This newsletter is coming back to life, with news about my indie game!

Hi, remember me? You were probably subscribed to The Tech Bubble, my newsletter about indie and tech stuff. I halted it a while ago because I lacked the motivation and the time to continue putting out an edition every single week.

But now, I am focusing my energies in a single project, and I was thinking that it is a good opportunity to revive this newsletter, with updates about my journey with this new project of mine, instead of throwing all the work I put previously away.

This new project is an indie game I've been working on for the past year or so, called Quest of the Hero.

You can see the Steam Store page here, and if you have any ideas on how I can improve it, just let me know by sending me an email at vlad@vladcalin.ro:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3185230/Quest_of_the_Hero/

Here's what's been happening with it for the past year:

1. I started it based on a simple "dungeon crawling" mechanic that's based in card games: draw three cards with different effects, and choose the one that you like most (or dislike the least). They affect your journey in different ways, and the main goal is to get as far as possible before running out of health
2. I built some prototypes around it, and decided to get serious with it, and fully committed to building it and releasing it on Steam. I bought some art packs to make it look more like an actual commercially viable game, and the core gameplay loop started to actually feel fun.
3. I iterated over multiple iterations on various aspects
   1. the combat transitioned from a turn based system, to a clicker system and now it is an semi-idle system
   2. the type of effects the option cards give transitioned from a combination of positive and negative effects, to "sections" of good only options alternating with sections of negative only effects, to only negative effects, but cards have a chance to have a positive effect (but a harsher negative effect it you're unlucky).
4. After the game loop was somewhat stable, I partnered up with an artist from Iași, Romania, my city, to get proper art that looks good. By doing that, the game was unrecognizable from before, it looked WAY better.
5. Now, I am working on building interest around my game to gather wishlists, in anticipation for the release day which will come in Q1 2025. As I created the Steam Page, and I have a place to send people to to get some feedback.
6. I am on track to release the demo on Steam sometimes end October or early November 2024.

I put a lot of hours in developing it, so I want it to be financially successful to some degree, at least to keep me motivated afterwards to go out with a 2nd game, then a 3rd, and so on.

So, in order for that to happen, I have to approach it as a business, and put in some marketing. Because as any product, no matter how good the product is, it is going to fail if nobody hears about it.

The marketing efforts I made so far are:

1. Restarting this newsletter, as a general update newsletter. I will send updates without a schedule, when I have news or more things happened over a period that I think would be interesting enough to share.
2. Paid promotion: I ran a paid ad on Meta to bring eyeballs to my Steam page, and for ~35 RON / 7€, which is the minimum amount Meta allows you to spend, I got ~80 people to the Steam page. The sad part is that I forgot to add campaign tracking parameters on the link, so I have no idea how many converted to wishlists 😢
3. Reddit promotion: I spammed Reddit a bit with gameplay footage, and got some feedback that way. Some good, some bad, but overall, feedback is important and I'm using it to make my game better. I promoted so hard that I got banned for 15 days on a certain subreddit... woops! 😬
4. Social media posting: I setup all the accounts for my "gaming studio", CSV Games, on all major platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and I started to post almost daily there. The views are not great and I don't know how many people they bring. I'm thinking on adjusting the frequency there so I have more time to prepare the content for it.

The results so far:

• So, in about two weeks since I created the Steam page, I got ~50 wishlists. Not great, not terrible, from what I read, it's very slightly above the organic traffic and wishlists Steam offers any game by default.
• One frequent criticism about the game is related to the name I chose, that it is too generic or sends too many "mobile asset flip" vibes. I chose it to be memorable, have common words and also a somewhat low competition on both Steam and Youtube for these words. As you can see in this Steam traffic breakdown screenshot, it seems that I made the right call, or at least that's how I interpret these numbers (a lot of impressions are coming from the Search suggestions and results, but unfortunately I can't see what terms lead to that).