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What's up with the 2018 indie bombs from indie darling devs?

FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
Below is a little more obvious because it didn't review particularly well.

The ones that really confuse me are Pit People and Full Metal Furies.

The next big game from The Behemoth and Cellar Door Games (made Rogue Legacy) and these went nearly unnoticed? The crazy part is they didn't even get bad reviews. They just barely got reviewed.

What's wrong with these games, and/or why did everyone ignore them?

Have you HEARD the Full Metal Furies soundtrack? It's insane. And this not even on YouTube! I can't even post links here.

I have some friends who have been working on an indie game for years, and I'm terrified about how saturated the market is. Really worry about the release.
 
superNESjoe

superNESjoe

Developer at Limited Run Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
1,160
Over saturation and a particularly massive AAA year.

Pit People is great but the way it was released made me not event notice it til months later.
 
Potterson

Potterson

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,408
Was Battleblock Theater a lot more popular? Pit People is great and I guess it's not really a flop... It's just not "mainstream indie" like Gungeon or Inside.
 
Paz

Paz

Member
Nov 1, 2017
2,148
Brisbane, Australia
Pit People has nearly 5k reviews on Steam and sells for ~20 USD.

It's not a huge hit but that's not exactly a huge bomb either, though that depends on scope.
 
Starlatine

Starlatine

533.489 paid youtubers cant be wrong
Member
Oct 28, 2017
30,362
Pit People is far from being a flop.

The game is great by the way. Era and most reviewers ignore it because it got no PS4 or switch version, but its doing more than fine.
 
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FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
This almost happened to Hollow Knight. It actually took a few months before people really started talking about.

CrossCode is also the secret Hollow Knight of 2018, but I guess that's a different topic. This are proven devs.
 
Lithium Flower

Lithium Flower

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,624
La-Mulana 2 was robbed. Not sure if it counts for the topic but I thought Nigoro proved themselves with the first game and I assumed this was a game the indie crowd was looking forward to.
 
Becks'

Becks'

Member
Dec 7, 2017
7,428
Canada
Over saturation. I feel like the best hope for indie developers right now is being picked up and promoted by Nintendo.
 
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FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
A LOT of those reviews and ratings for Pit People were from early access. It's the launch that seemed like it went by without a peep.

But the game is good! And it reviewed well. Strange.
 
ViewtifulJC

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,020
Y'all slept on guacamelee 2. That didn't get nearly the attention the first game got but it was even better
 

Deleted member 21709

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
23,310
FolderBrad said:
Below is a little more obvious because it didn't review particularly well.

The ones that really confuse me are Pit People and Full Metal Furies.

The next big game from The Behemoth and Cellar Door Games (made Rogue Legacy) and these went nearly unnoticed? The crazy part is they didn't even get bad reviews. They just barely got reviewed.

What's wrong with these games, and/or why did everyone ignore them?

Have you HEARD the Full Metal Furies soundtrack? It's insane. And this not even on YouTube! I can't even post links here.

I have some friends who have been working on an indie game for years, and I'm terrified about how saturated the market is. Really worry about the release.
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The name of FMF. That's why it failed. The name.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,689
ViewtifulJC said:
Y'all slept on guacamelee 2. That didn't get nearly the attention the first game got but it was even better
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I have it but haven't played it yet, which is the case for a lot of games, especially indies since there are so many more of those vs. big releases... so I've done my part by buying them, but not in terms of being able to promote them after playing, sadly.
 
Poimandres

Poimandres

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,854
packy17 said:
The bad memes turn a lot of people off tbh
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That's just a vocal minority. The first game sold well across several releases and platforms, and reviewed well. Most people don't care about silly memes.

The real problem with Guac 2 is that it looks largely the same as the first game. It just doesn't seem particularly "exciting". I'm sure it will sell steadily over the next few years.

I picked up Full Metal Furies in the recent eshop sale, but haven't played yet. Going to co-op with my wife.

First I've heard of Pit People honestly. I'll check it out.
 
werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,310
I imagine Pit People didn't get noticed as much because 1) it was an early access title so purchased spread out between EA release & official release and 2) it was in a completely different genre than all of their past games. SteamSpy pegs it at 200k-500k sales and as far as I know it hasn't had any bargain-basement sales so it doesn't look like it bombed even if it isn't a mega-blockbuster like Castle Crashers.

Full Metal Furies is a bad name (which wouldn't be much better if Furies was changed for something else). From what I've read of the game, it sounds super niche - it's a brawler focused on multiplayer (fair enough) but it also has a heavy emphasis on puzzles which is a super weird combination. Hearing that enemies have colored barriers that can only be broken with specific characters isn't a selling point but for some reason they advertise it like it is on the store page. Also, from what I've read, the online multiplayer was broken at launch.
 
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werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,310
Poimandres said:
The real problem with Guac 2 is that it looks largely the same as the first game. It just doesn't seem particularly "exciting". I'm sure it will sell steadily over the next few years.
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I imagine this is why most indie direct sequels don't sell. The first game sells on a combination of quality & uniqueness but without that uniqueness, the sequel doesn't sell even if it's of higher quality. Like with me, I thought Guacamelee 1 was a pretty good game but I didn't love it. 6 years later, there are so many indie metroidvanias out there that "Guacamelee but somewhat better" isn't enough of a selling point to convince me to play the game, much less buy it, when instead I could be playing Hollow Knight or one of the many dozens of high quality games in the genre that aren't sequels to a game I've already played.
 
