itch.io

Definitely enjoyed this. Feels original and it felt like the right level of difficulty for me. It also feels like you can do a lot with that mechanic. I also liked how the tutorial directions were in-world. The jumping felt a little off but that's probably my main gripe.

Hi Zebris. Make sure you are logged into itch.io in your browser, then go to the download page of the game (visit http://pulpul.itch.io/startupfreak and you will see a download link). Once you are there you'll see "Get Steam Key" button.

Let me know if that works.

Could you please give me the email address you have associated with itch.io in a private message, or send me an email from that address to support@pulpulgames.com ? Thank you.

Hi @GrumpyOldGamer, thanks for backing the game! If you go to the game page http://pulpul.itch.io/startupfreak you will see a download link (make sure you are logged in). When you click that, you should see a button that say "Get Steam Key".

Hey Simon, thanks for the suggestion! It's a very interesting idea, although it might be a little too specific for the music industry. In the future there will be completely different industries you can pick from at the beginning of the game.

Maybe there can be a mechanic for getting endorsement from different celebrities depending on the industry. I'll make a note of it.

Thanks :)

Yes, the lower you set the price, the more customers will sign up. However that doesn't get you the most revenue. There is an optimum point you are trying to look for and the market reports help you with that.

Also generally it's better to have more plans than fewer, but that also makes it harder to find the optimal price point for each plan.

Thanks heaps for the encouraging words! Feedback is always welcome. Send it to me whichever way is easiest for you. You can use steam community forums (http://steamcommunity.com/app/722660/discussions/). It's a bit dead at the moment but once the game is on Steam, that will probably become the main channel of communication. You can also use the feedback Trello board or join Discord and message me directly (links over at https://startupfreakgame.com/contact/).

I should also mention that at the moment it's really really hard (maybe impossible) to make a profit without a couple of rounds of investment. It takes a while before you get cash-flow positive. Still working on balancing :)

YAY!!

Thanks for trying the Beta. Besides some balancing issues, I definitely need to bubble up information about "what affects what". Tutorials would be one way but I think I also want to improve the UI.

Long answer your question, here are the core stats in the game and what affects them:

• Visitors: Visitors to your site/product is mainly determined by your marketing spending. Spend more money on activities that are well suited to your product, and you get more visitors. Some other things like your branding logo will also give you a boost.
• Signups: This is primarily based on the number of your features, so the more features you build the more visitors will sign up to your product. Note that over time people's expectation of the number of features increases so you need to keep building more and more. There are some other factors, for example building "requested" features will give you a boost.
• Churn: This is the most complex and interesting part. Churn is mainly based on your combined "Feature Rating". The rating for each feature depends on:
  • The number of components in the feature. This is the base and really important so you need to build bigger and bigger features.
  • Getting the ratio of design vs tech components right, based on market reports and experimentation.
  • Whether or not it's a "requested" feature.
  • Adding feature upgrades (their effects stack).
  • Average performance of the components.
  • Keeping the feature bug free.

You can see most of this information by right clicking features and selecting "Details", and also by checking the "Metrics" checkbox at the top of the Product Backlog view.

I hope that's helpful.