Colony Ship Early Access Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Üstad]

There is high demand among the niche that wants them, and people within that niche are (or at least should be) willing to pay a good price for good games.

Niches are not that in high demand hence they're niches.

But people within the niche are willing to pay for good games that serve it, because those are rare (because it's a niche).

I get what you're saying and I agree there are people willing to pay good money for those games but sadly the demand is overestimated as you can see from sells of cRPGs that includes Colony Ship RPG, lack of demand is the reason we likely won't see a sequel Those games are rare and so their crowd.

 

[Tyranicon]

While I like ITS games, marketing gurus, they are not.

There's only so much you can do without throwing a lot of money at it. Niche games, especially cRPGs, are awful to market.

Here's the standard marketing avenues for indie games:

• Paid ads
• Fulltime social media shill
• Influencers

The first one you need money for, and I mean a serious amount of money. Also generally indie studios don't manage their own advertising spend, you contract with a marketing firm that handles it for you, or better yet, a publisher. I've been told that if you don't have at least six figures to spend on this, you won't get the results you're looking for.

It's cheaper then just to get somebody who sits on social media all day posting about your game. But a cRPG? That's a hard sell. You can make the regular rounds on Twitter, reddit, etc but outside of the codex, cRPGs are not really big draws. That may be changing slightly with the launch of BG3, but we'll have to see.

Same with influencers. Youtubers may help, and I'm sure a lot of reviews will go up once Colony Ship is released. But twitch? Fogeddaboutit. Twitch isn't interested in cRPGs without the chance for bear sex. Then again, I don't think ITS is aiming for the usual Twitch audience.

Colony Ship needs to rely on word of mouth. If you want to help, spread the word.

 

[Spectral Pontifex]

Now that I thought about it, change your game tagline to "Baldur's Gate 3, but for straight men."

The gaming press that ignored you? Won't be ignoring you anymore.

I second this. If the situation is financially bleak then you might as well try this and - if nothing else - go out with a bang.

 

[Abu Antar]

I do spread it as much as I can.

I know CRPGs are not top selling games in general. I know that they are more relevant to the Codex, but of all studios I follow, they are the least active on social media.

Now, I know that social media doesn't equal great sales, but at least some people will notice. Get noticed by the right account, and it might help a little. The game also looks decent. Post a gif now and then, post whatever once a week.

They don't need to spend hours and allocate devs on this on a permanent basis.

 

[Andnjord]

Real Codexers already bought it a while ago

Real Codexers finance the Incline at the price point it deserves, MAJESTIC Incline deserves a MAJESTIC price worthy of the talent of its makers.

But honestly, I felt guilty at the idea of getting it on sale when I know that Iron Tower are a small indie developer making proper RPGs in this day and age. This kind of chicanery is best left for AAA studios who also try to nickel and dime me for basic features and glorified patches.

 

[Üstad]

While I like ITS games, marketing gurus, they are not.

There's only so much you can do without throwing a lot of money at it. Niche games, especially cRPGs, are awful to market.

Here's the standard marketing avenues for indie games:

• Paid ads
• Fulltime social media shill
• Influencers

The first one you need money for, and I mean a serious amount of money. Also generally indie studios don't manage their own advertising spend, you contract with a marketing firm that handles it for you, or better yet, a publisher. I've been told that if you don't have at least six figures to spend on this, you won't get the results you're looking for.

It's cheaper then just to get somebody who sits on social media all day posting about your game. But a cRPG? That's a hard sell. You can make the regular rounds on Twitter, reddit, etc but outside of the codex, cRPGs are not really big draws. That may be changing slightly with the launch of BG3, but we'll have to see.

Same with influencers. Youtubers may help, and I'm sure a lot of reviews will go up once Colony Ship is released. But twitch? Fogeddaboutit. Twitch isn't interested in cRPGs without the chance for bear sex. Then again, I don't think ITS is aiming for the usual Twitch audience.

Colony Ship needs to rely on word of mouth. If you want to help, spread the word.

I already wrote reviews for both this game and for AoD, shamelessly shilled it my friends on steam, but that won't bring the neccesary impact. As you said youtubers like Sseth needs to cover it, the word will be spread then.