Ehoavash

Ehoavash

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,232
Hm i never even heard of people pit people or full metal furies tbh

Maybe poor word of mouth?? The later has a bad name ..also the former isn't on the switch, which I kinda gravitate towards when playing indie games currently ..
 
benj

benj

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,833
Releasing for other platforms has obviously done a lot for Hollow Knight, but it was in no way a flop before that. Even when it was just on Steam, it was doing very well—extremely well for a first release from a tiny, basically unknown team.

Hard to find graphs of ownership over time, but check the date on this tweet.



 
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FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
I guess Pit People is more of a bomb in its final release. And certainly chatter around here or end of year discussion.
 
dabri

dabri

Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,728
Considering I've not heard of any of these games except below, I don't know what to tell you. I even know of the devs and their past games.
I think it's a matter of lack of marketing or marketing in a really poor way.
 
Anubseth

Anubseth

Member
Jan 10, 2018
109
ViewtifulJC said:
Y'all slept on guacamelee 2. That didn't get nearly the attention the first game got but it was even better
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I didn't buy it because its not on my prefered console. The game is releasing 6 months after the oldest versions were released on a different console. I didn't approved this when the Xbox 360 version of the first game was launched 1 year and 3 months after the PS3 version and I don't aprove it now so it is a no-buy.
 
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FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
Can't act like hype didn't exist for Hollow Knight BEFORE the Switch release. Because it did. It just happened months after initial release. "Waiting for Switch" was almost a meme.

This was more about just how well known and loved the dev's previous releases were. And seemingly how little that mattered.
 
Platy

Platy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,617
Brazil
werezompire said:
Full Metal Furies is a bad name (which wouldn't be much better if Furies was changed for something else). From what I've read of the game, it sounds super niche - it's a brawler focused on multiplayer (fair enough) but it also has a heavy emphasis on puzzles which is a super weird combination. Hearing that enemies have colored barriers that can only be broken with specific characters isn't a selling point but for some reason they advertise it like it is on the store page. Also, from what I've read, the online multiplayer was broken at launch.
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The barrier thing is that it forces the coop, since it gives people in your team a goal : to break my barrier so people can beat this enemy up.
It is like a coop conversation starter =P

Also the puzzles are pratically unecessary if you don't want since you can just take a look at the steam forums and copy the passwords they gave you so you can access the endgame stuff.

And the name is not the best.

BUT what this game made as it's biggest sin is that it launched basically as a Xbox One exclusive. A old school cute beat em up with a full roster of awesome women. Microsoft barely mentioned the existence of that game to the world =P
Meanwhile Nintendo was making people think Celeste was a console exclusive for the switch.

That is a game that I am ANXIOUS to hear how much it sold on the switch with the late port
 
BlackManLovesKUF

BlackManLovesKUF

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,358
I bought all of those games so I did my part, but really it had to have came down to lack of aggressive marketing. It's still a blindspot for many indie devs, right or wrong resting on previous success is a luxury reserved for certain devs and you can't take that success for granted.

Lithium Flower said:
La-Mulana 2 was robbed. Not sure if it counts for the topic but I thought Nigoro proved themselves with the first game and I assumed this was a game the indie crowd was looking forward to.
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Well it certainly made my GOTY list for what its worth, hopefully it'll have great longtail sales.
 
somerandomweirdguy

somerandomweirdguy

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,086
Don't name your game something that calls this to mind

6cef9a5d373f354c77373c9d6dc7a8e25de71588bf05ce8d11895e4cd23e1b9d.jpg
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Moppy

Moppy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,666
For me, I think it's just a saturation thing. I play a lot of games in a year's time, most of which are smaller indie titles, but even then, I only have so much time/budget to dedicate to things. As it stands, my backlog rolling into 2018 is already pretty massive, and I'm really only playing on Xbox anymore (with the occasional Switch exclusive). Couldn't imagine if I were trying to juggle multiple platforms and their respective exclusives on top of that. There's lots of things I see trailers/coverage for and think "I'll definitely get to that when I have some time", and it never happens. Hell, I buy a fair number of games and do that exact same thing (though I've tried to get better about this in recent years).
 
Silky

Silky

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Oct 25, 2017
10,522
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User Banned (1 week): Personal attack. Long history of aggressive behaviour and hostility to other members.
neon/drifter

neon/drifter

Shit Shoe Wasp Smasher
Member
Apr 3, 2018
4,060
I got Full Metal Furies. It's an incredible game. It really is excellent. But I really do think most people misread the title as "Furries" and just walk the other way. The discussion of this was rampant since release and they can't change the title because the story is based on some greek mythology based around the Furies. It's just what they're called.
 
BernardoOne

BernardoOne

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,289
benj said:
Releasing for other platforms has obviously done a lot for Hollow Knight, but it was in no way a flop before that. Even when it was just on Steam, it was doing very well—extremely well for a first release from a tiny, basically unknown team.

Hard to find graphs of ownership over time, but check the date on this tweet.



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Hollow Knight is a perfect example of utterly garbage mainstream gaming media is at reviewing any Indies not on consoles. Hollow Knight blew up on word of mouth and sales long way before the Switch port announcement, but most places only started covering and reviewing the game after that
 
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FolderBrad

FolderBrad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
868
Saying the name is bad doesnt explain why so many people here WHO KNOW it's not actually "Furries" didn't buy the game. Or even show much interest in it.

What's the reasoning behind why YOU didn't play it? Maybe that explains why a rando would pass it over. Maybe. Maaaybe. But it certainly doesn't explain why you all ignored it. That's like saying "LOL THE WII IS A BAD NAME" and then not buying it FOR that reason. I'm confused. People who read can't use this as an excuse.
 
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