Steam Suggestions

Question rather should be, is not how it look like, but how it is presented.
On last screen I see smartphone, with barely visible text on top and something which behaves somehow like infrared.

At least if there would be ghost inspector in the title, that would make more to think about it.
This is my perspective of view.

I think you have misconception, how to present a ghost. On initial images, you show shadow on the wall. Is hard to say otherwise, because of the high of the body and head, in respect to chairs.

And on the last one, you show device (smartphone), which can show person in the shadow. Or maybe behind the wall.
But I wouldn't bet for a ghost.

I would rather have some semitransparent posture, with maybe even a bit of glow if needed, or blur. And accordingly placed against wall and floor, so is obviously not a shadow, but possibly standing near, or on the front of player.

Look into games, how ghost are presented. You can ignore pacman however

 

I know you don't like the "typical" things, but for the customers, it's almost mandatory to give something familiar. Like it or not, people will recognize shiny aura, distinctive shapes or even some lack of shape. People won't recognize as "ghost" anything with normal people-shape and color. This phone screen looks like if you use heat camera on a guy who happens to be cold. Which is "realistic" if it's a ghost (and we assume ghosts exist), but you're making a game, not a realistic simulation (otherwise you wouldn't use the word "spook"). In games you need to give familiar things, at least a few of them. You can experiment with new ways, but if you want people to recognize something as something, then you need to rely on the common signifiers. How people show ghost in games?

 

what dpi are the images being exported as?

 

I like the concept lot more now! But goole something like ghost app or ghost sensor app. It is better to make the background visible in the screen to show it more that the ghost is only visible via the phone. Also the ghost should be than a bit transparent and look really creepy and not just a figure. But now it is much cooler than before!
Here is some inspiration

https://image.winudf.com/v2/image/Y...2M4MWU/screen-2.jpg?h=800&fakeurl=1&type=.jpg

https://image.winudf.com/v2/image/Y...WM1MDM/screen-1.jpg?h=800&fakeurl=1&type=.jpg

 

This is definitely a step in the right direction. This image gives gamers a lot more information about your game.

 

It's a device similar to a FLIR - infrared camera - not a smartphone. If I showed a semi-transparent ghost - which is how many of the ghosts appear in the game itself unless you're looking through a device - it wouldn't show up very well in a small image. I realize what you're saying about making something that's instantly recognizable, but I think most of the people who might be interested in this game would have seen shows like "Ghost Hunters", "Ghost Adventures" or the numerous Youtube videos showing "ghosts caught on video", so they'd be familiar with infrared devices and the way that ghosts appear in these TV shows and Youtube videos (a dark silhouette, shadow when no one's there, etc).

I've already got PacMan covered:

 

It's an infrared camera similar to a FLIR, and I think most horror fans are going to be used to seeing ghosts that have a human shape in TV shows like "Ghost Hunters", "Ghost Adventures", and the countless Youtube videos showing security camera or cellphone footage of unexplained human figures. Usually in these shows and videos, the ghost figures are either dark silhouettes of a person, a shadow of a person cast on a wall, semi-transparent human figures, etc. The above shows / videos are extremely popular ("Ghost Hunters" alone has fans in the millions I think), and most horror game fans probably spend a lot of time watching "raw footage" videos on Youtube and are therefore probably familiar with those too.

 

I could make an animated GIF that shows the device being swiveled so you can see there's nothing visible except in the device's screen. That might also make it stand out more in Steam lists, etc. I don't know whether Itch.io allows animated game images, but I've seen them on Steam.

 

If you only target audience, who is familiar with a genre, or some other title, hoping to grab part of the market pie, by all means do it. Your result my be at most in thousands, if lucky. But me as potential customer, and fan of ghost busters films, you title / advert do not grab any attention. At.most is misleading.

From what I see, I expect some crime inspector, like detective. But ghost would be last think ever to come into my mind. Here you are probably loosing more than hoped fraction pie of million, mentioned earlier.

