurb may need work. Short and catchy usually works!

5. Try adding relevant tags to your game to make sure it can be found (e.g.: horror, puzzle). There's this thing about the average session only lasting a few seconds too - you may want to change that to reflect the actual time taken to complete a session of the game.

6. Try to identify the system requirements for the game and check that on the download zip file. These will help your game get filtered by the search system a little better, since it'll automatically add it to the platform tagging. Right now nobody can tell if your download file is meant for Windows, Linux, Mobile, etc.

7. You can try adding which engine you used to make it too, so other developers using the same engine can find it and review it.

I think that's about it. Good luck!

D'aww, thanks. If it helps, ratings are private and only viewable to the developer receiving them, the rater and the rater's followers, which may be why they can be pretty different from the comments. You can't respond in any way to ratings, and the public can't see what they are.

Not at the moment, unfortunately! I'm closed for commissions for the time being.

No problem. To answer your first question, from the remarks in the one-star ratings, there were other better games that deserved to be on the Popular tab... namely theirs (or their favorites, idk). 😅 You're right when you say "weird and far-fetched", because I wasn't expecting to get those remarks either. But Itch is weird like that, and I've learned to roll with the punches since. You gotta grow a thick skin when pushing out games.

To answer your second question, I don't reply to posts often. I tend to comment on other games which I've played and rate them, but only when time permits. If there's something I do more often than other things, it's posting new visual novel game assets... but even then it's not that often overall. I'm offline a lot of the time.

I can't answer for paid games - mine are all free at the moment (they're browser-based, so you can't charge for them). But if it helps, I do regularly get passive visits daily for a few older games, and these haven't been updated since their initial launch.

Looking at the referrers, folk seem to be visiting internally from Itch Io. Initially some views came from their respective game jam rating pages, but that seems to taper off after two to three weeks. I haven't joined game jams lately, but I haven't seen much of a difference in visits, honestly. I don't get a lot of traction posting links to my games on social media. The referrer that generates the highest hits is platform-web.

Interestingly I do have visits offsite. Some are from Google - about 64 altogether for this month. I have a handful from baidu.com, yandex.ru, Vietnamese Yahoo, bing.com and duckduckgo. I'm not sure what keywords they're using, though.

Subject-wise, my games and assets are generally based on Immortal Cultivation, which may be why they're getting searched up and accessed regularly enough. I did hear down the grapevine that Itch Io's one of the few spaces on the web that hasn't been blocked by the Chinese government yet, which may be why there are quite a number of players and developers from mainland China accessing it at the moment. I do get a number of downloads for my Xianxia assets, which may also be generating extra activity to my games and therefore pushing them to the upper end of the algorithm. Needless to say, my most popular game is indeed set in a world of Immortal Cultivation.

From experience, Itch Io does tend to push older games to the top of the search and tags once in a while to make sure they aren't forgotten. I wouldn't say it's too random either - my brain-dead single-click "boyfriend generator" got randomly featured by a Youtuber for two seconds or so, which got my game about 20+ odd visits from Youtube, but that was enough to mess with Itch's algorithm, which pushed it to the top of the landing pages for a few tags, resulting in thousands of views over the week (this made a lot of regular Itch Io devs and users angry, btw).

Basically games climb up the algorithm when there's a spike of visitations, so when you update your game, you'll get a spike of visits, which will in turn push your game up the algorithm to place on the landing pages of certain tags. If it's a steady stream of passive visits you want, you'll simply need to be "known" for one or two things that people will search and visit you specifically for. There's also the option of pushing out as many new games as you can each month, but... yeah, it will eat your life up...

Edit: goddamn typos

Hi! Did you mean for the comment to reach the actual creators of the game? https://alex-und-mathew.itch.io/

Seems like you've commented under me by mistake. Try clicking on the "Write Your Comment" bar instead.

Played the browser version! I liked the moving backgrounds, especially the moving branches and soft, glowing lights. The steam from the pot and bowls were great too, felt so warm~ ❤️

I gotta admit I nearly had a heart attack when I scored mostly wrongs in that rules pop quiz. 😨I have the brains of a goldfish, what can I say...

Who on earth would quiz their crush on rules??? No one but Lan Wangji, of course...

Thank you for your hard work making this game~

Hi, thanks for your comment! You bring up a great point about not having any backgrounds for certain character sprites - I did forget to mention that it's easier to find modern-day backgrounds or those featuring Japanese school settings compared to, say, Neverland, feudal Japan or anything of the Victorian era. It's one of the things that causes developers to not use specific assets or write specific stories as well, even if they could.