 

[thesecret1]

Release a $60 DLC to "support the creators" that gives the option to toggle a prestigious monocle to show up on your character portrait

 

[Jaedar]

While I like ITS games, marketing gurus, they are not.

According to the .txts VD used to be a sales exec. So he probably knows a decent amount about selling stuff.

But a cRPG? That's a hard sell

Larian managed for BG3. But it is a different beast (I don't think any of the trailers even showed any gameplay, just cutscenes).
I don't think it's that it's a hard sell, it's that it's hard to compress what makes colony ship cool into a 30s video or a single tweet. And that's about the attention span you have to work with for normal ads.
It has 85% approval rating on steam, which is honestly higher than I'd expect (only 900 reviews total though, probably it's the count that's keeping it from being visible).

I do think the game is very cool. Most of the special starting feats are hugely impactful on your build. The various aimed/burst/snap options means you have a lot of tactical options, even with "only" 6 weapon types. But I have no idea how you'd turn that into a visually appealing trailer.

 

[Hellraiser]

This, although I think the current challenge in gaming is the logistics part. Connecting the demand with the supply is where the industry still struggles. Even now who knows how many great games there are buried somewhere within the depths of Steam with <100 reviews and thus limited storefront visibility.

I'm going to nitpick here and mention that the proper term for that is marketing not logistics.

A bit of a topic derailment on my end here, but anyway this is a known problem, indies complain about it a lot, and you can easily find interesting data like the below showing how the bulk of indies are pretty much flops from a financial point of view, even if just one dude made them:

Source:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/29/median-indie-game-earnings-steam-barely-over-1000

Now granted what Tyranicon wrote is pretty much spot on, from my own purely amateurish poking and dissection of this subject I came to the conclusion (also touching upon Tyranicon's post) that the only real choices an indie hopeful has, that is one without enough FFF (friends, family, fools) cash to blow on professional shilling by an agency, are:

1. Take a loss on the first 2 or 3 games hoping you start building brand recognition over time (if you are not shit at game dev of course, but everyone thinks they're not) and eventually the next game break even or turns a profit because the small fanbase grows. This probably works best if you do low-technical investment cheap stuff like visual novels where you can afford to do it yourself in your spare time at a loss of just free time, but certainly not if you need to pay people so they don't starve to death. I saw posts of some indie devs who took this approach and claimed it worked, I mean it makes sense, it works for would-be novelists.

2. Mod a popular game and only make your own game as a successor to the mod once your mod has gained enough brand recognition, very similar to 1 but you get free targeted exposure on fan communities of the game you modded. This is the CS, DOTA, Left 4 Dead, Terra Invicta etc. approach, although those first 3 got patronage from Valve so not really indies I guess, but I think you get what I mean when I say do modding first to make a name for yourself.

3. Make a fucking good pitch to a publisher, secure a deal that has them get you exposure at PAX or some other convent or via press shilling/newsletters the publisher does, even if you get jack shit of revenue on your first game with them (it's their risk). I think this is what Highfleet and a few other (revived) Microprose releases did? This is the only way journos might ever write about your work, unless you win the lottery as described in 4. Sure, it goes against being a truly independent developer, but like with everything it depends on the trade off, current business context including needs, long term strategy and the specifics of the contract. By which I mean that eventually if you make games that sell you will gain enough brand recognition that you no longer need publishers.

4. Win the lottery the Stardew Valley, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld way - strike gold by filling a market void in an existing market where the target group happens to be as passionate as they are starved for new experiences, so word of mouth really kicks off. There's an obvious catch here, none of the devs behind those games expected them to be runaway successes, so how can you? But in all cases there was precedent showing someone would buy it (SV - Harvest Moon, KSP - Orbiter, where the creator hanged around, Rimworld - dwarf fortress), and it was known the market need is not being satisfied, so the big question was how big the untapped market was. Most indies on the other hand go with the flow into saturated markets or follow the leader (deckbuilders, pixelart platformers, survival games etc.) which dooms them, doing that without a very good plan how to beat the large competition is probably the biggest indicator how clueless from a business sense point of view a hopeful indie developer is. It's the equivalent of failing a [business] skill check with a difficulty of 1, it's like dying to the first fucking rat just outside of Vault 13's door in Fallout. Also as a side note: out of those 3 I mentioned I think only Rimworld did crowdfounding which helped gauge market interest and confirm some assumptions, not sure how good that is nowadays since people might have been burned by that (fucking Battletech, in my case), but failing a kickstarter was a good red flag telling you the project is doomed to fail to turn a profit even if it is ever finished.

