I’ve played quite a few indie games this year, although not nearly as many as I’d have liked to! This post is about my favourite ones that I’d like to recommend to you.

Not all of them were released in 2011, but I’ve included them because they were new to me. Also there may be some obvious “big name” indie games missing from this list, and that’s either because I didn’t get round to playing them yet, or I didn’t like them as much as these games.

So on with the list. I’ve split it into platforms (note that I didn’t play any Facebook games or Handheld (DS, PSP etc) games this year).

*** PC ***

To the Moon

Wow, what a game! This adventure game is more about the story than the basic game mechanics. The great pixel art and atmospheric music just add to the whole experience. This game made me cry more than once and that’s pretty impressive in my book.

Trauma

This game is basically a giant montage of atmospheric photos that you navigate around to piece together the story of a women in coma. Sounds weird, and it is, but I liked it a lot.

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter

Made by well-known devs, Vlambeer, this game has some great Serious Sam humour in it, all the familiar monsters rendered in fantastic pixel art, and an interesting JRPG type of fighting mechanic crossed with an arcade shooter. Wasn’t very long but I loved every minute.

Infested Planet

This game is made by a friend of mine, but I’m not adding it to my list because I know him – I’m adding it because it’s really good! This fast-paced strategy game about destroying hordes of aliens is only out as a beta right now. I recently playtested it and really enjoyed it. The best thing is, it’s going to get even better based on the plans I’ve heard from the developer!

BIT.TRIP.RUNNER

Yes I know this isn’t new but I only just got round to playing it. I loved the aesthetics and the old-skool gameplay and kept coming back to it despite the rock-hard difficulty.

Machinarium

Machinarium is an adventure game with a unique art style and is the latest game by the developer who made the Samorost Flash games (also excellent). I played it through to the end with my boys and we loved it! Some tricky puzzles but there’s a built-in hint system to help you out.

Magicka

Magicka has a unique mechanic that lets you combine different elements to come up with awesome spells to defeat your enemies. But it’s not a turn-based game, it’s an arcade game set in great-looking environments, so you’ve got to think quickly to survive!

Scoregasm

I’m a fan of twin-stick shooter games and this one by Charlie’s Games didn’t disappoint. Jam-packed with special effects, frantic gameplay and extremely varied levels, this game should not be missed if you are a fan of the genre.

Jamestown

I saw a video of this vertical shmup with lush pixel graphics and knew instantly that it was my type of game. I bought it and love it. Great old-skool shoot ‘em up, very well made. Don’t miss it if you like this sort of game.

VVVVVV

I love the look and feel of this game. It’s like a classic Commodore 64 game that never existed! VVVVVV is a futuristic platform game with an unusual jumping mechanic that leads to fiendish puzzles. Probably you’ve all heard of it already, but if you haven’t played it yet, do yourself a favour and download it now (or play it on Nintendo 3DS).

Minecraft

Yes I know we’ve all played it, and most of us really started playing it last year, and it’s already on every other top indie game list, but it’s that good that I had to mention it. I own three licenses so that I can play it multiplayer with my boys and they spend hours on it each week installing mods etc. Amazing game – a phenomenon in fact.

*** iPad ***

Velocispider

Think I heard about this game via Twitter. Anyway, I downloaded it one morning in bed and then just stayed there for several hours until I beat it. A really great old-skool shoot ‘em up with a Space Invaders type feel (except more fun) and great pixel art. Highly recommended.

Sword and Sworcery

Kept hearing about this game and wasn’t disappointed when I bought it. Lovely graphics and interesting story – it’s a very enjoyable game. Only bummer was my son erased my game halfway through so he could play it! grr…

Helsing’s Fire

Perfectly suited to iPad, this puzzle game where you have to basically shine a light to kill as many monsters as possible is better than it sounds. Try it out.

Casey’s Contraptions

This is a physics-based game where you set up elaborate, uh, contraptions to collect various stars dotted around the level, often with a ball. Great fun and well-suited to iPad, plus has a cool level editor.

