Game Dev

Indie Dev makes $4 MILLION! ...then goes broke

Finding success with Indie Games is insanely difficult, most games make nothing. So imagine you DO find success, you get to the Top 1% of Steam with a hit game and make $4 MILLION! ...but then 3 years later you sell your IP for a measly $5k.

That's the story of the dev behind Rise of Industry, a hit automation game from 2019.

The dev has put out a great YouTube video talking about that story. How the game found a lot of success before Steam, then got a somewhat bad publishing deal, launched on Steam and made millions, so far so good.

However then they over expanded the team to over 20! people due to one very incorrect assumption: Assuming the game would continue selling the same number of copies month over month. There are very very few games where they keep selling more and more over time, most games sell a lot at launch then the sales dwindle over time, so if you expand your team based on your Month 1 sales then you will likely end up in this scenario, having 20 developers working on the game and dwindling funds from which to pay them.

They attempted updates to get the game selling more but, like it happens in most games, the sales numbers continued on their slow downtrend, slowly eating away at the company's funds until there was nothing left. At the end the lead developer was even at risk of losing his house and ended up taking a pretty bad deal to sell the IP for a measly $5k.

He also talks about the personal cost, being under so much stress for so long and working non-stop is a recipe for guaranteed burnout, which is what happened.

However while this seems like a tragic story that's not necessarily the case. The money didn't really vanish into thin air, it was paid to the developers working on the game. So a bunch of developers got paid a nice amount whilst working on a game for a few years, rather than just a single developer becoming a multi-millionaire, that's still a positive outcome!

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Game Dev

New HOTTEST genre on Steam!

There is a NEW HOTTEST Genre on Steam, several games have come out in the past 2 months in this genre and have found tons of success!

The genre is Incremental games. These are games where you start off from nothing doing very inefficient manual labor, then you buy an upgrade to make yourself work faster, then you hire some kind of minion to do work for you, then a machine to automate further, then more and more upgrades making yourself more and more efficient so you can watch the numbers go up faster and faster.

Here are examples of games in this genre that came out in the past 2 months and how much money they have already made in such a short period of time:

• Fill Up the Hole -> $70,000

• Click and Conquer -> $160,000

• Astro Prospector -> $260,000

• Keep on Mining -> $540,000

• Tower Wizard -> $600,000

• Digseum -> $720,000

• Cast n Chill -> $1,560,000

And it's not just financial success, players genuinely love these games! Several of these have Overwhelmingly Positive reviews with scores above 95%! Also several of these games clearly state in the store page how they are short experiences, 2 to 5 hours long, and yet players do not mind it. The games are genuinely great so players are happy to pay even if it's not a 50 hour experience.

There is no Incremental Tag on steam just yet, so the closest one that these games use is either Idler or Clicker.

If I were right now thinking of ideas on what game to work on for the next 4 months, I would definitely think about this genre.

It remains to be seen if this will be a genre like Simulator games which are still hot even after 10 years, of if it will be like Vampire-Survivors-likes which were super hot for about a year and now not as hot.

Tech

Liquid Biz Card!

If you're looking for a publishing deal in something like GDC then a business card like this could definitely make you stand out, I doubt anyone would toss a card like this in the trash!

It's a card with a particle liquid simulation on a bunch of LEDs. The GitHub contains the PCB design files as well as all the code that makes it work. This is built upon another project that is also excellent, if you want to understand the nitty gritty for how this works definitely read that post, it's super detailed.

This project even has a rechargeable battery! Super cool!

The main question is how much does it cost to make one? I have no idea but it certainly looks super cool! So if you're trying to get a 6 figure publishing deal then perhaps this might actually be a worthwhile expense.

Fun

Humanity's Tech Tree!

Tech Trees in games are always fun, it's always interesting to see all the upgrades you can unlock.

Humanity itself has also gained access to a lot of technologies over the years, and this website showcases the entire tech tree. It starts off with a Stone Tool all the way back at 3,300,000 BCE in Prehistoric Africa!

Then Humans unlocked Fire in 1,000,000 BCE, started making weapons with a Spear in 400,000 BCE, made the first Cave Painting in 42,000 BCE and Domesticated Dogs in 23,000 BCE!

The Abacus in 2700 BCE, Egyptian Wooden Tumbler Lock in 2000 BCE, Greek Alphabet with Vowels in 800 BCE, and the first Analog Computer in 150 BCE! Fun!