What you are going to do, is up to you. But if I ware you, I would listen to advise/critique, while is.early time yet and not too late. Last think you want, is mislead target audience, and receive negative reviews, based on their different expectations.for example, players liking crime games.may not necessary like ghost based crimes. But this is just my speculation at his point.

 

I've already seen what you've had to say about your game here, so that may colour my perception. Putting that aside...

To me, the new picture implies that I'll be searching for stuff in old buildings, maybe using gadgets or tech to find clues. I'm definitely not getting any traditional sort of ghost or spooky connotations from that image, probably because of the warm colours and clear visuals, so it doesn't imply that I'm looking for ghosts.

If what I've described fits what you want my perception to be then good. If not... see what other people think, and keep trying different stuff until what people perceive is what you want to communicate.

Keep in mind that I'm not a part of your target audience, and likely nor are most people in this thread. If you're confident that your target audience - people who watch ghost video shows and whatnot - would understand your game from these images then generic advice may not apply. Of course, one piece of generic advice that does apply is that it's a good idea to test it. Is there a ghost show forum where you could post a few variations and see which one is most attention grabbing specifically for those people?

Alternatively... if you're doing this as a just-for-fun project and you detest doing this stuff then don't sweat it. If you're doing this for you then don't spoil the experience by following what other people think is best.

 

There isn't an obvious answer there. You did get more creative in this new image. Still, it's unclear that the phone shows something you cannot see with the naked eye.

A few suggestions, please don't take this as "telling you what to do", I'm often wrong about things, it's just food for thought.

The scene is still very bright, clean and evenly lit. Why not introduce some contrast, some dirt shader/ambient occlusion to the environment? Apart from a missed opportunity with the atmosphere, it doesn't sell the "ghost" at all. A silhouette of a normal figure standing right in the middle of a well-lit room.

Also, if you don't want your ghost to have the usual tropes, such as deformities, glowing eyes, ragged clothes etc. maybe just a subtle, otherworldly glow emitted from it could do the trick? Just something to make the silhouette out of the ordinary.

The font is boring. The font backdrop is the same color as the background, making everything confusing and indistinguishable. It's almost like there is a horizontal plank with a sign in front of you and you have to duck to move forward. Maybe lose the backdrop and use a font more suited to the spooky theme?

 

LOL Infrared radiation ghosts and phone cameras (with no IR filtering).

 

It's not a phone (as I explained earlier). It's an infrared device similar to a FLIR, hence it basically shows temperature since infrared light is emitted due to heat (or reflected off objects due to ambient heat). Everything shows up in infrared unless its temperature is Absolute Zero (-459 Fahrenheit) in which case it shows up as black. Paranormal groups routinely use infrared devices because they say ghosts show up in infrared light even if they aren't visible in normal light.

 

The most recent Steam review rejected the game because the reviewer only got five of the devices, since the reviewer only got to the Trainee rank (which takes about three minutes), hence the reviewer accused me of failing to implement the rest of the devices that are attained at higher ranks. I don't even know what to say to that.
So apparently the game will only be approved by Steam if I make it easy enough so that the reviewer can quickly complete the entire game in a single brief session. That seems bizarre, but no longer unexpected I guess.

I think I may just skip Steam entirely and focus on itch.io and similar websites.

 

It may be, because reviewer do not fall into ghost fan group Or you got major flow issue in the game design, which makes not obvious, how to progress. Your UI maybe is no e intuitive. Maybe reviewer get frustrated with a game play, and lack of progress.

Mind, for you may be 3 minutes, for somebody who has no idea about game, may take 5 or 10 min.

I will speculate, but I think your major issue is, based on our discussion and posts, that you assume, that players know all about your game concept from the start. Which mostly is not the case, leading you where you are.

You really should sit on your game concept, and look from the perspective of player, who has 0 idea, what is playing. Game should be self descriptive via progress.

Why you don't show the game to your friends, ask to play it. Just don't tell them anything about, nor explain, to get most useful feedback from them. Note their reactions and note progress time, through levels.

