Warships On The Halloween Night Coming Soon on Steam! - A 2D Arcade Shooter Game - Wishlist Now

Hello,

I have been working on a new indie game called Warships on The Halloween Night which is a 2D Arcade Shoot them up game based on the war between the human beings and the pumpkin bots.

Wishlist This Game on Steam: 



Warships On The Halloween Night is an extreme Top Down Arcade Shooter game based on the naval war which broke out between the Human beings and the Living Pumpkins.

I also have released the game trailer for Warships on The Halloween Night game. If you are into the shoot'em genre you might like this game. Here is the Official Game Trailer given below:

BEHIND THE SCENES:

Warships on the Halloween Night is my very first 2D shoot them up game which brings you back to 90s when arcade games were very popular among the masses. I thought it would be a great idea to work on. 

I have done all of the graphics work, artwork, animation, character design, and programming. I have used Royalty free music for the game since I am not a music guy. I am an artist to begin with and I love programming too.

It took around 1 and a half month to finish the game. I also have worked on the cover art. Key visuals is an important part required for marketing. If Steam cover image is attractive it will encourage a higher number of users to click on the game page link and check out your game on Steam. 

During the development of the game, I got stuck for a few times especially at the ideas and game mechanics. Creating 20 big levels was not a matter of joke. No matter what the situation was I had successfully finished making the game. 

PLAYTESTING:

I don't have any other playtesters other than Steam curators who play the game and write the reviews. Well, not many people wrote reviews though. I have tested the game from level 1 to 20 and I made sure there are no game-breaking bugs. As you know, the launch window is crucial because it is make or break situation. I always make sure that the game is free from any major bugs and issue. 

REVIEWS:

Yes, I have received a review from one of the Steam curators who are into arcade shooters and he has played for about 15 minutes in average. So, here is the review he wrote:
"A fun top down shooter where it feels like an old school game with retro style. Bullet hell at times, which is great, love the Halloween style! Lots of fun for hardcore and casual players!" - Hookups.

Well, that sounds cool. But these reviews does not matter. I just have to learn from the feedback I receive and I will make better indie games in the future. 

VERDICT:

Although it was a really challenging for me to make the game of a new genre I have enjoyed the process. Since I have created a game based on the Halloween theme I was super excited and I wanted to finish the game before the Halloween 2019 comes up. 

1. The game will be released on 13th September, 2019.
2. It will be priced somewhere between $0.99 and $1.99.

This is all about the game and if you still have not wishlisted the game yet please do it. I hope you will enjoy the game and yes, cheer me up because I am really nervous as I don't know what will happen after the game goes public. Moreover, it is a great learning experience for me.

I will do a mini postmortem as soon as I have some sales data. Thank you!

Jaxon The Thief - A 2D Stealth Platform Game - Mini Postmortem

Today, I am gonna talk about the game Jaxon The Thief and how it did on Steam. Due to the NDA I am afraid I can't expose exact sales figure. So, I apologize in advance for that.

Jaxon The Thief is a 2D Stealth Platformer based on the story of an infamous thief called Jaxon who mostly targets the richest houses in the various cities in the US. 

Check out the game on Steam and support me if you want. Thank You!

One day, I came to know about The Master Spy game on Steam and I fell in love with the ideas that I got from that game. I thought it would be fun to create a game like that and hopefully be liked by some players. So, I created the game within a month and a half working 16 hours a day including Saturdays and Sundays and finally launched it on Steam.

I had priced it just at $1.99 and probably, this pricing was a bit higher for customers probably as per the sales data of the first week after the launch. 

So, how did it do on Steam? Terrible. Just terrible. Many developers don't want to admit that they sucked and that their games did not sell well. But I will share it even if it had sold 0 copies.  I am not scared to fail because I have failed a lot already and it just excites me more than making me depressed. 

I have sold around 20 copies(Won't provide specific number due to NDA). But that's okay.

But I will share the Google Analytics visitor graph for the first week of release:

Verdict:

I have learned something out of this experience. I would say until you can create something much more unique in simple platformer genre I would not encourage anyone to create platformer. The genre is super competitive and making simple platformer is no longer a viable option. Action platformer do sell better now-a-days on Steam. However, I did not run any paid advertising or marketing. Sometimes, the games don't do well on Steam at launch but it might take off later.

