Steam strategy fest : visibility high, click through rate ~0%. Any tips? Please

TL;DR : Is there anything I can still do as a quick fix while the steam strategy fest is still running? It ends this weekend. Do you see what the problem is with my marketing material? I feel like maybe I am just not objective enough, because I like the graphics. Or maybe this is a normal click through rate during a fest?

So I wanted people to try my free demo, so they see that this would be nice to play when its done & leave some feedback. And I can improve the game in the places I have failed to look. But now it seems like everything is failing because of the Capsules not being good enough? or because people hover over the capsule and see the trailer/screenshots and these are not good enough? Or there is just no one that wants this game with RTS and PCVR both being niches? Should I stop improving the game and focus only on marketing until I have enough whish lists?



I am a solo developer trying to make my first game, a PC VR RTS game, to put on steam . The goal is to support myself so I can continue to make games. I started this project full time ~2 years ago. Did Unity as a hobby before that, while working as a full stack web developer.

I’ve been working hard to get a nice demo out for the steam strategy fest (currently running). For the first time I also hired an artist to make my ‘Steam Capsules’, it looks much better than my own attempts. I re-did the entire steampage + screenshots + trailer… So everything was looking like the demo and was at the best state I could bring it in. In VR it always looks better than I can get it in the trailer, but if people would play the demo they would see this.

I got my steampage made public with my own art on may 2022. And right before the steam strategy fest this resulted in ~150 whish lists. On a normal day steam (Source = Store traffic) grands me ~200 impressions, leading to ~15 visits. (this includes the “other pages“). Resulting in ~0 whish lists per day .

With the steam strategy fest, the impressions are going through the roof, steam is now showing my game 10x more and this now also includes the bigger capsules. But in the most shown “popular titles“ category I only have a ~0.5% click through rate.

The game is not done yet, and therefore the demo is also not final version. But there is enough there to see how this would be a great game when its done. A lot of the time has already been put into making the game look better, without changing the core gameplay. Its just never going to be a ‘viral nice graphics game’. Because I need the CPU for all the gameplay (unit count) and the GPU for 120hz on reasonable hardware (5700XT).

I know I should have stared with a smaller project, but this feature creeped from a VR tower defense game because the throwing was so much fun. And I really like the game, and would not mind working on it longer… if I could only get some indication of possible return of investment.



This is my capsule and how it shows up on steam:

Spoiler

 

Everything about the capsule image has readability issues. I can't read the logo - it's too dark and the letters blend together in the smaller version. The logo should be legible in all scales. Squint your eyes when looking at your embedded example, the titles of other games are still fully readable, but your logo disappears entirely.

The focal (highest contrast) point of the image is the red misty thing together with the greenish yellow bauble thingies, I don't have any good idea what any of those are looking at the smaller image. Similarly, the rest of the image is very noisy and hard to read. It took me a very long time to discern some kind of tank attack going on, but this is not clear in the capsule image at all. You're trying to cram a whole epic scene in what is a very tiny image players glance at for a few seconds and then move on. It's too complex. If potential players can't understand what's going on, you've lost them already. A fewer, easier to read visual elements would give a better idea on what's the game about such as one tank vs what ever they're fighting but in closeup.

The only readable thing in the image is the scifi dude who is very prominent and dominant in the scene, which makes me think he's either the MC or the main villain in some kind of single player action game, doesn't give me RTS vibes. The game's title also doesn't help in that sense. Unoffensible could describe the dude in the capsule image.

As for the game, I don't VR game, so it's hard for me to comment. The few things that stand out to me is the texture quality, which look quite dated, like early 2000s. And many of the scenes in trailer are very dark and hard to understand in what's going on. Why some things are being stacked and thrown? When you talk about building, some of that happens out of the frame of the camera. And then there's some random capital ship doing something. I just don't have a clear idea on what's going on. The holo map looks good though.

The art direction could also be more consistent, I see a lot of bright, near primary colors next to each other, which clash a lot. I don't know if you have budget for some color correction post processing, but it would help with bringing everything together.

 

i think the only quick thing you could do that would make a big difference is change lighting so that there isn't such dark shadows and maybe drop the chunky textures and go with flat colors taken from one of those color theory wheels that tells you which colors work together.You can cut down project size this way and have more readable and artistically pleasing look without changing anything major.

As for the text material, focus on what makes the game unique - RTS in which you throw things or w/e it is that you do.

 

In general thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed feedback. I really appreciate it.

This is a great point. Thank you.

I came from this 'self made' version, which had a readable logo and a simple setup. So I asked the capsule artist to incorporate more action/battle so players would see what the game was about.
Just as a sanity check, this old version is just bad quality in general right? I feel the new one looks more professional.

The post processing does a ACES tone mapping, this also adds to the darkness of the scene.

The game is quite dark, but I will see if I can find someone to fix the art direction of the game.

Thank you again! It really helps to get an outside perspective.

 

I think it's better. Maybe compositionally weaker - inconsistent logo margins, a lot of negative space in bottom left corner, but the logo is legible and it communicates the game more clearly to me.

I'd remove ACES tonemapping, or compensate it with other post processing effects that lighten the shadows and/or midtones. The advice of the other user to embrace the low poly look with flat colors rather than textures is a good one as well. Look into how Falconeer solo dev did their mats. The game doesn't use textures at all.

 

You need to work on your colors composition.
It reads badly. Make your image gray scale, and you will understand right away.

 

So let me just complete this thread by showing what I did to try to improve my situation within the short amount of time I had.

On the first day:

So I started by increasing the brightness of the shadows in the trailer and screenshots. This did not take a lot of time and reduces how hard it is to see everything. Its not a fix, but a band aid.

The real work was in making the capsule brighter and have more distinction in saturation values. I removed the character and light background. Increased the logo size and brightness. And expanded the ‘light’ explosion around the 'dark' tank. This was the result:



On the 2nd day:

The logo was still unreadable, so I split it into separate letters and moved them from each other. Removed more background. Edit : I know its still not good, and will redo it before next marketing beat





I would like to again thank you for your comments. I now understand better what to look out for in an image. This is I will redo the entire capsule art before release. The click through rate went from 17/2985 = 0.57% to 12/1328 = 0.90%; So the sample size is a bit too low to say anything specific.

Also I learned you can change a setting in windows, so ‘Ctrl + Win + C’ toggles between color and black and white mode .