 

But the main issue is that the reviewer explicitly said they would need to verify that all eight devices are currently implemented in the game, which would mean the reviewer would have to play through MOST of the game. Even I would take quite a while to complete that much of the game, possibly several weeks. Why on earth does the reviewer need to win the game before granting approval? That's an absurd standard, especially since so many games are designed to take months to win. How would such games ever get approved on Steam?

 

Sounds like you just happened to get someone who maybe shouldn't be reviewing games. It is very odd why they seem to be so hyper critical of your game alone (well maybe not alone but obviously there are a lot of truly low quality games on Steam filled with bugs etc). Just seems odd why they would be so hyper focused on your screenshot when there are numerous games on Steam with blurry screenshots, poor video quality, etc. And now the game is too hard? Why are they even looking at such a thing? Seems very weird. I highly doubt they play through every game verifying every item is in the game.

 

I am sure you are not an isolated case, and indeed there are games, which takes long time to complete. Hence, there should be provided/available guidelines, how game should be introduced for review.

Edit:
In worse case scenario, you indeed had poor reviewer, as Benjamin sais.

 

That is really weird. I have not seen that happen with a Steam submission. One thing you could do is change the description text on your Steam page to only reference things a reviewer might find in the first couple minutes of play. Don't even mention anything in your game description (and Early Access description) that would be unlocked later through gameplay. Remember, you will be allowed to change your text after the initial review, and future changes are not subject to manual review.

 

To be fair, I honestly think Steam is trying to help. After all, Steam makes money when games sell, so Steam has submission rules and recommendations to try to help get every game's store page ready to sell.

Sometimes Steam catches little mistakes that a dev might have missed. For example, if a dev enables Early Access but does not provide the text in the Early Access section, then the Steam review process will catch that mistake and tell the dev to fill in that text. It is usually a bunch of little checks like that to make sure the content on the store page for the game is ready for the real world.

The only weird feedback I have ever gotten was when a Steam reviewer wanted one of my games to pause automatically when a game controller was removed. However, this was on a purely multiplayer game with no pause option, and it had support for game controllers, joysticks, keyboard, and mouse. Pausing the game on a game controller removed event would have made no sense at all. Luckily in my case, the Steam reviewer submitted that feedback as a recommendation instead of a requirement, and that feedback did not affect my game's approval. But even with that one weird feedback, I honestly think the Steam reviewer was trying to help in general, since that advice would have been helpful in a purely single player game if the gamer only had a game controller.

In the OP's example, I don't think Steam is saying the game is too hard. I think the Steam reviewer is trying to confirm everything the dev claims is in the game is actually in the game. The Steam staff don't care how hard or easy a game is. Anyway, the OP could likely get around this by reducing the claim of how much stuff is in the game, or by detailing that certain items are not unlocked until much later in the gameplay. For example, if a game has 20 guns but only 1 gun in the first level, then say the player starts with one gun in level 1 and additional guns are unlocked in later levels. Don't claim there are 20 guns in the game if only 1 gun is available during the first level, because some Steam reviewers could flag that as false information.

 

But that doesn't make any sense. Saying there are 20 guns in the game is no reason to expect 20 guns to be in the first level. I get what you are saying just that in the OP's case it seems like they are scrutinizing things that are not normal considering numerous other games on Steam. If someone made an FPS or RPG for example that says it has 25 different weapons or 1,500 different pieces of gear surely the reviewer doesn't test to confirm those are all there. And in any case why would they even doubt it to begin with. That is the part that seems weird.

 

The reviewer knew that most of them have to be unlocked by moving up in rank (he said so), but mistakenly thought that a UI display glitch was somehow preventing him from advancing in rank even though he advanced to Trainee and knew that he had advanced because he mentioned it. That UI glitch is just cosmetic and doesn't prevent the player from advancing in rank. But the bottom line is that he said explicitly that he needs to confirm that all the devices are in the game, so he would still have failed to get all of them unless he played the game an awfully long time.

