this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Indie Game Development

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This is the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/652770/Zofia/

Some other fun stats:

  • The demo had 27,719 downloads (Almost all from Steam with 45 of those being from itch.io)
  • ~334 players (demo and game owners combined) played splitscreen at least once
  • ~12% of players beat the game
  • ~70% of players quit playing when they encounter the first town
  • As of today, the game has had ~2 million impressions and ~800k page visits
  • I showed the game at three local expos (which made no noticeable impact on wishlists/sales/views)

I've been told the early access release was 'the release' and going to 1.0 was essentially a minor update, though my stats have reflected a little differently. Zofia went into early access almost entirely unnoticed and it wasn't until 1.0 that it got some attention, and more or less bursts here and there since then.

All in all I ran into pretty much every pitfall you could along the way, so I didn't walk away learning what the "correct" answers are, mostly just things to avoid doing - Which was unfortunately a lot.

That's it, thanks for reading.

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[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Two million impressions and only 1500 sales, never knew the ratio would be so rough. On the one hand it's nice that steam pushes obscure indie games so much (I guess that's where the 30% is worth it). On the other hand, they do it for everyone so I bet it's hard to stand out and get conversions on those impressions/clicks.

I know I'm guilty of speeding through my discovery queue. Although I at least wishlist things that interest me.

(PS I've seen games from major publishers do worse than 1500 sales, but I can't say more since it's nda lol)

[–] justdaveisfine@piefed.social 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah the conversion rate is pretty bad. I've been told its not visually standout enough to really grab much interest.

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

There's a lot of factors, but a lot of it is also luck. You're looking at an incredibly saturated market, though, so even if you had striking visuals it might not be enough (and usually, it isn't). I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a fairly typical conversion rate given the Steam method of conveyor belt showcasing.

Besides, you did have otters. That's a plus!