This is an excellent postmortem from a hit* incremental indie game, MMO98, and I think there are a ton of valuable lessons here for indie devs.

The short version is: the game was a success, but with a big asterisk, it could have been a lot bigger.

They made $73,886 gross revenue in about 3 weeks! With a game made by 2 people in roughly 100 days. Compared to the average indie game, that is an awesome result! Most indie games take months or years to develop, and end up returning less than $1000, so this one is clearly a hit compared to most games. But that number could have also ended up with an extra digit. In their analysis they feel like could have set expectations better, they could have balanced the late-game more, and solved issues with launch communication.

The game launched with 27,000 wishlists (very strong amount!) and the game was selling extremely well, sold over 5,000 copies in just a few hours. But then the reviews started coming in, and due to issues with mismatched player expectations they were coming in quite negative which dropped the game into Mixed review score (59%) which then tanked their momentum.

The biggest reason the game worked was the hook. Windows 98 UI + MMO studio fantasy + incremental game is just instantly clickable. Nowadays you need a strong hook and that is a very strong hook with a very strong visual identity on a very strong genre. You can look at one screenshot and immediately understand why people would be curious. This is such an important lesson in terms of marketing and idea selection.

But interestingly, that same hook also sort of hurt them.

Some players thought the game would be more like an actual MMO, others expected a deep management sim, and others were disappointed that it was a short incremental game. So the thing that made people click also made some players imagine a different game in their head. They do include at the very top of the description "this is a short incremental game" but most people don't actually read the description, they see the trailer, capsule and maybe 1-2 screenshots. That is very important when it comes to correctly talking about your game to players.

Player expectations really matter, and in this case the warm audience that followed their YouTube channel understood the game and enjoyed it, but the cold Steam audience expected something different which lead to negative reviews which killed their momentum. Steam has a ton of places where your game can show up, Popular Upcoming, More Like This, Genre/Tag page, and many more. But when a game is Mixed players are less likely to buy it which in turn leads to the game drastically losing visibility (Steam only cares about making money, so if your game starts converting less, AKA making Steam less money, it loses visibility)

There are also some really useful smaller takeaways. Supporter packs can be "free money" if your game has traction. Mac support can be worth it but only if testing cost is low. Bundles can help, but only when they make sense for the audience and it might be best to have fewer better bundles than just bundling with everyone. And also late-game matters a lot, even for a short game, because some players will push your systems way harder than you expect.

My favorite lesson though is the bigger one: keep making games.

This was not just some magical lucky hit. It was the result of them making previous games, learning lessons, building skills, understanding Steam better, and slowly improving. That is exactly why I always say "make more games." Every finished project teaches you something that makes the next one better. This was their 6th game on Steam and it is the biggest hit they've had so far, and I'm sure they will have even bigger hits in the future.

Unity is running an surprising bundle! Surprising because I instantly spotted how it contains one of my most recommended assets of all time, that I definitely did not expect to be bundled!

It’s worth it for that asset alone (Asset Inventory) and on top of that getting all the other assets is just an awesome bonus. The whole thing has a huge discount and it’s mostly made up of new assets so you probably don’t have any yet. (I only had one asset myself)

Get it HERE!

The Publisher of the Week this time is Gustav Olsson, who has a bunch of interesting tools for making Ropes, Shadows, Breaking things and more.

Get the FREE Ocean Toolkit which is a tool to help you render and entire ocean!

Get it HERE and use coupon GUSTAVOLSSON at checkout to get it for FREE!

Looking for Characters and Weapons in a realistic style to make your games? Check out this awesome HumbleBundle!

It’s made by Bugrimov Maksim which is one of the best realistic publishers. This pack has a mountain of characters in all styles, alongside a ton of weapons with first person animations.

It’s 98% OFF! Get it HERE!

One of the absolute legends in the games industry when it comes to programming is John Carmack. One of the original founders of id Software responsible for DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D and more, not to mention the revolutionary id Tech engine.

He just wrote a very interesting post on Twitter talking about his advice on starting a game company.

The market is extremely difficult, it is extremely crowded with extremely high quality games. Finding success requires excellent execution. (plus a little bit of luck)

He says how if you still want to go ahead with it then absolutely make sure you identify your target players BEFORE you start. Build the smallest version of your game you can, and when you find something that works, keep pushing on it.

This is excellent advice, not just with regards to Game Development but really any company or any commercial product you want to create.

The first step is the audience. If you're making games with the goal of making it a successful business then you need players to buy your games, so you can't make something no one wants.

And how do you know that someone wants your game? You make something SMALL like I always say. Make more games, make smaller games, and over time you will develop a sense for what kinds of games people want to play. Every time you actually ship something, you learn about scope, production, marketing, player expectations, pricing, Steam, and all the boring business stuff that you cannot learn just by planning your mega dream project forever.

So if your goal is success, I highly recommend you follow this advice.

Here is such a fun, dumb idea in the best possible way. One developer is working on an indie game that turns your neglected Steam library into actual enemies! It is called Game Quest: The Backlog Battler

The basic joke is perfect: the games you never played come back to punish you, and the more money you spent on them, the more damage they do. While at the same time your most played games become your allies. The whole thing pulls data from the Steam API so it's all super accurate.

This is so silly and so fun. Everyone has a pile of shame in their Steam library, I definitely have thousands of games I've never played (plenty I bought a bundle to play one game and got a dozen extra games) and I'm definitely not the only one. Maybe this will cause people to remember "oh right I did buy that game ages ago and never played it! Maybe now I will!"

I really like ideas like this because they feel so obviously clever in hindsight. This is not some huge technical breakthrough, just a very strong concept built around a behavior almost every Steam user understands. There is already a demo on Steam, and the game is currently listed for release in 2026, so now the funniest possible outcome would be for a bunch of people to wishlist it, and then never actually play it.

Valve is finally releasing hardware again! The Steam Controller launched last week and it sold out instantly (despite the $99 pricepoint)

And somehow someone discovered that if you drop the Steam Controller from a certain height, it actually screams! It plays the famous Wilhelm scream as it falls down.

This is pretty silly but also a genius way to get a ton of free organic marketing! They definitely got tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising by adding a feature that likely took them 5 minutes to implement.