The only reason I listed the exact number of devices in the Early Access description was because a previous Store Page review had said my Early Access description failed due to a lack of specifics about the exact number of things currently implemented. But I make it clear that most of them are gained only later in the game, and the reviewer knows that.

I suppose I could add a tutorial mode that lets the reviewer test all the devices before attaining the rank needed to use them, otherwise it'll take him far too long to gain the needed rank. But I can't afford to keep spending extra time just to get it to finally be approved by Steam, because I need to focus on improving the gameplay.

 

Well, he didn't expect them to be in the first level, but he did somehow expect to be able to advance far enough to gain all of them, and that's what puzzles me. I have to wonder how "Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy" was approved for Steam, given that most players never get very far, and very few ever win it. How do they test large FRPGs that can take months to win?

 

Exactly. That is all I am saying. That is the weird part. Now maybe they are trying to hint they want you to give them some kind of code or something to make every item just spawn right in front of them. I don't know. But yeah that is exactly what I was thinking. Look at all of the games that have power ups and skills to gain metroidvanias etc and some games are intentionally targeting high difficulty loving gamers. Or look at the games that say they have 500 levels or 1,000+ levels. Do they spend the time to actually play until they have visited every one? Lol

Anyway good luck!

 

Someone on another forum mentioned giving the reviewer "debug keys" to help them get to the places they needed to check, so maybe I'm expected to give them the ability to cheat.

If you decide to release on Steam sometime later, I could give you the list I drew up (after finally figuring it out) for preparing a build for upload. They have an 11-minute tutorial (yes, 11 minutes to learn how to upload a file) but their tutorial is now out of date and so some of the stuff doesn't work. I had to figure out parts of it by trial and error.

 

I was thinking of releasing on Steam sooner or later but I'm not 100% decided. I like doing experiments but I basically don't expect anything to come from just being on Steam. Since I view this like I need to do all of the work myself to make sales it seems to me like it makes little difference where the game is actually hosted for download (other than some people might want to buy games only on Steam).

Anyway I definitely appreciate your offer and may well take you up on it at some point! I am a huge fan of testing so I do want to test launching on multiple sites at some point because then I will know for sure if it is worth it or serves only to dilute my marketing efforts and works against me. Maybe my expectations are extreme to the opposite of most people and it will turn out in reality there is some tiny value just from being there.I haven't checked out your game yet because I have been busy with my own launch & follow-up but I hope to try it out sometime soonish! Probably tomorrow night or this weekend for sure. I like the concept a lot.

Thanks again and I hope you get things sorted soon out with the reviewer.

 

I get what you are saying, but in terms of the Steam review process you need to be clear about what a gamer can expect initially. For Steam, you want to explicitly write what to expect in the first few minutes. You can also say additional things are unlocked later in the game. For example, you could say "the player starts with one weapon and can unlock up to 25 weapons through gameplay".

 

Just change your text in your Steam page. Say something like "The player gets one device to start with and up to eight devices can be unlocked through gameplay". You don't need to rewrite your game or add a special tutorial to show off devices. The easiest solution is to simply clarify your text in your description.

 

Well, the description for "Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy" very clearly describes the game. That game's Steam page says "Climb up an enormous mountain with nothing but a hammer and a pot."

 

I love Steam, both as a gamer and as a developer. If you have a game you want to sell, then I strongly recommend putting it on Steam. Steam has rules to make sure game pages accurately represent their games, but the rules are there to help people. Steam is not trying to hurt anybody by requiring good game store pages.

As far as why to use Steam instead of some random site. Well, gamers trust Steam more than a random website. Steam handles the credit card transactions. Steam has an excellent distribution system with really efficient incremental updates, and it is really efficient for both the gamers and the devs.

 

This is why I do not buy games anywhere else, only on Steam or places where I can redeem on Steam.

I have only one game, which is not on Steam: Ghost Recon Wildlands, and I have it because I got it from my friends (we play together from time to time).

