When you have 0 budget, the community is your biggest mouthpiece. Definitely post the game as Early Access and share it with Steam curators or people who enjoy reviewing indie games!

9 minutes ago, gsimo999 said:

Hi, i'm interested in playing your game, at the moment i have a few questions

Can i buy the game right now ? or do i need to wait until the 2 August ?

How much will it cost ?

Do you have a forum or Discord/Slack/etc. to find the community ?

Hi! Thanks for your interest.

You can play the demo for free right now but you can't buy it before August 2, 2019.

I'm still unsure about the price. I think $29.99 USD should be fair given the unique features and the amount of work I've put into it. If I sell it for less, people will probably ask themselves what is wrong with the game.

forums.cubeuniverse.net

Discord

2 minutes ago, Torao0 said:

When you have 0 budget, the community is your biggest mouthpiece. Definitely post the game as Early Access and share it with Steam curators or people who enjoy reviewing indie games!

It. Is. Not. On. Steam. But yeah, I'll find people who want to review it.

Quote

If I sell it for less, people will probably ask themselves what is wrong with the game

This is definitely not true. I doubt anybody has ever thought "this game is too cheap, something must be wrong with it."

Voxel games are very common right now, and the risk of buying a $30 indie game with few reviews and in early access would result in very low sales. I would recommend going for the extreme opposite and selling it for something like $5 or less. Lower prices mean higher sales. As an example, I bought Insurgency for $1. It's a fantastic game that has a sizable player base thanks to generous pricing and discount sales like that. The large player base resulted in more publicity and in the end, more income

Well, that's helpful, two contradicting opinions.

I'm definitely not selling it for $5 though. Still not sure if $20 or $30 is better. If you consider how expensive things are here where I live, I would go with $30. If I order a pizza I pay €24 here, it's actually crazy. And yes, I know that maybe shouldn't be a factor if you sell internationally, but still.

And given that I have previously shown that I will not give up and will continue working on the game, paying $30 is not too high of a risk.

I do not plan any discounts until at least 6 months after full release. People are just used to paying way too low prices for games and then they wonder why almost no Early Access game gets finished. I mean, what is the point of paying $5 for 6 games each if none of them will be finished anyway.

On the subject of price, two advice (since I'm hearing stuff that is "academically" wrong).

First, you definitely can price your product too low and lose sell over it.

Second, don't ever price something based on the amount of work you put into it. Price something based on it's market value.

I'll probably get a lot of shit for this, but people generally do not care about the work you put into something. The best way to go about this is to find who your client is and what he's willing to pay for the game (and this applies to anything, but first you need to know who you want to market your game to). At this point you're so far off the mark marketing wise it's probably useless to give you industry specific advices. Taking a day to do a video probably won't help much. Your next step probably consists of trying to explain your game to your target segments (if you don't have, just use random people, and start from there ). Then watch them play and take notes. Have a conversation with them.

If that sounds awful and scary, it's because it is. But you must do this if you care about your project.

Source: I'm 6 months away from having my B.B.A.

And what is the market value of a game? In my case I'm sure it is at least $20 but is it maybe higher? It's still in development but it was $25 on Steam and it is now way more advanced, therefore $30 would be fitting I guess? I mean, you definitely get something special, it's not your typical Unity game or whatever, it's a custom engine that is pretty advanced, with a game that has really cool features. Yes, the graphics aren't perfect maybe but they are good enough for this stage.

6 minutes ago, Magogan said:

And what is the market value of a game? In my case I'm sure it is at least $20 but is it maybe higher? It's still in development but it was $25 on Steam and it is now way more advanced, therefore $30 would be fitting I guess? I mean, you definitely get something special, it's not your typical Unity game or whatever, it's a custom engine that is pretty advanced, with a game that has really cool features. Yes, the graphics aren't perfect maybe but they are good enough for this stage.

I understand that. I don't know what the market value of your game is. You will have to research this yourself, probably mainly by looking at similar games and seeing how they're doing.

Also, and I know this is hard, but you're not selling a game engine. You're selling a game to people who probably don't know what an "advanced custom engine" means. It needs to be reflected in advanced custom gameplay, and advertising your game as a game like minecraft but with smaller cubes and quests is a far cry from doing so.

You need to detach yourself from the game and think about the person who you'll sell the game to, or you'll be stuck with an uncomercializable love project forever.

13 hours ago, FFA702 said:

Also, and I know this is hard, but you're not selling a game engine. You're selling a game to people who probably don't know what an "advanced custom engine" means. It needs to be reflected in advanced custom gameplay, and advertising your game as a game like minecraft but with smaller cubes and quests is a far cry from doing so.

Well, what am I supposed to do? Those are the main features. The combat system is somewhat unique, at least the fact that weapons work like classes and you can easily switch between two "classes" by simply equipping a different weapon. The other main features (space combat, dungeons, battlegrounds) are still in development.

That said, I now call the smaller blocks "Mini Blocks" to not emphasize the comparison that much. I'm working on a trailer that shows some quests and calls the viewer to action.

So, how's the release going? I see one playthrough on YouTube.