itch.io

This is my first game on itchio. I'm just wondering what you think of my product page?

Any obvious mistakes? Improvements?

https://neurowocky.itch.io/tesla8

I just posted my first game on itch.io 

It's an action breakout style game with a ton of upgrades, where you have to fight Tesla.

Please take a look!

https://neurowocky.itch.io/tesla8

I get you. When I first put the game out, I did get a number of bad reviews both from the in-game ads, and from the fact that webgl is kind of... inconstant.

But I do want to be able to promote any of my games from any of my games. I guess some people will freak out.

Anyway, I put an option in the menu that let's you turn off promotions(downloading them too), and I inform the user that that option exists when they hover-over the "boost" icon. And I still give them a set 10% boost if they opt-out, as opposed to 35% for looking at it.

The scary thing about Kongregate was that there were people down-voting any new game that looked decent with about 10 accounts. I think the prize money for their monthly contests was bringing out the worst in people.

It's a bit of a hit or miss, but last I checked Tesla8 had over 340,000 game plays on Kongregate  alone. On Kong it was tied into the old ad system, which was annoying as (expletive), so when I designed this new add system, I designed it to be as unannoying as possible.

But if you want to try it out and tell me what you think, that would be helpful:

https://www.neurowockygames.com/files/Tesla8_PC.zip

I didn't see any rules against posting links to game files (unless they contain malware) in the community rules, but If I've made a mistake, and should take it down, please let me know!

Even with a free game?

Thanks for the link!

It downloads a 1k file each time it opens. And then adds a "boost" to the upgrade screen if it gets that data. If it doesn't download the boost simply doesn't appear.

The file contains information on what platforms the promo game is available on and links (relative to my server) of screen shots for the promo game. If the promo key has changed since the last time you played, or you don't have the images, it downloads those images and stores them in the appdata path (around 700KB)

When it shows the ad, there is a big button on the bottom "back to game" so you don't need to look at it for anytime at all. It has a store buttons for steam, itchio, gog, and epic that show if the game if available on each service (or coming soon, early access, etc...) you can click on to go to the store pages.

The level of the boost can be adjusted by the downloaded file, I have it set to 35%. The boost lasts until the user exits the game. I can disable or enable the promo at will by altering the file.

Here's what's in the downloaded file:

steam|string|app/2363000/Apocalypse_Run
itchioDev|string|neurowocky
itchioGame|string|
gog|string|
epic|string|
statusSteam|int|5
statusItchio|int|3
statusGOG|int|0
statusEpic|int|0
logo|string|PromoApocRunLogo.png
fullpage|string|PromoApocRunFullpage.jpg
banner|string|PromoApocRunBanner.jpg
title|string|Apocalypse Run!
callToAction|string|Run for your life!
promoPitch|string|See a screen from my new game
blurb|string|Free demo of my new Strategy-RPG
text|string|In this Roguelike Strategy RPG, You'll stop the Apocalypse...\nIf Motorlord Dysentery doesn't get you first!\n\nFree Demo coming to Itch.IO
promoKey|string|ApocRunBh
promoValue|float|1.35
promoEnabled|int|1

Thanks for the info!

I'm thinking about releasing the promo game "Tesla8" a little before hand, and releasing the new game "Apocalypse Run!" after Tesla's been indexed. Hopefully, that will speed up the indexing on the new game a little bit.

I have it in Tesla8 where I can switch the promo on and off, and point it at other games, update the screen shot, link to new store pages etc... so it feels like an in-game as system. But it doesn't annoy me when I'm testing it, so hopefully it won't annoy players either.

(It can't link to arbitrary websites, just steam, itchio, gog, and epic, so even if my server is hacked, it can't harm the player)

I'm all set to release my paid Oregon Trail / Mad Max game (Apocalypse Run!) next week, and I'm thinking of releasing a PC version of a web game I did a while back (Tesla8:My Balls of Steel) as a means of promoting it.

I shudder to use the word in-game ad, but in Tesla8 I've got it set so if you look at screen shot from "Apocalypse Run!" (you can exit right back out), you get a 35% xp boost for the rest of the session.

Anyway, I'm wondering:

• Will In-game ads (promotions for my other games) cause issues?
• Will releasing two games at the same time lower the visibility of one or both of them?