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Lasautus 22 Oct, 2015 @ 5:14am
Hi! Releasing a game today and sales look bad... advice?
Hi! Thanks for the invite to the group!

We just released Alpha Polaris on Steam.

More about the project can be learned from this post-mortem / making of we posted on reddit yesterday.

So far the sales seem really really low for the first 7 hours. America is still sleeping but still, it's ridiculously low. We have tried to be visible on facebook, twitter, reddit, youtube, tumblr, sending a press release through a service and also contacting steam curators, but it seems that a game this niche just wont spread. Especially when it's a re-release. It's genuinely a good, well executed game if you're a fan of the genre, but man this is hard.

Do you have any tips what more we could do at this point? Or do you spot any mistakes on our steam page? Anyone can offer help? Or do we just wait for the big sales and lower the price -50% or -75% then?
Last edited by Lasautus; 22 Oct, 2015 @ 11:54pm
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
JosPlays 22 Oct, 2015 @ 5:28am 
Big sales and youtube I suggest. Maybe trying to get the game bundled. All these will get attention for your game.
#1
EeuorT 22 Oct, 2015 @ 5:58am 
Grrgah: Hello and welcome to the group.
I agree with JosPlays. For the bundle idea, there is an announcement in this group about Groupees.com that would help to do so. Aside from myself I have a few people in a group for doing Youtube and Twitch gameplay/streaming if your looking for more reviewers.
Something else, does this version of the game have any Steam only features? Like workshop or extra missions, modes or ingame content? Does it have all the normal Steam additions? Cards, achievements, DLC or leader boards? Things like that would help get people who own the game already to want this new version.
#2
Lasautus 22 Oct, 2015 @ 6:27am 
Thanks for the replys and suggestions! I'm sure we'll do bundles at some point.

The steam edition has expanded resolution support with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 768 (the retail one was fixed 1280x800 which was stupid, but 1366x768 resolution wasn't really a thing back then), achievements and trading cards, but that's not really enough to buy it again. On the other hand, the retail sales were so bad at the time that I don't think many people own the game yet anyway. Well it was a popular torrent at least.

Youtube and twitch are a double edged sword for linear story games... When you have seen the story once, would you still buy it and play again? So I think they may even hurt the sales for a game like this in the worst case, but we have done them, and some more are coming out.
#3
JosPlays 22 Oct, 2015 @ 7:00am 
Yeah that's a hard choice. On the other hand this year there were more releases on Steam than all the other years combined, so it's hard for your game to get noticed these days. If I were you I would consider being part of a bundle, so the game gets out there and maybe people will leave some cool reviews or good mouth to mouth commercial.
#4
Oblivionburn 2 Nov, 2015 @ 4:09pm 
Getting included in a bundle is definitely helpful... 90% of my sales/outreach so far have just been through bundles lol
#5
Sasha Darko 7 Apr, 2016 @ 1:13pm 
Alpha Polaris is one my favs :) I can help a bit with promotion, sent you an e-mail.
Post-mortem was very interesting to read, too.
#6
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Date Posted: 22 Oct, 2015 @ 5:14am
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