From developer to developer, though, I can try to help you with your issue in Point (1). You don't actually have to create a special credits page to credit the artists or sound creators - you can just edit the About page in Ren'Py, if you're using that as an engine. You can find it in the screens.rpy file and edit it:

Alternatively, you can write the credit module in your text once the game ends, in your script.rpy file itself:

I can't speak for other creators out there, but you're probably going to have a difficult time finding free assets you can use if you don't find a way to credit them, especially if you intend to sell your game. Free assets can take hours, days or weeks to make, so the lowest bar of use is to credit the creator of the free source you're using. This also extends to sound files and background music.

As a developer, we can potentially get into trouble with customers who've bought our game and decide to report us for not crediting our sources, once they find out we're using free assets instead of purchased ones since they're paying us in the first place. I've seen some pretty... vocal people on the Internet. Having a credits page tends to help us as developers quite a bit.

Point (4) appears to be specific to my assets, so I guess I can only answer for myself. I tend to put extra information within the metadata - this is because developers specifically looking to create commercial games to sell will most likely check the metadata or extended information due to legalities. Most prolific commercial game creators tend to have a dedicated team for scripting, timing, QC as well as art, animation, sound, voice-overs and music, and these are usually paid assets. When I mention my stuff is commercial-free, it simply means that I don't accept payment for them, and that I'll put out only a standard set of free stuff and modifications are for the team to make, not me. While I do allow them to be used commercially, it'll absolve me from further involvement. Legal use is always in the metadata/further information area. It's neater-looking, more professional, and still within the same page.

If you don't know anything, it's not a bad idea to ask in the comments. Hope that helps! Cheers~

不客气~

OMG! You're definitely one of the the luckiest to date! One of the best boyfriends in RBG, bless!

Ooo thank you.. who did you get as a boyfriend 👀👀👀

Hahaha! SUCK SUCK SUCK's a heap better than CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED

At least you know what he's doing! 😘 Thank you for playing and rating~

Aww, thanks for crediting and you're welcome! Yeah, I kinda get how you feel - having ideas but having a hard time expressing them visually. Glad these help! Figured some folk might need these for the upcoming month of Mermay~

Uh, does this help? https://itch.io/games/tag-femboy

I don't know if every developer who makes femboy games would remember to tag is as such since the tag doesn't automatically pop up when you're typing it. A developer might probably think folk won't look under the tags and opt to pick the ones that do pop up instead.

An alternative is looking using the Search option (https://itch.io/search?q=femboy) but the limitation here is that not every title appears when you're using this option. Some games that aren't already tagged do pop up though.

Anyway, good luck! Femboys seem quite popular, from what I've seen. I'm surprised they don't already have a Femboy Game Jam hosted. Maybe you could host one and get more femboy content put out!

You're welcome~

Sure, no problem! Feel free to edit them how you like!

Wow they gonna get abs! Wonderful!!

Thanks for being understanding about it! And yeah, I do get the need to double-check. Some people don't like the naughty! I'm kinda curious as to how these are going to be used in an NSFW game, though - they're wearing so many clothes. 😳 Oh my, my imagination is running now... what naughty things can one do with clothes on, heheheheheeee 😳🤭🤭

Aww, thanks for your kind words! I'm so glad you like them! Always happy to share~ I hope more developers or storytellers can find and use them, especially those starting out and experimenting, if they can't draw themselves or don't already have a dedicated artist on the team.

More free games means more games for everyone to play too! So thank you for making free games too! Bless~~ ❤️

Hi Lila! You're welcome and thanks so much for the compliment!

And sure, no problem! I make NSFW games myself, so I really don't mind them being used naughtily haha! Thanks for considering downloading them!

EDIT: Also sorry for the late reply. Been mad busy @_@

Ikr?? Poor guy T_T

Hi! Commercial use is fine.

Thank you! Glad you liked it! I'll look into it when I have some time~

Ikr? Imagine talking while flying and BAM a bird in your mouth

No probs! Thanks for making such a cute game!

GODDDAMMIT THESE BIRDS GIVE ME ANXIETY T_T HAHAHA

I keep hitting birds! I love this! 😍🥰

Ikr? You're expecting normal sexy, and then BAM! otherworldly sexy

Thank you hua hua

But... bunny here secretly has abs too ;__; It's just hidden by clothes....

Thanks and no problem~ Hope it's helpful~

Hi everyone! I noticed that Alice in Wonderland-themed visual novels are allowed, so I decided to share my free sprites here in case anyone needed something quick/last minute.

Each pack has 9 to 69 different expressions depending on character. All are transparent 2D PNG files drawn/colored by myself using Medibang and Photoshop. You can edit and rename them freely after download, but no edits are necessary since they can be immediately be used by copying them to the Ren'Py game\images folder.

Link here: https://linxuelian.itch.io/charres-wonderland

I don't really have restrictions on usage. You can use them in your written novels covers too, if you like.

Hope it helps! Cheers~

Thank youuuuu~~ time to change my ugly banner, bless

EDIT: Hurrah it is fixed! Thank you so much~