Hello everyone,

I'm looking to decide between SDL, SFML, and GLFW. Based on your experience, which one would you recommend?

To clarify, I'm specifically interested in working with one of these libraries and am not looking to use a pre-built engine. My project is primarily a 2D pixel art game for PC and console.

Thanks in advance for your insights!

https://preview.redd.it/f2u5frccupzd1.png?width=3984&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6d5f71dba1a14317022e0b87dd657a083443075

I've just released the eary access of my first ambitious game, Starry Larry: Let's Parry!, a boss rush where you can only attack by parrying.
https://akidne-develops.itch.io/starry-larry/devlog/830485/early-access-released

I’m a self taught programmer and in my spare time I am trying to make games (at least a nice one). This current project is bigger than my capabilities, but this journey helps me learn a lot!

Here come my problem: sometimes I show a friend of mine my code, or a ask him questions on how to do stuff, and he often asks me why I want to do it that way, or what’s my reasoning. I’m usually told that there are more efficient ways, and that what I do is VERY complex, and can be done in much easier ways.

Is it normal to come up with wrong/hard solutions? I know undertale is a programming nightmare, but still, sometimes I feel like I’m not good at this…

I announced my game 30 days ago and posted my pre-launch marketing plan here. Several redditors asked me to follow up, so here we are! As I wrote in the original thread, my goals are: 1) keep myself motivated through public disclosure, 2) see if any of you fine gentlepeople have ideas or suggestions, and 3) self-promote to this community through what I hope are interesting and helpful posts.

In this post, I’ll report wishlist counts for the first 30 days (tl;dr 479 wishlists), post-mortem on the social media strategy I used, and my status with regards to streamers (also referred to as content creators or YouTubers).

The Game

Flocking Hell is a deeply strategic roguelite in which you defend your pasture from a demonic invasion. The game blends calm exploration with auto-battler combat, offering a mix of easy-to-learn mechanics and deep strategy. It also has a lot of sheep. Learn more on the Steam page.

First 30 Days: Network + Social Media

I announced Flocking Hell on October 7. I posted on multiple subreddits, several small Discord channels where I’m an active member, the Kickstarter announcements for my 2022 crowdfunded board game, Worldbreakers, and a mailing list with ~1,800 subscribers who were interested in the board game. This first week saw healthy growth in wishlists, with 71 and 74 wishlists on the first two days, and 276 wishlists in total over the first week.

For the following 24 days, I received ~9 wishlists/day on average. However, this number is misleading, since wishlists have been directly correlated with my reddit posts and their success. For example, I posted the first part of this series on October 15, and the following day I saw 38 new wishlists. I had another successful post on Oct 21, where I introduced the “chill mode” for the game, and received 28 wishlists the following day. However, during periods where I did not post, wishlists dropped to 1-3 per day.

Two notes about social media. One, I have been an active redditor for over 15 years at this point. I feel very much at home here and I believe I understand the site rather well. Two, I tried using Twitter and larger Discords, and did not see any impact there. This is concordant with advice from Chris Zukowski (who claims that Twitter underperforms), but could also be due to my lack of experience with these platforms.

These numbers are rather poor given the amount of time I spent writing and posting. Speaking to other indie developers, I heard several credible stories of games reaching 1,000-2,000 wishlists in their first month through social media promotions. My conclusion from this period is that social media (and reddit in particular) is not the right marketing approach for Flocking Hell. The game is not pretty enough nor does it have a visual gimmick that can be delivered in a GIF or short video.

Gearing Up for Streamers

In the months leading to the Flocking Hell’s announcements, I curated and collected the contact information for 372 streamers whom I thought might be interested in featuring the game on their channel. A vast majority of these are YouTubers, with a handful of Twitch streamers, bloggers, or podcasters. I aimed to get at least 10 streamers in each of the languages Flocking Hell supports, with as many as 20 streamers for some languages (such as Japanese and German). Over the past 30 days, I have emailed each of these streamers at least once, and sent a second email to most of them.

I will write a separate post on my streamer outreach process. For the purpose of this conversation, I set an embargo date of November 8 (tomorrow), with a demo release date of November 19.

Of the 372 streamers, 312 (84%) did not reply at all. 3 (~1%) said that the game is not a good fit for their channel. 6 (~2%) were not interested in featuring a demo and asked me to email them again when I’m ready with the full game. 5 (~2%) asked for a key and said they probably won’t feature the game, but they will think about it. The remaining 46 (12%) streamers answered the email, seemed excited about the game, and said that they plan to feature it on their channel.

The two largest streamers have ~500k and ~350k subscribers, respectively. 7 streamers have between 30k and 100k subscribers, 13 have a few thousand subscribers, and the rest (24) have 1,000 subscribers or less.

I am overall very happy with the response rate I got from streamers. Everyone I have spoken with was super-nice and enthusiastic, and I believe they’re all “true believers” in gaming and in indie developers in particular. I really appreciate the burst of support I got from this group. Streamers are flooded with publisher and developer emails, and I am touched that so many of them spent the time to read about Flocking Hell and reply to my request.

Now what?

Now we wait. Tomorrow the embargo is lifted, so streamers will start posting their videos. I expect them to drip over the next two weeks, until the November 19 demo drop date.

I have no idea what will be the effect on views and wishlists, so it’s hard to provide a prediction. For my own personal sanity, I made up these goals: < 500 new wishlists, I’ll be deeply concerned about the future of the game. 501-1,000 wishlists, reasonable but disappointed, 1,001-2,000 wishlists, amazing, 2,001+ wishlists, over-the-moon delighted. Again, these are totally made up, hand wavy numbers.

Whatever happens, I’ll be back in a few weeks to report numbers. Thank you for reading! If you got this far, please check out the Flocking Hell Steam page, and wishlist if the game looks interesting.

Print millions in counterfeit cash, flood the market, outsmart the cops, seize the nation’s economy in a race against time! Demo link : https://jaykastudios.itch.io/the-counterfeit-bank

Hello everyone,

Can you provide examples of games that were developed within 3-4 months and were able to support the developer financially?

I'm trying to understand if it's possible, and under what conditions, to develop a game in a short period and be able to generate enough income to support the developer, allowing them to continue developing more games.

I would appreciate a list of examples. Thank you!

Adjusted the stair lights, and made the character start darker and gradually get brighter, added char weight at the end of the staircase an added some details.