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Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

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Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#51

Post by sspiff »

AnonHP wrote: post #50
SCUSKU wrote: post #11

Congrats on the launch! I would say though I think you should up your price to at least $9.99. A $3 game makes me think it's low quality, which it's not. So you ought to price your game appropriately.

Strongly disagree. A price of $9.99 may seem “quality “ to you, but may be out of reach for many people (including, but not limited to, those who are not in developed countries). I’d rather have a lower priced item that allows people to pay a lot more at the time of purchase or perhaps a reminder (not annoying, and only once) to donate/pay more on reaching a certain level. A price of $3 may be an impulse buy for some…

Steam allows for adjusted pricing based on country. It is common for games to cost more in US/EU versus other regions.

Additionally, and perhaps perversely, much of a games sale volume tends to be generated during seasonal promotions (Steam Summer/Winter Sale, etc).

Pricing a game at $3 doesn't give you anywhere to go in terms of a discount.

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#53

Post by janosdebugs »

eek2121 wrote: post #28
SCUSKU wrote: post #11

Congrats on the launch! I would say though I think you should up your price to at least $9.99. A $3 game makes me think it's low quality, which it's not. So you ought to price your game appropriately.

Disagree. If you agree, buy it and leave a review.

You just made our day, we were laughing do hard. :D

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#54

Post by janosdebugs »

maxdaten wrote: post #42
tracyhenry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 really well made. I wonder if there's a framework for making these kind of websites?

found in the sources that babylon.js ( https://www.babylonjs.com/ ) is in use.

BabylonJS indeed. We had a tutorial up on our previous YouTube channel, if there's interest, we'll reupload it.

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#55

Post by janosdebugs »

digging wrote: post #4

How did y'all find working in Godot? Any DX or workflow recommendations? I've bounced off it a couple times after getting impatient with slowness and other minor frictions, but I really want to like it.

Can't speak to Godot 3, but v4 has some infuriating bugs, unfinished features and idiosincracies. The interaction between scenes and code caused us to lose data more times than we can count and the dev team seems to be completely overwhelmed with the number of issues.

That being said, it is an engine that works and is used by enough people that you'll find bugs reported on the things that bother you, so you'll at least know if something is broken.

We found that doing as much as possible in GDScript and as little as possible in the editor is the way to go. The only time we had performance problems was when adding nodes (for some reason adding nodes is insanely slow). The multithreading is also still in need of work, but thread groups will, hopefully, solve the problem in the future.

We are currently looking into Bevy and Fyrox for BlockBawks since it needs a custom simulation engine, but we are still unsure. (It currently has a semi-working version in Godot, but spawning several 100k nodes is creating problems and will need optimizations.)

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#56

Post by janosdebugs »

SCUSKU wrote: post #11

Congrats on the launch! I would say though I think you should up your price to at least $9.99. A $3 game makes me think it's low quality, which it's not. So you ought to price your game appropriately.

We were debating this exact thing back and forth and decided for the current price based on expected playtime. By now, I have 10+ hours in the game, but you can beat the game to level 80 in roughly 4 hours, which equates to 1$/hour or the regional equivalent in price. We made the style and source code DLCs for people who were willing to pay more or support us, but wanted kids with low allowances to be able to buy the game as well.

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#57

Post by janosdebugs »

speps wrote: post #6

Congratulations, it must have been a difficult decision! Shipping a game is an amazing achievement and I like the creative way of releasing the source code! Make sure you've properly licensed the code, people have no conscience sometimes and will release your game again without crediting you...

Thank you! Apart from the Godot engine and the Rubik font (which are correctly attributed with detailed licenses in the game in the "Credits" section), we made everything in the game ourselves (code, graphics, sounds, music). The source code includes 3 MIT-licensed libraries we made, too. These are available in the source code DLC.

As far as people re-releasing our game is concerned, the source code DLC is licensed under the Steam Subscriber Agreement with a few added grants for mods and making videos, so legally nobody is allowed to re-release our game as a whole or even reuse the non-MIT parts without asking first. If anyone wants to re-use parts of the game in their own game, they are encouraged to contact us. (We definitely won't make a fuss about minor parts of the code when asked, but re-releasing the entire game is out of the question.)

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#58

Post by janosdebugs »

Hexigonz wrote: post #8

My story is similar to yours except I'm a little younger. My game comes out this summer. I'll definitely grab your demo, and I just want to say you should be really proud of this accomplishment.

Good luck! We learned a lot simply from the process of releasing the game. Wish we had done it earlier since now we feel ready for slightly larger projects and know we can push it over the finish line.

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#59

Post by janosdebugs »

shermantanktop wrote: post #22
ThinkBeat wrote: post #19

I watched the video on the Steam site and I dont understand the game at all. At one point it sort of looks like a modern version of snake. But that it is not. It sort looks like they are running over a circuit board. What are those green v shapes mean? Then perhaps Pacman Seems a bit Pacman. Gobble energy pellets?

Whether the game mechanics are totally obvious from a video or not is pretty game-dependent. The voiceover made it clear enough what was going on to me.

Wow, that is really valuable feedback, I suppose we should rework the trailer to work without voice-over too. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game

#60

Post by dotinvoke »

AnonHP wrote: post #50
SCUSKU wrote: post #11

Congrats on the launch! I would say though I think you should up your price to at least $9.99. A $3 game makes me think it's low quality, which it's not. So you ought to price your game appropriately.

Strongly disagree. A price of $9.99 may seem “quality “ to you, but may be out of reach for many people (including, but not limited to, those who are not in developed countries). I’d rather have a lower priced item that allows people to pay a lot more at the time of purchase or perhaps a reminder (not annoying, and only once) to donate/pay more on reaching a certain level. A price of $3 may be an impulse buy for some…

>I’d rather have a lower priced item

That’s what every customer wants. But game companies that sell at $3.99 don’t tend to release many high-quality sequels.

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