Either way the likely result is that you will spend a lot of manhours (and possibly money) over a long period of time before you start turning a profit (and that is likely to never happen), regardless if this is because your first releases under-perform, you do free mods, you shill your own game hard as fuck on your own or because the publisher's cut will leave you with nothing.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't think it's that it's a hard sell, it's that it's hard to compress what makes colony ship cool into a 30s video or a single tweet. And that's about the attention span you have to work with for normal ads.

Kamaz advertised Space Wreck with short clips of all the fun interactive stuff you can do with the game's RPG systems. He often posts about fun gameplay elements on Twitter.
The most striking of these is, of course, the zero-G flying through the air after being kicked, but there's plenty of other scenes that are equally fun.

There should be some fun situations in Colony Ship that warrant such advertisement.

I'm also reminded of the badass old AoD trailer felipepepe made a long time ago. That was a banger:


You gotta be catchy and meme-worthy.

 

[jackofshadows]

Kamaz is a hopeless cuck though. No need to look up to him at all.

 

[Hobo Elf]

This, although I think the current challenge in gaming is the logistics part. Connecting the demand with the supply is where the industry still struggles. Even now who knows how many great games there are buried somewhere within the depths of Steam with <100 reviews and thus limited storefront visibility.

I'm going to nitpick here and mention that the proper term for that is marketing not logistics.

Nitpick away. I just used the word because I like it. Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

This, although I think the current challenge in gaming is the logistics part. Connecting the demand with the supply is where the industry still struggles. Even now who knows how many great games there are buried somewhere within the depths of Steam with <100 reviews and thus limited storefront visibility.

I'm going to nitpick here and mention that the proper term for that is marketing not logistics.

A bit of a topic derailment on my end here, but anyway this is a known problem, indies complain about it a lot, and you can easily find interesting data like the below showing how the bulk of indies are pretty much flops from a financial point of view, even if just one dude made them:

Source:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/29/median-indie-game-earnings-steam-barely-over-1000

Now granted what Tyranicon wrote is pretty much spot on, from my own purely amateurish poking and dissection of this subject I came to the conclusion (also touching upon Tyranicon's post) that the only real choices an indie hopeful has, that is one without enough FFF (friends, family, fools) cash to blow on professional shilling by an agency, are:

1. Take a loss on the first 2 or 3 games hoping you start building brand recognition over time (if you are not shit at game dev of course, but everyone thinks they're not) and eventually the next game break even or turns a profit because the small fanbase grows. This probably works best if you do low-technical investment cheap stuff like visual novels where you can afford to do it in your spare time at a loss of just free time. I saw posts of some indie devs who took this approach and claimed it worked, I mean it makes sense, it works for would-be novelists.

2. Mod a popular game and only make your own game as a successor to the mod once your mod has gained enough brand recognition, very similar to 1 but you get free targeted exposure on fan communities of the game you modded. This is the CS, DOTA, Left 4 Dead, Terra Invicta etc. approach, although those first 3 got patronage from Valve so not really indies I guess, but I think you get what I mean when I say do modding first to make a name for yourself.

3. Make a fucking good pitch to a publisher, secure a deal that has them get you exposure at PAX or some other convent or via press shilling/newsletters the publisher does, even if you get jack shit of revenue on your first game with them (it's their risk). I think this is what Highfleet and a few other (revived) Microprose releases did? This is the only way journos might ever write about your work, unless you win the lottery as described in 4. Sure, it goes against being a truly independent developer, but like with everything it depends on the trade off, current business context including needs, long term strategy and the specifics of the contract. By which I mean that eventually if you make games that sell you will gain enough brand recognition that you no longer need publishers.

