Lately I have been seeing more and more first-time devs lament “How can I possibly market my game when I have 0 following! No social media, no youtube subscribers.” In today’s blog post, I am here to reassure you that a huge number of the games that do well come Continue Reading

Middle games are the opposite of your dream game, they are games that you make quickly but not poorly. The point of a middle game is not to become a millionaire  but to get something public. They are more polished and complex than a game jam game, but much less Continue Reading

At the end of 2024 I wrote my definition of the meta-genre that Steam players really really like called Crafty-buildy-strategy-simulationy-games (read it here).  The “crafty-buildy” genre dominates PC. It is mostly unique to the PC marketplace. However I find that many indie game devs have a more console-game-based cultural history. Continue Reading

In my previous blog I looked at the stats for an itch.io game and what an over performing game looked like. Today I want to deep dive on a couple games that took their early itch.io success and parlayed it onto Steam with varied results. Die in Dungeon The experience Continue Reading

Hot take: the biggest constraint on indie developers isn’t “visibility” it’s “interest.” The most common question I hear is, “how do I get more visibility on my game?” But my theory is that games get plenty of visibility, it is just that the majority of game shoppers and content creators Continue Reading

The Roottrees are Dead is an amazing case study of how a narrative puzzle game emerged from a polished game jam game that was published to itch.io for free, then found some early interest by fans, then over the course of a year remade as a $19.99 Steam game and Continue Reading