*** XBLA ***

Bastion

Pretty much everyone has played this on one platform or another. I played it on XBLA which is the platform it feels like the game was designed for. Lovely graphics, really cool voiceover and fun game mechanics. I enjoyed trying to beat all the weapon challenges although some of them drove me nuts.

*** XBLIG ***

Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes

This game is FLIPPING HARD! You start with 1000 lives and have to beat really hard old-skool pixel art levels. It’s like Rick Dangerous (from the Amiga) with the difficulty dial turned up to 11, but is super-satisfying when you beat a level after losing about 100 lives.

Kung Fu Fight

This little gem could have easily been missed. Only later on did I realise it’s basically Bit.Trip.Runner with a Kung Fu scenario. Anyway it was challenging, but not too challenging, and had a great retro feel. I loved it and played it in one sitting until I beat it.

Escape Goat

A unique platform puzzle game with an unusual protagonist (a goat). Made by the same dev who made Soulcaster I and II, I highly recommend you check this game out.

Soulcaster II

This actually came out in December 2010 I think but I had to mention it because it’s such a great game. It’s like a tower defense and Gauntlet mashup. Really great idea and well made.

Cursed Loot

This expertly crafted 8-bit style roguelike actually came out in 2010 and was called Epic Dungeon. For some reason the developer, Eyehook Games had to rebrand it, but they also upgraded it at the same time. My boys and I all spent many hours on this.

*** PSN ***

I just bought a PS3 and have been checking out the PSN games. There are some great ones on there but I haven’t played many yet. The following games aren’t new but as I said at the beginning they are new to me, and also epic, so check ‘em out.

Shatter

I keep tying to type “Shatner”. Oh well. Anyway, this breakout clone has fantastic “glowing line” type graphics and loads of new cool game mechanics. My wife wanted to watch Boston Legal and I delayed her by playing this for ages.

Super Stardust HD

I had the original game for my Amiga 1200 and it was epic. This one involves blowing up asteroids and aliens as you fly in 3D around a planet. Not sure if it’s indie; hope so though because it’s amazing!

Conclusion

Wow, what a fantastic year for indie games! We’ve all been spoiled and I’m looking forward to seeing some more awesome indie games in 2012.

Sorry to all the indies whose games I’ve missed out, hopefully I’ll get to some of them next year!

What games have I missed out that you’d like to recommend? Thanks.

In May I set myself a goal to release 50 SKUs this year. By SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) I mean different versions of games, which could mean brand new games, games on a new platform, or localised versions of a game for example.

By May I had already shipped 17 SKUs (11 of which were different versions of Spring Bonus). The main plan for reaching 50 SKUs was to ship my existing games on mobile platforms and also to make localised versions as well as make some new games. Some things worked out and some didn’t.

Here’s a breakdown of what I did since May:

1) Spring Bonus came out on Windows Phone 7! It hasn’t sold very well though due to crappy download numbers on that platform. Downloads are converting to sales a good percentage of the time though, which is positive.

2) Spring Bonus did not come out for iOS. I was working with a local company to get it ported to iOS but they just got too busy with other work and it became a lower priority for them. However, it will definitely be coming out in 2012, perhaps via Big Fish Games if they will publish it.

3) Spring Bonus was not translated to Japanese. Well it was actually, I just didn’t plug the translations into the game. I’ll do it for next Spring though.

4) Holiday Bonus was translated to 8 languages and is doing quite well on Big Fish Games’ localised sites right now.

5) Holiday Bonus came out on iOS/Android/WP7/Internet! There were HD and Standard versions on iOS/Android and also Lite and HD Lite versions. In total 10 different versions were shipped in the space of a single week! I’m beginning to learn how useful Unity is as a cross-platform language. Damien Sturdy did a fantastic job of the iOS/Android/Web ports and James Mintram did a great Windows Phone 7 port.

6) I didn’t convert my framework to Linux and so did not release any Linux ports

7) I never finished my Ludum Dare #20 minigame although I may still finish it in 2012.

8 ) I did finish a Ludum Dare #22 minigame called Always Alone. I used the Monkey language so that I could release this as a Flash game to be played online.

