Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

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ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

Greenlight Campaign Rebooted

The greenlight campaign has been running for about six months, and it's run out of steam at this point (no pun intended). There were a few mistakes I made with it, such as using a poor branding image, that probably contributed to poor traffic. I attempted to up my marketing and did a lot with social media and other outlets throughout the last couple weeks, but it's very difficult to get steam users to the greenlight page to vote at this point. Greenlight doesn't have much of a filter system, so games are easy to get lost in the noise once they drop off the radar. But if anyone reading this has any advice, I'd appreciate anything that could help the campaign.

So for those reasons, I decided to reboot the campaign with a better presentation, and hope for the best. I also put together a new trailer. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgnINAMZh74

So far the response has been positive. It hasn't quite been 48 hours yet, and I've almost accumulated the number of views in the entire six-month stretch of the last campaign, 50 more "yes" votes, and a higher ratio of "yes" votes to "no" votes.

The new greenlight page is now here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =938296974. Please take a moment to vote. Thank you.
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

And Greenlight is over. The good news is that Steam Direct is only $100 per game.

They're going to do one final cut to greenlight the last batch of approved games. We'll see if Toad On Fire makes the cut, but it's currently at 9% of the way to the top 100, so unlikely. Although the response to the second campaign was much improved, it dropped off rapidly after a couple days (usually about the time Steam stops promoting it). But it gathered 567 votes: 232 yes (41%) and 326 no (57%), 9 undecided (2%).
Boromir
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by Boromir »

ecxjoe wrote:The good news is that Steam Direct is only $100 per game.
Good news for me too. :)
How far do you think you are from finishing the game now?
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

Not sure. Always feels like it's six months away.

Going to try to have it beta ready by mid July. Then spend a few more months on fixing bugs, polish, etc. So hopefully this year it'll be done.
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

Oh my god! It got greenlit. :D
BasicCoder2
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by BasicCoder2 »

ecxjoe wrote:Oh my god! It got greenlit. :D
What does that mean? I thought the greenlit thing closed? I don't really understand what all those things are.
Having worked on a similar game inspired by your first version I have some idea how much work is involved!!
.
Last edited by BasicCoder2 on Jun 08, 2017 0:24, edited 1 time in total.
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

It means I can publish the game on Steam. They stopped accepting submissions for greenlight, but are taking the time to review all the submissions, greenlighting (approving) the last bunch they deem worthy, before switching to Steam Direct.
BasicCoder2
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by BasicCoder2 »

ecxjoe wrote:It means I can publish the game on Steam.
Well congratulations then.
.
Boromir
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by Boromir »

ecxjoe wrote:Oh my god! It got greenlit. :D
Hourra!
I've dreamed for a long time of seeing a FreeBASIC game on Steam.
This is a big step for FreeBASIC game dev.
Congratulations to you! I hope to see my own game on Steam someday.
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

Thanks for the congrats guys!

Good luck with your game, @Boromir. Looks like it's coming along nicely.
TeeEmCee
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by TeeEmCee »

Congrats! That second video is far better than the first one; looks like you've learnt how to sell your game. It looks like a real (and fun!) game rather than looking a bit half-finished. The greenlight audience is (was) really tough, but I would have expected it to be accepted. Even if only 40% of people are interested in your game, you have to realise that's still a huge fraction! It's not like 100% of gamers are interested in buying the typical AAA game.
Boromir wrote:I've dreamed for a long time of seeing a FreeBASIC game on Steam.
This is a big step for FreeBASIC game dev.
Congratulations to you! I hope to see my own game on Steam someday.
Maybe it stretches the meaning of "FreeBASIC game", but there are already 5 games on steam that I'm aware of which were created using the OHRRPGCE, which is a game engine written in FB (which I co-maintain), plus another unfinished one that also just got greenlit.
Those probably aren't the best or most polished OHR games, but few people wanted to go through all the trouble and nasty comments, pay $100, and polish their game.

From what I've read about Steam Direct, the only significant thing stopping you from getting your game onto Steam is finishing the game! Which was always the hardest part anyway.
ecxjoe
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by ecxjoe »

Thanks for the vote of confidence, TeeEmCee!

I added a new dev log: Core Gameplay and Power-Ups.

Image

I'm thinking of keeping my dev logs off this forum, except for big announcements, like demos and releases. You can view the latest entries at the game's IndieDb page: http://www.indiedb.com/games/toad-on-fire. Otherwise, I just copy-paste it here. What do you guys think?
TeeEmCee
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Re: Vote for Toad On Fire on Steam Greenlight!

Post by TeeEmCee »

Well, I realise it's extra work for you to copy paste everything here, but if you don't, almost everyone here will generally forget about it and not check another site... but that doesn't really matter if you still mention major milestones here, I guess. Publicity is a lot of legwork! Don't know how many people here are actually paying attention to this though.
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