 

OH! Well that makes perfect sense. Yeah I get that. This is just writing an accurate description.

 

That wasn't the issue. The reviewer said he needed to actually verify that all of the unlockable items were already in the game, so he wanted a way to access them (which means attaining a higher rank). He thought there was a glitch preventing him from rising in rank, which wasn't the case, in fact he advanced one rank, up to Trainee (a big step up from Flunky). So I need to figure out how to allow the reviewer to quickly / instantly access all the items so he can verify they're in there. Some people upload a review version with cheat keys, or put in simpler requirements for advancement to each level. It would be easier for me (in terms of coding) to make a special area where the player starts with all the devices. I'm not sure what the acceptable practice is.

 

Not a completely random site. Lol I meant 2nd tier sites such as itch.io I will test Steam at some point. Right now I am happy with itch. I have a long-term view for this. Step by step gradually increasing business over time. And part of the process is simply building more games and marketing them. I'm thinking after I have a few games released then I will do a Steam release in a multi-games pack or at least make a bundle after releasing them on Steam.

I am the opposite where the more time passes I am not very interested in Steam as a gamer and find more games I like on itch and GJ. Tiny games. Experimental games. Heck even the game jam entries I like checking out. Lol

Anyway I don't want to derail this was just replying to @StarvingIndieDeveloper

 

I have not seen Steam reviewers do that. I honestly think you could easily address this by rewriting your description. Good luck with it.

 

But the only reason I added the precise number of unlockable items in the description is because a previous Store Page review had failed because I didn't have precise numbers: as I recall, the reviewer specifically said I needed to give the precise number. So I don't see how I can change it back to a more vague description at this point, especially now that the reviewer knows the number anyway.

 

Steam has some extra things like Achievements and other community-oriented features that can help spread your game (players see achievements earned by people on their friend list etc), but I don't think Steam brings in much initial attention by itself. My early demo on Steam only generated a small number of Youtube playthroughs, so the only way to get more is to send out free keys to Youtubers directly, which can be done via Itch.io too. Of course, the amount of "organic" attention gained on Itch.io is almost certainly even less than on Steam, but if it comes down to sending out free keys either way then it probably doesn't make much difference. And of course, Steam requires a submission payment of $100 per game, and the process of setting up a page and uploading builds is far more convoluted than on Itch.io (the latter doesn't require an 11-minute tutorial just to teach you how to upload a build).

 

Yes I get that there are definitely things that are of benefit on Steam such as the people who are big fans of certain curators or certain groups and like you said the achievements and so forth.

I think there will be some tiny value in just being there but overall I think the biggest factor is down to making a solid (not perfect not greatest game ever etc) somewhat unique (not majorly just touches of uniqueness) game and then creating a good game page and then doing a great job on marketing.

Personally I think most Indies are not seeing much success because they focus on the wrong things when making games and then after completion they ignore the most important things. Just my view based on what I have seen.

Also think it is likely more Indie games would sell overall if people would stop releasing any but the most primitive games for free or stupid low prices of say 50 cents. Reason being there have been many times now around the web I read a post (and even in real life people I know) saying they often don't see any need in buying Indie games because there are so many they can play for free anyway.

People have fun making stuff and then throw it out for free or think "ah I will sell it for say 50 cents someone might buy it" and they end up devaluing games on the whole a microscopic bit whenever they do that I think. Not that games still can't sell great when you get a lot of major players backing you. I'm talking about the norm. The average Indie trying to do it all themselves. I think this is a big part why average sales of "good" games just keep dropping. Especially when people use some nice art assets and players only see ah a game that looks good for $5 and a game that looks good for free... hmm... which do I get... which do I get.

 

While it is slightly easier initially to get going in Itch, the Steamworks system works better and is more flexible. I absolutely love using Steamworks for uploading incremental updates, but I admit that I had to watch the tutorial to really figure it out. If you have multiple platforms and various DLC, the flexibility of Steamworks really shines.