9) In the Summer I organised a Full Indie 48-hour game jam and made Metal Spawn for PC/Mac.

10) One person I helped as a design consultant shipped their game, but my role was very small so I won’t count it. Other games I’m helping with, such as Eets Munchies with Klei Entertainment, won’t ship until 2012.

11) I didn’t get any of my games ported to Flash. The web version of Holiday Bonus was in Unity, although with Unity’s new Flash export, we should be able to make a Flash version for next year.

12) I didn’t make any brand new games although I’ve had a number of cool ideas and talked to other people about collaborating with them. Let’s see what 2012 brings.

13) Oz has been localised to 4 languages by Big Fish Games and will be coming out in early 2012, then will be localised to some more languages later on by another big portal. If Holiday Bonus hadn’t taken so much time (shipping on mobile was a big learning experience for me), then maybe the Oz localised versions would have made it out this year instead.

14) I made a youtube adventure game with my boys called Death Dungeon.

So a mixed bag of success there. If you read my 2011 Review you’ll know that I had a tough summer in terms of family illness and depression, and I’ve no doubt that those things were a factor in me not quite shipping as many SKUs as I had planned.

Total SKUs shipped

So adding up all of the above we have:

- SKUs shipped up to may = 17
- Spring Bonus WP7 = 1
- Holiday Bonus localised = 8
- Holiday Bonus iOS/Android/WP7/Web = 10
- Always Alone minigame = 1
- Metal Spawn minigame = 1
- Death Dungeon youtube game = 1

Total = 39

Not quite 50, but still a number to be proud of I believe. Not sure I’ll be shipping that many next year, but who knows?

How many SKUs did you ship in 2011? Let me know in the comments.

Holiday Bonus is FREE until Jan 1st so get it while you can and please tell your friends and family about this charming game. Thanks!

Holiday Bonus HD (for iPad)
Holiday Bonus (for iPhone)

Enjoy!

It’s that time again when I like to review how I got on with my goals for the year and set new goals for next year. Last year I had about a 70% success rate, but this year the success rate wasn’t so good for a variety of reasons that I’ll discuss at the end of this post.

2011 Goals Review

Here’s what happened to my 2011 goals:

1) Have great fun making Indie games for the entire year. (FAILED. Haven’t made a single commercial “indie” game. Made a casual game and 3 free games, did a bunch of ports of my older IP and started work on a big project. I’m OK with how it turned out though.)

2) Do some design consultancy for backend royalties. (PART SUCCESS. Most of this is still in the pipeline and due in 2012.)

3) Make at least $100K (I’ll aim relatively low for my first year back in the driving seat). (FAILED. Earned about $79K. That’s gross revenue so it’s before the cost of making games/running a business and, of course, tax. A small amount of that money is from my last month at Big Fish Games. Plus I lost money on the stock market .)

4) Build up the Vancouver Indie Meetup into something even more awesome. (SUCCESS! At last a success. The group has been awesome this year for sure and continues to amaze me.)

5) Finish my Toastmasters CC manual (4 speeches to go) – I took a break when things got crazy earlier in the year. (FAILED. Didn’t even go back for a variety of reasons. I’d still like to go again but I find myself speaking at game-related events quite often anyway.)

6) Keep fit and beat my Grouse Grind time of 56 mins. (PART SUCCESS. Didn’t do the Grouse Grind at all, but did do lots of walking and stayed fit and ate healthy in the Spring/Summer/Fall. Have rather let myself go this Christmas though, ahem.)

7) Go to Hawaii (FAILED. Just didn’t have the cash plus my wife got really ill for months, which is one reason why many things this year failed. Did go to England for my sister’s wedding though.)

8 ) Have an awesome Spring/Summer with my family in Vancouver and go on some roadtrips. (PART SUCCESS. Hmm. I did enjoy parts the summer because I was indie and on my own schedule so could go outside when it was sunny, but we didn’t go and do many things because my wife was super ill as I mentioned above. I also got depressed/burned out and didn’t do any work for months. This was very weird for me. We did go on an epic 2200km roadtrip in BC at the end of the summer though!)