4. Win the lottery the Stardew Valley, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld way - strike gold by filling a market void in an existing market where the target group happens to be as passionate as they are starved for new experiences, so word of mouth really kicks off. There's an obvious catch here, none of the devs behind those games expected them to be runaway successes, so how can you? But in all cases there was precedent showing someone would buy it (SV - Harvest Moon, KSP - Orbiter, where the creator hanged around, Rimworld - dwarf fortress), and it was known the market need is not being satisfied, so the big question was how big the untapped market was. Most indies on the other hand go with the flow into saturated markets or follow the leader (deckbuilders, pixelart platformers, survival games etc.) which dooms them, doing that without a very good plan how to beat the large competition is probably the biggest indicator how clueless from a business sense point of view a hopeful indie developer is. It's the equivalent of failing a [business] skill check with a difficulty of 1, it's like dying to the first fucking rat just outside of Vault 13's door in Fallout. Also as a side note: out of those 3 I mentioned I think only Rimworld did crowdfounding which helped gauge market interest and confirm some assumptions, not sure how good that is nowadays since people might have been burned by that (fucking Battletech, in my case), but failing a kickstarter was a good red flag telling you the project is doomed to fail to turn a profit even if it is ever finished.

Either way the likely result is that you will spend a lot of manhours (and possibly money) over a long period of time before you start turning a profit (and that is likely to never happen), regardless if this is because your first releases under-perform, you do free mods, you shill your own game hard as fuck on your own or because the publisher's cut will leave you with nothing.

My Merchantile skill has improved by 1 point from reading this post.

I think building brand recognition is the best option(and the most preferable) for ITS. If they make two great games in a row, they will have a distinctly recognizable brand and a die-hard core group of fans who will bankroll whatever they attempt next.

I don't think AoD filled a large enough market void. It was basically a proof of concept for C&C, a notion that was mostly familiar to people who read the Codex. But making a game that Baldo's Gate and Shadowrun fans can relate to, only much more reactive, with a more adult setting, I think that could have a larger impact. I believe the timing is just right, honestly.

 

[Lady Error]

@Kamaz advertised Space Wreck with short clips of all the fun interactive stuff you can do with the game's RPG systems. He often posts about fun gameplay elements on Twitter.

I think short and fun gameplay videos on X and Youtube are the way to go to get more exposure. Isn't there an existing userbase who already subscribed due to AoD?

 

[Hellraiser]

I think building brand recognition is the best option(and the most preferable) for ITS. If they make two great games in a row, they will have a distinctly recognizable brand and a die-hard core group of fans who will bankroll whatever they attempt next.

I didn't intend to speculate what ITS is doing, had planned or should be doing with my post, VD definitely always had some strategy and always had a realistic outlook on his odds. Back when AoD was still being made and Colony Ship was a hypothetical "if things go well enough" idea, it was always clear as day from his posts whenever he wrote about the business-related development topics that he had a plan and knew the risks. I also certainly do not intend to as we in Poland say "teach a father how to make babies", it's his business, only he knows the full picture, and the fact ITS is still here after all these years and one two released titles with another one coming up shows he knows what he is doing and definitely better than me. Most new businesses, even well planned, fail very fast and the fact AoD was at all finished already puts ITS ahead of a lot of other gaming projects.

Also when AoD was being made the situation was in many ways different for indies just starting out, steam greenlight for one just started during AoD's development IIRC, and valve opened the floodgates without any kind of screening ditching greenlight just a few years back, so there were far less new releases in which one's own game could have gotten lost (I think VD also made a post on this at some point here on the codex, I vaguely recall one). Streaming wasn't that much of thing, neither was streamers and c-grade youtube shills shilling games on an industrial scale. Also at this point we have the benefit of hindsight seeing quite a few failures of the early access model or of crowdfounding over the years since VD set out to bring incline himself, likewise indies weren't bitching out in the open about business woes as much back then. Finally you couldn't really predict the future and how much these things changed.

EDIT: Also middleware and its pricing/availability changed significantly opening up different options for projects, as visible by the recent row over Unity and discussion on alternatives and likely replacement that will dethrone Unity from its spot. AoD and Colony Ship using two different engines is a good example of how that changed. Who could predict during the early days of AoD's development that ITS would one day make the next one in Unreal?

 

[JarlFrank]

one released title

two actually

 

[Haba]

While I like ITS games, marketing gurus, they are not.

According to the .txts VD used to be a sales exec. So he probably knows a decent amount about selling stuff.

I used to close million dollar software deals. I wouldn't have a single clue about selling niche RPGs to "gamers".

