Today is the one month anniversary of Nothing is Forever! What has happened so far?

Have you guys played Game Dev Tycoon? It's a fun little strategy game where you become a game dev. Doing it in real life is just as fun, albeit more stressful and quite a bit slower.

I thought it would be interesting to document how well the game is doing after each release and share some insights with you all that so generosity decided to support its development.

First things first: this is the google analytics stats that track how many visitors this patreon page gets.

During the last month we were a bit shy of 1000 visitors. I basically just released the game on reddit and in the adult game community f95. The first post on reddit didn't do so well, with only 9 upvotes. Most of the traffic on the launching period came from f95.

The game got quite a good response there accumulating 78 likes and 9 reviews averaging a 4.8 score out of 5. Eight users rated it 5 stars, while one rated it 3 mostly because he didn't like the art style.

F95 was the only place where I could get any feedback regarding the game. The response was very encouraging. I'm quite happy with some of the comments I got:

Of course, these are all cherry picked positive feedback. There were also some critics. The biggest complaints were about

too thick outlines at the beginning of the game (not so much by the end). All those complaints convinced me that's really important to remake a lot of the early renders to make a better first impression.

During this last month I also played a bit around with more promotional posts on reddit. All of them but 1 failed miserably. But, 2 weeks ago, this post got 27 upvotes and generated a good amount of traffic (as you saw above):

It's important to note a few things regarding these number though. First, roughly 40% of those visits came from mobile and are thus "wasted" since I don't

have a mobile port for the game. So, they either left empty hands (bad), or needed to come back from a pc (meaning 1 user is being counted twice, which makes reddit numbers less impressive).

Secondly, reddit users need to visit this patreon page to download the game, whereas f95 users can download the game directly from there. Thus, only players from f95 really interested in the game visit this patreon page. Because of that, I think that f95 is still the place that contains most Nothing is Forever players, although it's reassuring to see that the game can also get some success on reddit.

This seems to be in accordance with patrons numbers:

At the beginning of this month, 11 patrons contributed for the first time for the development of this game. A quick look around graphtreon showed me that 150 (!!) new adult gaming pages were created in the last 2 months. This is a very competitive market. Among all of those new pages, it seems that we are roughly in the top 25%.

That sounds relatively good and I'm happy with it. 11 patrons might sound little, but it's really hard to start from nothing. I'm sure it will get much better than this with time and more releases.

After payments were processed, 1 patron decided to cancel their subscription. This is all very normal, patrons have a lot of freedom in how much they want to chip in and for how long. I am very grateful to anyone that contributes, no matter the amount. Thank you all.

Future:

itch.io and gamcore.com: Regarding the future, my initial idea was to release the game in as many places as possible to get the most amount of exposure. However, I got a bit of cold feet after being systematic told that the initial renders style should be improved. It's so important to give a good 1st impression that I decided to wait a couple more months to fix everything first.

When that's done, I'll be putting the most recent free version of the game on itch.io. I also think it shouldn't be very hard to make a web version to be played on

gamcore.com. I'm not sure how big these sites are, but I've heard from other devs that they can definitely boost exposure. In such a competitive market, anything helps.

Reddit: I'll keep playing a bit to see what works and doesn't work to get exposure on reddit. 27 upvotes wasn't too shabby, but there are posts that can gather hundreds of upvotes. I'll have to see if I can create a bit of hype before the release of chaper 2, but it all seems a bit like catching lightning in a bottle.

To be honest, I find this marketing stuff the most annoying part of the job. But, at least for reddit, it doesn't take a lot of time to make a post and call it day. The bad part of reddit, at least so far, is that it's basically impossible to get any comment or feedback.

Twitter: I have no idea how twitter works. I made 1 post to the void and had zero visits. I don't want to spend time gathering followers over there or whatever, so I’ll leave twitter alone for the time being.

Discord: at some point I'll open a server for all fans of the game to talk there. Other devs have said that's a great way to get feedback. But I feel like we are too small at the moment for that. I'll wait until we grow a bit more.

F95: that community remains the best place to get feedback and potential patrons. I'll keep answering all questions and interacting with players over there. The bad part is that it's obviously a pirate community, so they'll probably release the early access, patron exclusive version, that I give you over here. It is what it is, no point fighting it. After 1 month I'll put the latest update here for free anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much. I see patreon as a tipping jar, anyone interested will tip in no matter how they get the game. The proof of that is all of you that are here even if the 1st chapter is completely free.

Android version: it would probably be a good idea to have an android port of the game. I need to investigate this further. If it takes like a weekend to make all the required changes, I think that would be a good thing to do. If it's like 2 weeks of work or more, then it will have to wait.

Update to web presentation: This one is hard for me because I have no idea what I'm doing regarding web design. But I have seen some other patreon pages

that look so much better. Before release of chapter 2, I'll try to improve a bit the presentation over here, on f95, and put on a good page on itch.

I'll also try to make some more informative posts regarding the mechanics of the game for anyone that might have questions. But all of this will take some time, and it will be a work in progress. I can't afford to take away too much time from actually developing the game.

Chapter 2 progress:

Progress is going according to the plan. I think that, at the latest, I'll be able to release at the second half of September like I said in the last update. I'm actually hoping that I can get everything ready a little before that, but that may be asking too much. We'll see. I'll keep you informed.

And to finish, a few renders from next update. You deserve them if you've read all of this long post.

This is all for today. I'll keep making these reports after each release. This way, we can all see how much progress we are making. Right now, there's not much more to do besides being patient, keeping my head down, and try to produce quality updates. The rest will come in due time.

Best,

MrSilverLust