9) Move back to the UK and have some money in the bank when I arrive. (FAILED. A friend offered to help me get residency here, which I thought I had no chance of getting as an indie. So currently my work permit is extended and the residency thing seems to be progressing well. There is some money in my company bank account, which is nice, but not much. So although I failed to go back to England, I don’t mind at all because there’s lots going on for me right now here in Vancouver.)

So in summary, uh lots of failures. Only a 28% success rate. Really not my best year for a bunch of reasons, although it did start well and has ended well. However things are lining up for a great 2012!

Bonus Points

Some other things I did that I’m proud of include (in no particular order):

- Made 3 mini-games via 48-hour jams (GGJ, Full Indie Jam, Ludum Dare #22) and started another one I aim to finish off at some point.
- Shipped 10 different versions of Holiday Bonus to mobile and web during 1 week!
- Spoke on a panel at PAX Dev and Casual Connect about being indie + at other local events.
- Began work on a great project with Klei Entertainment.
- Reached over 150,000 units sold for all my games.
- Continued to build the Grey Alien Games name via Twitter, Facebook, Blog, speaking and networking.
- Spring Bonus (my 7th casual game) turned out well and has made as much revenue as Holiday Bonus in under a year.
- Got Holiday Bonus and Oz on several new portals, shipped Holiday Bonus in 8 new languages, and did the groundwork for shipping localised versions of Oz in early 2012.
- Got a Provincial Nomination which means that the Canadian Government thinks I’m “worthy” and should help my family get residency here.
- Improved my acoustic guitar playing some more and brought my electric up from the basement so I play it more often.
- Looked after my family and the house whilst my wife was ill during the Spring/Summer.
- Was around much more for my kids this year.
- Deepened my friendships with some great indies.
- I got my photo taken with Shatner, and 3 other Star Trek actors!

2012 Goals

Work goals:

1) Ship Eets Munchies in the Spring(ish). Working on this as Producer/Designer/Script monkey with Klei Entertainment and Alex Vostrov.
2) Make $250K+ and pay off a large chunk of UK mortgage.
3) Make an “indie” game. (might only be a small Flash game, might be something larger)
4) Make a new casual game (working as Producer/Designer whilst someone else does the rest using my existing engine).
5) Ship Spring Bonus and Oz on iOS/Android and maybe more platforms. Ideally BFG will publish both because my own mobile marketing success is poor.
6) Make at least 3 jam games.
7) Do some Game Design consultancy work on great projects (have a couple lined up already)
8 ) Complete secret project in January or February.

Personal goals:

1) Do lots of walking and do the Grouse Grind in under an hour.
2) Continue to improve on guitar and post something on Youtube.
3) Do one or more road trips in Canada/US.
4) Have a great relaxing summer with my family.
5) Play a bunch of the games I have stockpiled on Steam

2011 Mistakes

I like to be honest with myself about how I’ve screwed up each year so that I can learn some lessons and keep on improving. Here’s a few “lowlights”:

- I didn’t buy my Big Fish Games options when I left, then later in the year they paid out a dividend to everyone who had them. I didn’t buy them because I really needed to money to survive and to invest in Spring Bonus (which has yielded a 10x return so far).

- When I was working extremely long hours to finish Spring Bonus on time my wife became really ill. In fact on the day I was supposed to ship it I had stayed up until 9am working on it, slept for only 1 hour, and was just finishing it off when my wife said I had to take her to the hospital urgently. I was sleep-deprived and stressed about the game and then my wife’s health was like the world’s biggest straw on my camel’s back. It was one of the toughest days of my life. We found out my wife was pretty darn ill and she had surgery which failed, and then she had chemotherapy all summer. This meant she couldn’t work, and we ate up our savings at an alarming rate, although a friend was kind enough to help us out a bit financially. Also I couldn’t work much because I had to look after the kids and the house and my wife. The good news is that she has now finished her treatment and has recovered and has been working again; so life has returned to “normal”. This whole thing wasn’t really a “mistake” but it had a major impact on the year and my goals.