So, will I create platformer again sometime in the future?
Simple platformer - Probably never again. I will make action platformer instead with an effective story behind it. That would be much better option even now on Steam I believe.

Don't be disheartened after reading this post. I am sure there are lots of great other genres which I have not even created the games for. I am currently expanding to try making games of different genre and see what works the best.

I will keep making more postmortem of my future releases. If you have questions feel free to comment below. I will get back to you. Thank you!


 

Gregor Hills Haunted Hospital - A 2D Survival Horror Game Launched on Steam! - Analysis

Hello everyone,

I have recently launched a 2D Survival Horror game on Steam which is called Gregor Hills Haunted Hospital. This game is based on the story of one of the most haunted hospitals in Gregor Hills.

I have been attempting to make some small 2D Horror indie titles and so far, it has been a great experience for me. I have decided to make more indie horror games in the future because gamers do like horror games and I am glad to find an audience for my niche game on Steam which is indeed awesome!

I have decided to share the sales graph for the first week of release of the game only without any numbers or specifics. Because of the NDA, I afraid I can't expose the specific numbers.

Anyway, this 2D Survival Horror indie game is available for purchase on Steam. Feel free to check it out if you want:

With no social media marketing, or advertising I was able to sell around 100 copies of the game in the first week of the release. 

Although sales were not that good but without marketing I was able to sell some copies. That's always a plus.

So, do I want to make more horror games after the massive launch failure? Yes, absolutely. Why not?! Who knows if my game gets popularity all of a sudden. It has been a great experience so far. I did got it in some bundle promotions and got a lot of exposure and sales. 

So, does it worth the effort?
Yes. However, I can increase sales by doing some marketing and stuff in the future and this product adds up to my collection. 

Don't forget to check this game out and support my game.

Chills - A 2D Top Down Survival Horror Indie Game - Devlog

Project Started: 5th December, 2018
Project End: -
Project Name: The Chills
Developer: Anamik Majumdar

5th February, 2018:
I have almost done most part of the game. Here is the official trailer of the game. You can wishlist the game on Steam right now.
Store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1008140/The_Chills/

28th December, 2018:
I made a lot of progress within these weeks. I will post little by little every single day to let you know how things are progressing. I have added some of the features mentioned below:
1. Added lighting effects in the game.
2. Added more furniture, lights and lots of props.

I am currently working on new characters which I will show later. For the time being, here is an image:

7th December, 2018:
I have started working on a new indie game which is a 2D Top down Survival horror game. The game is just started and I am currently designing the very first level of the game. After creating so many platformers I have decided to make a game of different genre which is based on the dark theme. I am going to make it as good as I can. Wish me luck guys! :D

Here is a raw image of the level I am currently building. It looks pretty amateurish but well, it will take some good amount of work to make it look great. I will show it anyway.

 More updates coming soon! I will try my best to post every day.

The Making of Smash Halloween Pumpkins - The Challenge Indie Game - Developer Story And Postmortem

Hey guys,

After releasing Captain The Runner game, I set out with another interesting platform action game, the genre which I love the most, called Smash Halloween Pumpkins: The Challenge. Yes, it is a Halloween themed platform action game which is released on Steam.

I can still recall when I got an idea of making a Halloween themed game. It was when I watched a GDC talk presented by Jake Birkett and his story of surviving 11 years in the game industry without a hit. He presented some of his games in that video where he had a Halloween themed game as well. At that moment, I made my mind. I said to myself, " Hey! I wanna make a 2D Action Platform based on Halloween theme." Why not? There are obviously not many Halloween Themed games on Steam and the world needs more great Halloween themed game. Finally, I successfully finished making the game within a month. Yes, it took me a month to finish the game.

I have created all the assets of the game myself except for the music. My art style is kind of different from all sorts of pixel art and I am proud of being different. 

The game got released on Steam on 14th September 2018. Today on 28th September, I am writing this article and I can say there is a few weeks sales data which I can show here. But I will not expose the numbers because of the Steam NDA(Non-Disclosure Agreement). A small graph can be more than enough for you to even show that it has sold some copies. 

I have been working on many project all at once and I am trying to get them out to the public within a month or two months or six months. Well, I am no longer working on a year long project because it is too risky for me at this moment. So, I am focusing on small scoped projects. As I have always said that I am a fast game designer, artist and programmer, working around 10 to 12 hours a day including Saturday and Sunday. Well, holidays are not for me to be honest although I sometimes get overwhelmed by the amount of work left.  

