Wishlists, feedback and how to continue

As always, I'm Taaro, SoloDev of Farewell, which is the game I want to make and the reason why I entered the industry.

On June 26th I released the Farewell demo on Steam. It was a big goal I had set in January, and I'm happy to have accomplished it despite all the problems. Looking back it was a lot of work, I can't even describe it. But today I don't want to talk about that. Today I want to talk about the Farewell wishlists, the feedback and how to continue.

The Results

About the demo results, can you say that they went good? Well, there was an improvement in the wishlist compared to before, but every day the wishlist per day goes down more and more. This week I made 46 wishlists, which is a big improvement compared to before when I only had the page and made between 9-13 wishlists. Now, the number of wishlists is still decreasing, so I don't know if the number will be much lower than before.

On the other hand, about how many people played the demo, Steam says that during the week there were 36, which is not much but not too few for the level I manage. In fact, a very good news I saw is that the average play time until a few days ago was 20 minutes (the demo duration it's more or less 25 minutes), so it means that most people played 4/5 of the game. Unfortunately, today that average dropped to 11 minutes, so we're back to not very positive numbers.

The Feedback

On the other hand, the feedback. In general, feedback is what helps me the most to move forward, because people point out problems or situations that I, with such a close and constant look at the project, cannot see. It also helps me to ask myself the right questions and to know if the direction I am taking is the right one.

However, even though there were 36 people who played it, to this day I have no feedback from anyone I don't know or with whom I haven't interacted in some way. Don't get me wrong, all the feedback I got from friends, peers, other game devs, playtesters, everything helped me like you can't imagine. But all that feedback has a layer of kindness and respect to be talking to me, and being just starting with this game I happen to really want to hear an opinion and make sure it's completely honest and disinterested.

In these months I've seen chatter and data from other game devs, and it scares me to think that I can go months or even years without a lot of people interacting. I've seen how many indie devs that did very well had flat metrics until at one point something happened and they started doing well. I hope I have the patience to get to that point.

The Decision

Surprisingly, there is one positive with all of this, which is the decision. All I know is that this game I'm making is all I want to do, so my options boil down to:

• A: Give up. Not fulfill the only dream I have and dedicate myself to doing something that keeps me unhappy.

• B: Keep going despite everything and find a way to make it work.

When I see that I only have these two options, the choice I have to make is obvious. I'm going to have a hard time, I'm already having a hard time, but I know what I want to do.

For the time being, my idea is to make the improvements that I believe in and keep leaning on friends and playtesters that I get, and make the best version of what I believe is possible. The only thing I hope is to be able to hold on.

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What about you?

Are you having bad results or did you have?

How do you handle it?

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