- After I finished Spring Bonus I felt totally burned out. I wasn’t just burned out from Spring Bonus, but also from working at Big Fish Games for the previous 2 years. Plus my wife’s ill health, our money worries, and uncertainty about where we were going to be living (UK or Canada) all added up to a huge mindfrak. I got depressed, although I didn’t admit it to myself until later on, and did virtually no work all summer. I moped around, played the guitar a lot, and considered giving up working in games altogether. At first I was worried about not doing any work, then I took some St John’s wort pills (a natural anti-depressant), and then I stopped caring about not doing any work and quite enjoyed parts of the summer. But I knew that I couldn’t carry on like that, so I stopped the pills and starting drinking coke, which somehow motivated me to get going on a bunch of projects, and now I’m pretty much fine (and have given up the coke). Strangely it helps that it’s crappy weather outside because I don’t mind working inside all day. It was a very strange time for me, one that I’m not keen to repeat.

- I haven’t made any games all year “for me” apart from a couple of minigames. When I went indie again I wanted to change tactic and make “indie” games and do stuff I was really into. I haven’t yet done that, although I’m proud of Spring Bonus and think the project I’m working on with Klei is going to turn out great. But I still have that major urge to make something for me that I’m going to have to deal with soon…

- I still haven’t sorted through the photos of my dad, who passed away in 2010, and processed his recordings (he was a musician). I still can’t handle listening to his voice or looking at photos of him. I was planning to do that this year and spend a week or so dealing with it all because I figured it would make me pretty emotional, but I’ve had quite a lot of my own stuff to deal with instead. I can feel that I’ve got some stuff locked up in me that I need to let out at some point, and the sooner the better.

So there you have it. Life certainly is filled with ups and downs! Here’s to hoping that 2012 has a few more ups.

I wish you all the best in 2012. Happy New Year!

You can now try out our popular match-3 game, Holiday Bonus, for free!

We’ve just released a Lite version on multiple platforms as follows:

iPhone (Lite)
iPad (HD Lite)
Android phone (Lite)
Android tablet (HD Lite)
Windows Phone 7 (Lite)
Online Version (contains HD levels)

Of course you can still try out the classic game for PC/Mac too:

PC Demo
Mac Demo

Please tell your friends and family about this delightful relaxing Christmas-themed game. Thanks!

Last weekend was the Ludum Dare #22 48-hour game jam and I made game and entered it into the competition.

I used a new language called Monkey which is by the makers of BlitzMax (which I used for most of my casual download games), so it was fairly familiar. However there were still many basic things that I had to figure out, so the weekend was almost more about learning Monkey and beginning to make a basic framework/engine as making the actual game. Because Monkey is cross-platform I kept building the game in HTML 5 because it was quick to test and then I made the final build in Flash so that people could get instant access to it online and it would be nice and fast.

The theme for the game jam was “Alone” and I decided I wanted to make a game that had a proper story because in the past my minigames haven’t every done that. In fact none of my games have ever really had a story.

The game tells a story about a boy/man named Jim and his journey through life and is an extrapolation of feelings that I sometimes get (and many other people have since commented that they feel the same too sometimes). The game starts off lighthearted but the tone changes towards the end (level 4), so don’t play if you are easily depressed. If you feel the need to cheat, you can press J to Jump to the end of the level.

Anyway, here it is.

Always Alone (Free online game)

I hope you like it – please tell me what you thought in the comments!

I’m proud to announce that Holiday Bonus is now available for iPhone and iPad as well as Android smartphones and tablets!

It feels really good to play the game with your fingers on a touchscreen whilst sitting in a cosy chair by the fireplace.

There are two versions: one has smaller levels suitable for phones, and the HD version for iPad and Android tablets has larger levels like the PC/Mac versions.

You can get the phone version from here:

iPhone
Android phone

And the HD version with larger levels from here:

iPad
Android tablet

I really hope that you enjoy playing Holiday Bonus on your mobile device. Please tell you friends and family. Many thanks.

image by DrJohnBullas

Sorry about that, there are proper graphs further down.