POSTMORTEM:

The Release: 
The game got released on 14th September 2018 on Steam with a pricetag of $0.99. The reason behind putting such a pricetag for my game is that it works for me but that does not mean it will work for you. Being an unknown indie developer, having a higher price tag might not be the best option. It depends upon lots of things like development budget, timing etc.

It was released with an introductory discount of 30% that means it sold for $0.69 at the time of launch which lasted for a week. After that, it was still selling at a full price. However, people usually don't buy an unknown title from an unknown indie developer at a full price.   

I indeed got some traffic directly from Steam and I used Google Analytics to take a look at some numbers. Here is the information given below:

Here is an interesting data. I did not get much traffic at the time of launch. But as soon as it got a positive review from a Steam customer, the visibility increased by two times than what it got during the launch week.

So, how did the game do on Steam? Well, You have heard about lots of successes but the developers usually don't want to discuss about their failure. I am kind of different person. I have failed so many times in life that I don't have a fear of failure but I just never stop making games. I am madly in love with my work, trust me. I can't live without making games for a single day. 

The sales did not go well. That's given because I am hardly doing any marketing outside Steam and without marketing it is impossible to sell many copies. As an indie developer, Tim Ruswick said, "You sell zero copies of your game by default." That's true.

My game has sold pretty less, that is, < 200 copies. Most of you will consider it as a brutal failure. Trust me, you can sell around 100 to 500 copies a week on Steam now-a-days due to increased number of releases without external marketing. There is also an article written on Gamasutra about it.

Conclusion:

It does not matter even if it fails because I am very proud of the game I made and I am really glad to be able to publish it on Steam and get it out to the public. You should always remember that Launch day is not the end of the life cycle of the game. You can use many post-marketing strategies to keep selling the games you make. I love launching and shipping games. I am honestly less embarrassed to put my work out to the public. People often get annoyed by negative reviews but it really does not matter if it gets bad reviews or good reviews as long as you learn something from them. 
You can check out Smash Halloween Pumpkins: The Challenge game on Steam:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/886010/
   
I am currently working on a new game called The Christmas Gifts and I hope it does well on Steam but I highly doubt it though. 

Thanks for reading the article and I hope you found it useful.

Gaze At Maze - an Upcoming 2D Maze Game on Steam! - Developer Story

Hey guys,

Developer here! I have decided to share my stories regarding the game and my life while I was working on this game. 

I wanted to make a maze game long time ago. I had attempted to create Gaze At Maze game in 2015 which was in prototype phase for a very long time. I had at first published it on itchio and sold some copies. This has led me realize that I should make this game as good as possible. I did not have good art skill at that time. But now within just three years, I got much better at pixel art. So, I had decided to revamp the whole game and make a new game based on the prototype which was created in 2015. The game was really fun to play and when I published the prototype on Gamejolt, a few people made a walkthrough of the game. They did enjoy it and played it for more than 10 minutes.

After all these years, I decided to work on this game and finish it within the least possible time. It took me three months to get it work and running. I have done all the artwork, graphics, programming etc.

You can take a look at the old version of the game:

 

It was a great experience for me and after making couple of indie games for Steam, I gained confidence in myself to be a finisher. The things which I have learned is priceless. 

After finishing The Mystery of Devils House game I immediately started out with another project. Since I made lots of platformer I wanted to try something new. So, an idea came to my mind and I started working on and build the prototype I made long time ago into a full fetched indie game with good graphics and challenging game play. I can't really say if people on Steam would love it or hate it. Either Way, I will accept and move on from there. 

I am pretty lucky to have a supportive community around all of my game and most of their feedback were tremendously helpful to me. That's the very reason why my latest game called The Mystery of Devils house got mostly positive reviews. 

Animating lots of characters, creating props, textures and all is pretty challenging. I consider myself a fast game designer. I can create and animate a 2D character sprite within a few hours or a day if I work full time. (Around 12 hour a day). Someday I couldn't work at all and someday I worked like crazy to finish the game. 

The game turned out to be a science fiction themed game based on the story which I had created for the game. I had to change the story many times to make it suitable for the current theme of the game and it turned out alright in the end. I was really surprised by the improvement of my own art work and my art style is kind of different and unique as compared to other pixel art for Western styled games. 

