Arctic Flower

In First impression is important -article I covered some important things which developer should take account to ensure player’s interest to the game. In this article I’m going to talk little about releasing your W.I.Ps and completed games. How to get as much attention as possible? I have noted some common things in well released games and made many mistakes myself and earned precious knowledge. So I will share some of my experience to you.

Test your game

This is very important. When you are nearly finished your game, it’s tempting to get everything ready and publish your game as soon as possible. Hold on. In your hurry you will probably make some very bad mistakes which are going to ruin your game’s reputation. During my earlier projects I fell to this mistake and released accidentally one of my test version which started from later levels with very hard enemies. This caused many negative comments and was very damaging because my game looked enough good to attract many downloaders. You may also make some small modifications for your game just before publishing which lead to error messages or other weird things. Eventhough it’s very boring to test everything before release, do it! Or hire someone else to do it like I do

Screenshots

Many people have rule “No screenshot, no download” . If you want people to download your game you have to provide them some information about your game. Screenshots provide this information efficiently. Take some good screenshots from exciting places in your game and try to include many different situations which might awake potential player’s interest to download your game. There should be more than one or two screenshots from game. These screenshots should also be viewable “without” downloading (believe or not, many people host their images to the file services such as host-a-net which require to download file to the hard drive). They should also be large enough to give good idea from gameplay. You can also provide video of the gameplay using services like Youtube but in my opinion you should provide screenshots along with video.

Descriptions

Your game needs good description. In forums like GMC it’s best to compose topic which has brief general description of the game, little more detailed description of the gameplay and some other notes. Don’t write much though. Try to cram all needed information to small space because many people doesn’t like to read walls of text. Instructions should be introducted in game itself not in game’s topic. Good guide to compose effective topic can be found here made by Rhys Andrews. I also recommend to use good grammar and spelling in the description text. People who aren’t native English speakers can make some mistakes like I still tend to do, but native speakers should take care that their text is free of these kind errors.

It’s harder to compose effective description in YYG kind of sites, where you have only limited space for text. I have noticed that very short descriptions works well like “Hunt your escaped frogs in this challenging and fast paced game” . Okay, maybe little bad example but you got the point. In sites like this hangs around more people who cannot read even so much as people in forums, so you have to take that in account. It’s good idea to provide all necessary information in game itself.

Submit your game to the various places

In order to get as many players as possible you have to submit it to the various locations so many people will found it. Some good places for GM games which now come to my mind are

• YoYo Games
• GMC
• 64Digits
• Acid-play

Those were just some of the sites but should provide you some feedback and attention. You can find more with Google.

Other helpful tips

There is some other helpful things to do. You can example keep development blog of the game when you are developing something bigger game. If you succeed, you will generate some interest even before you release actual game or even demo.

Another thing is to try to make your project seem professional. People like professional looking things, right? Create good looking logo and banner for your project and put they to your signature in forums with link to your site or development blog. When you release your game you can make one of those so called userbars with text “I am proud supporter of Froghunt” and if people like your game, they may add bar to their signatures and so spread the word of your game.

Conclusion

• Test your game carefully and stomp every bugs you see.
• Provide some good looking screenshots including exciting events.
• Make clear and rather short description and remember good grammar.
• Submit your games to many locations to achieve more attention.
• Try to make your project seem professional with some further advertising.

Keep these things in mind when you are up to publish your game. Bad publishing may cause some serious damage for game’s reputation even if the game itself is good so plan carefully how you show your game to the world!

Tumetsu