I recently ran a Thanksgiving sale on my site offering up to 70% of my casual games and I’d like to share the results with you.

Deals

The basic deal was that I was offering 50% off my 5x match-3 games (not Fairway Solitaire and Unwell Mel because Big Fish Games own those) via a coupon code.

Then I had 3 bundles:

2x Christmas-themed games for 60% off (PC only)
3x match-3s for 65% off (PC and Mac)
5x match-3s for 70% off (PC only)

Payment Provider

I use BMT Micro as my payment provider. They have various discount schemes that I was able to use for this sale. When I create a bundle, all the games are listed individually so that keys and download links can be send out for each one. I highly recommend BMT Micro for their customer service, and ability to deliver.

Promotion

- The sale started on Tuesday 22nd November and ran for 9 days until Wednesday 30th November.

Day 1:
- I put a coloured banner about the sale on the top of my page and showed some fancy bundle images.
- I emailed Gamezebo (a site that reviews casual games) and they mentioned the sale on day 4 which was my best day for sales.
- I tweeted about it twice on the first day (got 10 RTs, thanks everyone); made a Facebook post on my Grey Alien Games Facebook page; posted on the BlitzBasic and IndieGamer forums; and wrote a blog post about it.
- I emailed my mailing list of newsletter subscribers. An email was sent to 384 people and got 137 opens (35.68%) and 83 clicks (18.75%). It was text only and maybe could have benefited from a picture. I got a few bounces and a couple of unsubscribes, not many.

Day 3:
- I tweeted about it again on day 3 (got 6 RTs). Had about 1250 followers, so my best RT % on day 1 was about 0.8%, which isn’t exactly stellar.
- I also told indiegamer about it on day 3 via Twitter and got a retweet a couple of days later and also posted a comment on their blog post about sales but it got held up for a few days before appearing.

Day 6:
- I tweeted about 3 days being left (got 4 RTs)

Day 9
- I tweeted about it being the last day (got a few RTs)

I didn’t do these things:

- Contact Jay is Games, and I probably should have.
- Send out a press release or contact any other press/bloggers.
- Post on any other forums. I only post on ones I’m an active member on so it doesn’t feel like spam.
- Advertising. Probably should have used up a free Google Adwords $100 credit if I could be arsed.

Results

And now for the bit you’ve all been waiting for…drumroll…

29 units sold. Total revenue $55. Not exactly impressive, but hey it’s more than zero!

Because most of those sales were bundles, there were only 10 actual customers, 2 of which were existing customers (presumably from my newsletter, meaning it had a 0.5% success rate, which I’m quite disappointed by). Still at least that’s 8 new customers who signed up to my newsletter so I can inform them of future deals and the soon-to-be-released Holiday Bonus for iPhone/iPad/Android/WP7.

Also, weirdly, no one used the 50% discount coupon code, even though two customers bought single games (at full price)!

Traffic

- I checked my site’s monthly bandwidth usage before and after the sale and it went from about 3GB to 5.65GB, which wasn’t much out of the ordinary.
- I also tracked the number of hits on my site via my primitive visit counter and I got about 3000 hits on the first day and 2000 hits on each subsequent day. Again not much our of the ordinary.

There certainly wasn’t any kind of server meltdown.

Conclusion

For me this sale was an experiment because I’ve never done one before. I wanted to learn how to sell game bundles using BMT Micro, and I wanted to see how effective my Twitter followers are at spreading the word and how effective some other channels are (like my newsletter).

I’m crazy busy with several main projects right now, so I didn’t have any spare time to spend on better marketing or anything; I just wanted to see what I could do with a sort of basic minimum. The answer seems to be, not very well (take heed other indies!)

Part of the problem is that I’m selling casual games and I only really got one mention in the casual gaming press, and most of my Twitter followers are indie game devs, so they aren’t that interested. I thought that I’d have made more sales from my newsletter (which contains lots of existing customers), especially as a 70% discount is a pretty strong offering, but it wasn’t to be. Also of course I was competing against TONS of other sales and indie bundles.