Finally, I finished it within three months only. Meanwhile, I was working on a new little title called Captain the runner. 

Here is the official trailer of Gaze at Maze game:

I hope those who will play it will love it and I will post about the postmortem of this game once it is out on Steam and I finsh gathering enough data for the first week of launch. 

Get it on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/861210/ 

Postmortem: Link Coming soon! 

The Mystery of Devils House - A 2D Horror Action Platformer got a Release Date - PC Windows/ Linux

The waiting time is over! The Mystery of Devils House, a new 2D Horror Action Platformer has got a release date. This game is created by Anamik, a solo indie game developer, who has been working on this game for more than 6 months. 

The Mystery of Devils House is a 2D Action Platformer based on the story of the Haunted House located in Massachusetts. The owner of the house called The Ghostbusters Crew: International to investigate the whole building to prove the existence of evil spirits and the Devil. There was a dark history associated with the William House which is a popular Haunted location in America. The Ghostbuster crew consists of four team members like Ankush, Annie, Tomoko and Steve. 

The Mystery of Devils House is scheduled for release on 11th of May, 2018 on Steam and will be available for both Windows PC and Linux. It also has Steam Achievements which can be collected as you play the game.

The Official trailer of The Mystery of Devils House is given below:

 

Are you looking forward to the release? Cool! 

Wishlist the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/825970/The_Mystery_of_Devils_House/ 

Want to be a fan of this game? Subscribe to the mailing list to get notified about indie game discounts, new releases and some goodies here: http://www.amaxang-games.com/2018/03/the-mystery-of-devils-house-indie-game.html 

 

Top 5 Places to promote your indie game Generating Gif images

In this article, I will cover some techniques by which you can promote your game and if you are lucky you can also build a fan base using your "promotion materials"  before your games are released to the public.

For Pre-Alpha phase of your game:

This is the phase of development where you have some concepts ready for showing to the public. However, I would not recommend you to show the gifs at this stage. But if you have some sketches or any animated model ready. You might show it on the various communities.

But, for the games which are in Alpha, Beta or Stable state, it is strongly recommended that you start making some promotional materials including gif images, screenshots and banners(if you have one). 

There are several places where you can upload gifs and promote your gifs online to get some potential customers and at the same time building your very own audience surrounding your brand. 

1. Uploading and Sharing on Imgur Community:

Have you head about Imgur website? Well, it is an image hosting website where you can upload your gifs and screenshots. Nice, if you know that why don't you upload gifs of your games on that site. 

But if nobody sees my gif on Imgur what is the point of uploading there? Good question. Actually, there is a way to post your images by adding some texts, links and sharing with Imgur community. As soon as you share on Imgur community you can see more and more people are watching your gif image.

But one downside which I have noticed on Imgur is that any posts are going to receive more downvotes than upvotes and that should not matter as you can not satisfy all the customers ever.

2. Share images on Social network site like Twitter:
Upload your gifs on giphy image hosting site because these images works the best with Twitter. Just post 5 times per day or a week to get most out of it. Gif images might be a great way to receive more attention. Don't forget to use #gamedev hashtag while sharing the post on Twitter.

3. You can post it on some of your favorite game dev forums like gamedev.net, tigsource. This might not be as effective as you think because game developers are NOT your target audience. However, you can still show the gifs in Gamedev forums during the development solely for feedback.

4. Share your gifs on some well known subreddits like /r/gifs and that is really effecting. Make sure your game is really polished. Choose the best possible gif to show it on this subreddit. In order to receive feedback, don't forget to post your gifs of your games in /r/gamedev "Gamedev subreddit". Moderators on Gamedev subreddit arrange Screenshotsaturdays thread every Saturday and that is a chance for you to show off your indie game to other game developers.

5. Upload your gif images to gfycat.com and share your gifs on vine.co and other similar sites like giphy. It does not gurantee that it will get more visibility but there is still a chance of getting some following. You can post about it on your own websites and blogs like Tumbler.com. 

These are some of the ways you can promote your Gif images. It won't be that easy to get a following for your game but it will certainly get more visibility and some potential sales when the games come out, than doing nothing. 

I hope that it will be useful for your indie game marketing adventure.