We are now half way through my annual inside conference. This year I am focusing on the current “golden age” style games that I have written about: rapid release, high earnings. We are going through a period right now where players will buy and enjoy games with short and fun play times.
Most of my conference speakers have games that earned millions of dollars. But I also want to shine a light on other games that earn a more modest $100,000.
Get ready for the most boring, least sensational post mortem. This is the story of Void Miner; a game that did the minimum I recommend for marketing, in a genre that we all know to be popular. It didn’t go viral. It didn’t blow up. It didn’t result in life-changing wealth. But best of all, it didn’t take long to make. It is exactly what I call a “middle game” because it is a great way to learn how to make and market a game and possibly pay for itself. This is following the plan. This is exactly what I hope for all of you in your game dev journey.
What’s Void Miner?
It’s basically asteroids meets incremental games with a roguelike meta structure. Play asteroids until you run out of fuel. Spend your earnings from your run on upgrades which will make your next run last longer.
Reviews are generally positive. Players like the short simple version of it. It is consumable. There is a desire for more variety however.
Development
RyanJakob is a solo dev with a general software development background. He developed the game over about 7 months. Marketed it for 6 of them.
The origins come from playing Nodebuster and figuring it was easy to build and market. The game’s pixel art comes from free assets he picked up off itch.io. His only contracts were for music and a great capsule art from the illustrator who made the Megabonk capsule.
Marketing
Again, this will be the most boring zero-cost marketing campaign you have ever seen. It hits the minimum requirements in every way possible.
✅ Good genre: incremental / roguelike / spaceship
✅ Steam page live for 6 months before launch
✅ Social, Reddit push at the page announce
✅ Demo launched soon after page launched
✅ Early youtuber outreach (Idle Cub played it)
✅ Got IGN to post the trailer on GameTrailers Youtube channel (not the more exclusive IGN channel)
✅ Reddit didn’t really work (he got banned and posts pulled a few time)
✅ Content creators & festivals got him the majority of wishlist spikes (ImCade)
✅ Last Next Fest before launch (Earned ~1400 wishlists)
✅ Popular Upcoming for 2 days (~6000 net wishlists before it)
✅ Launch with 8449 wishlists
Here is his wishlist chart:
Great conversion
Launch was great
In the first 12 days, Void Miner sold 10,000 copies
I have seen many games launch with 20K+ wishlists and fail on the launch pad. Not Void Miner. It hit 7000 wishlists and converted at a very respectable 22%.
THIS is the benefit of making a good game, in a good genre, and nailing the tropes. It just converts. People know what they are getting, they know the genre, they buy. It is the McDonald’s burger and fries. It is the Starbucks coffee. Users are not taking a chance. They don’t have to wonder if they will like it.
Consumable Genres
Idle, Horror, Gambling-likes-with-extra-steps, and Friendslop, do so well for developers because the fan base loves to consume them and then move on. Fans consume a BUNCH of them and move on. The games are well defined and are easy to identify at a glance. Are you really going to think hard whether you want to buy that chocolate bar at the check out aisle? No thinking needed. Even if it is a sub-par bar, it is still chocolate and probably going to taste good.
Other genres like 4X, City builder, and Battle Royale are hobby games. The player base picks one and it becomes their life. They are very complex and have a steep learning curve.
Look at these comments about Void Miner. They are basically “Yup, what I expected. Good enough”
This “consumability” is why Void Miner has a 22% conversion rate.
Other cool marketing bits
Online game portals: During development, RyanJakob also uploaded a web-based version of his game demo to browser portals such as Armor Games and Addicting Games. He said it was to increase feedback. It didn’t lead to many wishlists (About 30 by my count). I would recommend doing this and monitoring the feedback.
Reddit sucks – RyanJakob tried many times to post to the typical gaming subreddits but similar to most game devs, the Reddit community deleted posts and downvoted many of them. All told reddit earned him 100-ish wishlists. Doesn’t seem worth the potential backlash. In general my recommendation is try an intro announce post, try a demo launch post, and try a final launch post. If those don’t take off, keep your nose and sanity clean and just focus on the platforms to provide better results: content creators and festivals.