This is a story of two developers who spent about 6 months making a Wholesome management game and it went on to earn $750,000 (pre cut gross)
It is an amazing story with something that developers of all types (an genres) can take away from it.
- The importance of connecting with the broader fandom of your genre.
- How market research can lead to a creative game that succeeds in the market.
- That management genre that supports a bunch of innovation AND can be made in a shorter time frame.
- Festivals and streamers, festivals and streamers, festivals and streamers
The numbers
Here are some details of how they pulled this off:
- Game: Minami Lane
- Release Date: February 28, 2024
- Coming soon page launch: November 6, 2023 (3 months of collecting wishlists)
- Wishlists at Launch: 48,000
- Wishlist conversion rate: 27%
- Median playtime: 2 hours 9 minutes
- Average playtime: 3 hours
The team
Minami Lane was codeveloped by boyfriend & girlfriend team of Doot and Blibloop. Both worked for Ubisoft in market research and data analysts.
“We both have a mindset that we want to make something players will play. We think about that in a lot of our decisions.”
Doot has also worked on or made games in the indie space. He interned at a company making a management game and released another small game Froggy’s Battle in the previous year.
The music and sound effects was composed by Zakku. You can check out the soundtrack on Bandcamp here.
Market analysis
Using their background in user research Doot and Blibloop wisely looked into the market potential of their game before development. They used Game Analytics and found there were very few quality management style games for less than $5.
This screenshot screams “Management Game.” They are all about making minute decision about how to tune a store, make people happy, and improve over time.
Both of them also really like Wholesome games. They know the influencers, the content creators, the developers in the Wholesome scene. They knew the market.
Blibloop also really loves management games and brought her experience to the design. I asked her for recommendations and she provided a great list.
If you are wondering “what does Chris mean by ‘management’ games” the Steam Winter festival starts next week, buy a bunch of these games for cheap!
City builders:
Shop management:
Other:
- Rock Manager (old French game about managing a Rock band)
- Lovely Juliet (old French life sim with some “life management” mechanics)
- Gamedev Tycoon
By playing lots of other games you can determine what levers to move and what is better suited for the experience you are trying to achieve.
For instance they knew that cozy gamers loved hidden object games. They added a trash collection mechanic that was inspired by hidden object games and provides extra depth to their game.
Whenever I say, look at the market data, research genres, there is a knee-jerk response that this will hurt creativity or lead to a boring cookie-cutter games. Minami Lane is proof that this is not true! Minami Lane is charming, full of personality, and made by people who love the genre. Yes they did market research first, and yes they are AAA trained data analysis who have experience creating cold-hearted reports on the numbers, but they still make creative, innovative games. Creating a game using data isn’t saying no to love and creativity. It isn’t black or white, art vs commerce, love vs statistics. It is both! You can totally do both!
Long term promotion
Yes we all love to see huge spikes in wishlists, but Doot pointed out that some of the biggest promotional wins were months in the making.
“Smaller stuff brings bigger stuff”
Here is step by step on how Minami Lane got on Wholesome Games’ radar
The team posted on social media and existed there as much as they could because they want to be a part of that community because they are fans first. When they first posted about their game, Japanese media almost immediately covered them (I wrote about the Japan twitter phenomenon in this blog post). But, beyond that passive exposure, they took it to the next level and became active participants in the Wholesome subculture. Here is how:
- A “Wholesome Influencer” Gamer Girl Gale said she was looking for recommendations for a new VR headset. Doot gave her some recommendations because he genuinely follows the Wholesome scene and was a fan of her taste.
- Then Gamer Girl Gale followed him. Doot suspects she checked out his profile and noticed they were working on a Wholesome game after his VR suggestion.
- One week later, she took videos from his dev logs and recorded a talk-over video describing his game. These influencer commentaries are very common in the cozy game space. It did well! You can watch it here
- Shortly after that the Wholesome Games team reached out to them. Doot suspects they saw gamergirlgale’s video.
Cozy gale
Wholesome Games
Shortly after connecting, Doot and Blibloop signed a rev-share deal with Wholesome Games for marketing support and Influencer outreach.
6-Month Game Design and Development?
How the hell did they make a management game in 6 months?
“My Priority is to get a game out in a small time frame. You don’t have to go fast, you have to go small.
First they cut out features they knew would take a long time. So no translation, no controller support.
I have to admit, this is risky. I have shown before that translating your game really opens up the visibility potential. Maybe because of the type of game they have it works? Similarly I know lacking controller support can lead to bad reviews. But maybe management style games where there is no main character you directly control means they can get away with it? Proceed with caution.
However, Doot says most of their ability to move fast is by doing a lot of playtesting.
Playtesting allows you to go fast…but you have to think, what is the smallest option to fix this.
For example, they knew they were getting feedback that the game was too short. They could have added more levels, more scenarios, but that would have added time to development. Instead they fixed it by making the game come to a climax and conclusion. They reused the Tanuki narrator “Ema” to narrate an ending.
The ending scene concludes the game on a positive feeling that we hoped overshadowed the feeling of not having enough.
They got the idea from the Portal episode of GMTK. If you provide a villain and a resolution, it makes the game feel more “Complete.”