I’ll probably try again at Christmas though and see what happens. Wish me luck!

Hope you enjoyed reading this post.

If you have any advice or thoughts, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Oz Revenue (5 years)

Holiday Bonus Revenue (5 years)

I just posted some comments on Twitter about how being indie is a long-term game and thought I’d make a mini blog post to explain further.

“Overnight Success”

You often hear about successful indies in the press but overnight success is actually very rare. Most times the indie in question has actually been making games for years and their “overnight success” was the result of all that knowledge, or they really did just get super-lucky (right time, right place, right people, plus incredibly skilled).

What you don’t hear much about is all the indie failures, and unfortunately there are a ton of those (as there are in many fields of business). Or people like me, who keep going and make a living from it, but haven’t got rich (yet).

Holiday Bonus

I’ve been running Grey Alien Games for 6 years, and it’s been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. I’ve shipped 7 games and I’m always learning new things and finding new ways to sell my old games. For example, this Christmas, my 5-year-old match-3 game called Holiday Bonus (PC/Mac Download) is on some new casual portals and is being localised to 8 new languages by Big Fish Games, and is coming out on iOS/Android/WP7 and web. Check out the graph above that shows the revenue of Holiday Bonus over 5 years. Hopefully this Christmas will be the biggest spike yet, and who knows what the future brings?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The other graph is from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, my only non-seasonal game. Sure there’s a big spike at the beginning but look at that long fat tail… Oz is also coming out on some new portals soon and being localised, and I have plans to get it on mobile – so the story is not over yet! Hopefully you are getting the picture here: many eggs in many baskets over many years type thing.

It takes a long time

Basically if you go full-time indie with a year’s worth of savings in the bank and aim to get rich quickly, you are most likely setting yourself up for failure. You need to have several years’ worth of savings, or be prepared to earn money doing part-time work/contracting etc until your games get good enough to provide you with a half-decent income. Then with more practice (and a ton of perseverance and dedication), hopefully you’ll make something hot that really sells.

6 Steps to Massive Success

I documented how I saw this process a while ago in an article called The 6 steps to massive game development success. Alas I’m still at step 5 having dropped down from what I thought was 5.5 (Facebook game FAIL). Still, I’m pushing towards step 6 (“massive success”) every day and am determined to get there. Why? Well sure, I enjoy making games for fun, and for many people that’s all they need, and that’s fine. But I’m in my mid-30s and don’t live in a basement plus I have a family (+cat) to feed, so I’d really love to get some good money in the bank just to relax a little bit for once! We’ll see…

It takes a long time

Yes, I know I’ve already used that sub-heading – it’s important that’s why!

- Don’t plan for overnight success (but do plan for success).
- Don’t plan for your first game being a massive hit (but still work bloody hard on it as if it will be.)
- Don’t get discouraged when your first game, and maybe quite a few more games after it, flop or make peanuts.

Come to terms with the fact that being indie is a long-term game that takes a lot of hard work, mistakes, and mini-triumphs over many years. If you want to “make it”, keep on learning and don’t give in!

Also, it’s probably best not to play Skyrim and get some work done instead

Please share your stories in the comments. Thanks!

Grey Alien Games is having a Thanksgiving sale with up to 70% discount on our match-3 games.

http://www.greyaliengames.com/

There are also some awesome bundle deals for PC and Mac including:

Holiday Bundle (2 games):
Holiday Bonus and Xmas Bonus (60% discount. Only $6.76)

Mega Bundle (3 games):
Holiday Bonus, Spring Bonus and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (65% discount. Only $10.44)

Giant Bundle (5 games):
Holiday Bonus, Spring Bonus. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Xmas Bonus and Easter Bonus (70% discount. Only $13.15)

Please take a look and tell you friends. Thanks! Note that you can gift purchases to other people as well by using the “Purchase is for someone else” box on the shopping cart.

We’ve never run a sale before so this is an experiment for us. If it goes well, we’ll do more sales in the future too.

Happy Thanksgiving!