 

In the continuing saga of trying to get Steam to finally allow my game: my latest Build Review failed because I took out obsolete counters that the reviewer had previously complained about, but taking them out resulted in the reviewer complaining that the screenshots show the counters and therefore are now inaccurate. This is just nitpicking, pure and simple, in fact almost everything in this process has been a matter of being condemned for doing what the previous review had told me to do.

 

Steam has requirements in place to make sure the videos and pictures accurately represent the actual game. The way it used to be, a developer could post videos and pictures that had nothing to do with actual gameplay, and in some cases developers completely mislead gamers about the state of the games.

For example, when "No Man's Sky" first launched, it's Steam store page included videos and screenshots that definitely did not exist in the game that users purchased. It was very misleading, and it lead to an outcry from many gamers. As a result, Steam implemented new rules regarding videos and screenshots.

If you make changes to your game, you need to update your screenshots and videos to match the actual game. That will satisfy the requirement for Steam.

 

Yes, I know; but a tiny change to the UI that few people will even notice in the screenshots (especially at the normal screenshot size on Steam) should not hold up the game for yet another 2 - 5 days, nor should I need to continuously put in so many extra hours for small things like this. I need to be stamping out final bugs, finalizing gameplay, putting in more content etc, otherwise players will complain. No player is going to notice whether some of the screenshots have one tiny UI element or not. This isn't a big misleading feature, it's just a tiny cosmetic change. There needs to be some sort of reasonable limit on how picky the review process is, otherwise devs just get exhausted jumping through endless hoops.

 

Does Steam allow animated capsule images? I thought there used to be quite a few in the search listings at Steam, but I don't see any now.

 

You need to work on the lighting in your game. I would directly disregard a game with those screenshots because of the lighting

 

What's wrong with the lighting?

 

I actually thought the ghost was the inspector. Google "inspectors" and compare what you get back (select Images) to see what I mean. The particular hat you have in the image is mentally correlated to inspectors for a lot of the population. Just my $0.000002.

 

Here's the latest version of the Steam capsule image, with a ghost that looks more like a stereotypical ghost. How does this look?

 

That looks nothing like a stereotypical ghost but fine, whatever. It's better. It's boring as hell, but it's better.

 

If you want the best feedback for art related stuff go to polycount forum. No offense to the developers here and not saying what feedback they have isn't useful, but you know if you want art feedback why not go to artist?

Also, when it comes to reviewing and iterating on art, what you want is few words and lots of art. Make a S*** ton of images to look at, not just one and then hen peck it to death. Try out anything and everything you can think of. It's all about the feels, not the theories. Put away the magnifying glass, take 5 steps back, and just look. You need something that grabs attention and holds it. Make a composite image of 50 other steam thumbnails and stick yours in there at random. Does it stand out?

My take is that your latest image looks 100% like developer art. Meaning, it's going to blend in with all the crap on steam. Something you click by fast without bothering to read the description at all. IMO, if there is one thing to put some money into or put more time into, it's those first impression images. You know, get out the push up bra and the best make-up for that first date. Everything depends on it.

Also, throw away your sense of shame. Do you have females in your game? Sexy females? Get them in there if at all possible. Show some skin. Show a pretty face. Show a pretty eye. A delicate feminine hand. Anything. People can say whatever they want. Sex sells. 100% guaranteed. Even if it has nothing to do at all with the rest of your game.

 

This! Back in high school I remember being given a piece of paper divided into 30 squares and told to draw a different approach in every square, and to try to make them each significantly different from the others. Not necessarily good, just different. The point was to get me generating ideas, and to stop me from just iterating on the first thing that popped into my head.

I am by no means an artist or a graphic designer, but that exercise is still a really useful one even to me!

When people show off concept art it's generally the stuff near the end of the process, when they've got up to the point of finalising details. What we rarely see outside of their studio is the early stages where it's lots of quick sketches or mockups to explore different approaches. That's a step that many people skip, probably because it's a part we don't often see from other people unless we're already working in that field.