The Ema character guides you through tutorials, missions, and was repurposed to also provide a satisfactory end to the game.
CZ side note: I have seen other single-developers create successful management games in short periods. Look at the work of Cozy Bee Games. Although they didn’t site it as a reference, I feel like Capybara Spa share a lot of the same design sensibilities and was completed in a similarly short period of time.
How small is too small?
The Minami Lane team found success making their game small and cheap. But how small is too small? There are “minimalistic” games that are too simple. For example The Block got Mixed reviews with most people saying stuff like “The Block is too pared back for its own good” and “but unfortunately doesn’t give you enough customisation options”
But Minami Lane didn’t suffer similar complaints.
CZ Analysis: Unfortunately I can’t tell you why Minami Lane didn’t suffer the “too short” complaint. Doot says the playtests let them know they didn’t go too small. But I also think the team’s prior experience releasing games helped them here. A lot of game design is just “feeling” and “vibes” to get the sizing right.
Doots last game Froggy’s Battle had some complaints about complexity. “the lack of level variety makes replaying the same levels feel grindy and monotonous” and “its lack of variety ultimately leaves much to be desired.” So maybe he learned after his first solo game?
I can’t give you good advice here. I am not a good game designer. Talk to an expert in game design. You just have to make a lot of games and learn by doing. Just make more games, your first one will probably fail and people will complain about it. But make another one.
How they playtested
Doot said Discord + Social were the main ways he found people to playtest the game.
The team put a webGL version of the game on itch.io because as Doot reminds “Nobody wants to download your game” (for a playtest). To get player feedback they linked to a survey form.
Quick, simple, cheap. Great feedback.
Promotion
Before looking at this chart, Doot wanted to remind me to remind you that promotion is not just the spikes, it is the small steps it takes to get the bigger spikes (See spikes #1 and #2 which aren’t actually that high, but they allowed #3 to happen).
#1 Coverage from Japanese, Chinese, and Thai new sites cover their announcement
#2 Video by Gamer Girl Gale (again, influencers on social don’t drive THAT MUCH traffic compared to festivals and streamers)
#3 Wholesome games – initial trailer
(just before #4) Release of demo – just before Next Fest
#4 and #5 are Steam Next Fest. The 2-prong shape to the graph is the start and end of the fest.
#6 Game release
#7 Steam Summer Sale
#8 Wholesome direct (3000 wishilsts typical increase for this fest) Also note not many sales just new visibility.
#9 – Steam Summer Sale – Front page visibility because Steam reached out to feature them.
#11 – Steam Autumn Sale – No blue which means no new visibility, but big green because they sold a lot.
Blue is wishlists
Green is sales
(Doot says the best event is good blue and good green)
Other marketing tips
Here are a bunch of cool takeaways I couldn’t fit anywhere else
- Doot doesn’t care. He launches his Steam page without a trailer and before everything is ready to go. ”[When I announce my next game] The steam page won’t have any trailer when I launch my Steam page. I know that’s bad, but I don’t care. But I will announce the Steam page, then I will announce the trailer and talk about it every day… It worked for me to do stuff as early as possible. People who follow me want to see as early as possible. ”
- The game has made $750,000+ on Steam but how well on Itch.io? Since launching in December, $160. Itch is great for free games and vibes and the community, but don’t expect to make money from it.
- Nintendo Switch marketing is difficult. It is very hard to get visibility from the eShop. Doot says the only thing that moves numbers on Nintendo platforms is external marketing from Nintendo on youtube and social.
- The Steam Summer Sale did very well for them because Valve reached out and asked if they wanted to be featured on the front page of the sale (who would say no?). As expected, it did amazingly well for them. Repeat after me, Steam is curated (but only after you prove that your game can sell without their help).
- Participating in Wholesome Direct gets you 3000 wishlists. Doot says that he sees something similar from other developers he knows. The Wholesome Games organization does amazing work.
- Their discord is not that active. It goes quiet often. But when he is looking for a playtesters it is good to have that community to reach out to.
- The launch of Minami Lane greatly increased the sales of his first game Froggy’s Battle. The Minami Lane launch and bundle was bigger for Froggy than the game’s launch day. See! MAKE MORE GAMES!
- Doot’s next game is Kabuto Park. It is another management game. This one is a solo project and he says he is going to make it in an even shorter period of time but do more marketing.
- For additional details check out the reddit post Doot made
Summary
Everyone making a game should go play Minami Lane. It costs $4.99 and the lessons you can learn from it will save you hundreds of thousands in development costs.
After you buy it, pay attention to this:
- Try out a management game because they are the types of “sandboxy” games that Steam loves and I don’t think enough indie devs are making. I see many developers who come up with a really cool art style, don’t want to make a game about shooting and violence, but don’t know what type of game to make. I suspect many developers fall into making a puzzle game because of these constraints. Don’t do it though! A management game like Mianimi Lane is a much better fit for games with great art that you just want to luxuriate in. Make more management games!
- Minami Lane is a game that was made in a short period of time. It is possible. Play it to see how they cut development costs while not compromising on the fundamental gameplay that makes it acceptable to the picky Steam players.
- It’s fun and made by good people.