Now, scamming money from whales Chris Roberts style, in that I could have a few ideas to toss around...

 

[Tyranicon]

I used to close million dollar software deals.

Finally, someone who can actually afford a $40 game!

 

[jungl]

lol 40 dollars. Do they actually think their games are THAT good? Their games are annoying asf you are presented wutg this traditional character creation menu but its a class based one in disguise. There really is no character customization cause if you deviate your stats and skill a tiny bit your from the recommended options you are going to have awful time.

 

[thesecret1]

lol 40 dollars. Do they actually think their games are THAT good? Their games are annoying asf you are presented wutg this traditional character creation menu but its a class based one in disguise. There really is no character customization cause if you deviate your stats and skill a tiny bit your from the recommended options you are going to have awful time.

Git gud, retard

 

[Üstad]

lol 40 dollars. Do they actually think their games are THAT good? Their games are annoying asf you are presented wutg this traditional character creation menu but its a class based one in disguise. There really is no character customization cause if you deviate your stats and skill a tiny bit your from the recommended options you are going to have awful time.

 

[kangaxx]

$40 is but a meager amount for the MASSIVE INCLINE this game is going to bring us, my wallet is ready

I bought it for less than that on a recent sale.

The price was lower during Early Access, it has been raised several times as the game received more content.
During that low price period, the game has been on sale during major Steam sales several times, allowing you to buy it at an even lower price!

If you waited this long to buy it, it's your own fault!

Real Codexers already bought it a while ago

When's this being released? It's sitting on my HD waiting.

 

[JarlFrank]

$40 is but a meager amount for the MASSIVE INCLINE this game is going to bring us, my wallet is ready

I bought it for less than that on a recent sale.

The price was lower during Early Access, it has been raised several times as the game received more content.
During that low price period, the game has been on sale during major Steam sales several times, allowing you to buy it at an even lower price!

If you waited this long to buy it, it's your own fault!

Real Codexers already bought it a while ago

When's this being released? It's sitting on my HD waiting.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/648410/view/6163783419148384235

As we're getting closer (85% of the game is done and available on Early Access), let's go over what's left and the remaining update schedule.

1. Mission Control
   (lower levels) - released
   
   With this update we hit two major milestones:
   
   • all work on non-human characters is finally done and our programmer can fully focus on other tasks
   • all locations and level design are also done, which takes about 60% of work for every update. From this point on we'll focus on pure content (scripting quests and setting up fights), which will speed things up considerably.
2. The Grangers' Alliance, Attack on the Armory, Delivery
   - released on the beta branch
   
   
3. The Habitat's Questlines
   - released on the beta branch
   
   
4. The Pit's Alliance
   - End of Sep.
   
   
5. The Bridge and the Endgame
   - End of Oct.
   
   The level design (including unique props) is done ahead of schedule, the extensive text (interacting with the central computer) is done too, so we'll be able to focus on the endgame events. The Armory's level 3 (also done) is part of the endgame events.

Overall, we're looking at 5-6 increasingly less stressful months of work left. The hardest part of work is behind us now and we want to thank all those who supported us during the last two years. We wouldn't have made it this far without you.

 

[Jaedar]

lol 40 dollars. Do they actually think their games are THAT good? Their games are annoying asf you are presented wutg this traditional character creation menu but its a class based one in disguise. There really is no character customization cause if you deviate your stats and skill a tiny bit your from the recommended options you are going to have awful time.

Funny, cause it's not like that at all. It's a lot easier than in AoD to do "hybrid" or "weird" builds, simply because you have 0-3 other people on your team to pick up the slack. Case in point, I made a character with 0 combat stats/skills, and still beat the hardest encounters that existed at that point in the ea.

Sneaky edit: For the record I think you're sorta wrong about AoD as well, but it's more true there. When you join a certain faction that puts some stringent demands on your character. You can't avoid combat in legion, a merchant without sufficient speech skills is gonna have a bad time, etc. But there are lots of ways to build a legionnaire, assassin, thief, praetor respectively.

 

[mold]

Yeah, too expensive. I liked AoD and Dungeon Rats just fine but they're not among my favorites. Played through a couple of times and haven't touched them since. This does sound better, but 25€ is still about max I'd pay (but would be willing to pay more if there was a Linux version). The setting is really appealing, tho...