Will anakysize more later, but the rougelike audience is a sliver of the strategy audience. of course it will sell worst. with no demo, many assume in difficulty the defeault as the in game expert difficulty, and that doesnt appeal to most players.
A rougelike with no demo simply will be ignored by many outright. In no snall part becauuse players think it will be hard. with no demo, it cannot be disproven really.
The game lacks an easy "hook" as well, unlike Skyward.
Not quite true. A niche audience, sure, but there's a lot more people in that community than you might think. The sheer number of roguelikes getting made and released all the time is proof of that. I've lost count of how many I now have. Games like Dredmore also prove it wrong, as that game sold VERY well. It didn't really have any "hooks" either; it's a very traditional roguelike. It did well though because plenty were interested in that kind of game, and be cause it was a high quality game, and also because it was advertised like crazy, as indie advertising goes. I was aware of it many months before it came out, and it had a rather crowded beta.
If anything, Skyward is even more niche than this one. Responses from people finding this one have been along the lines of " wow, this looks great! A roguelike from Arcen!" Whereas a common response I saw with Skyward was "what the heck is this? I'm not sure what's going on in this game".
Neither the roguelike genre or the "god-game" subgenre are as big as the overall strategy genre, but they appeal to the same type of players. Most strategy fans that I've met also play one or both of those two types.
You have a point about the lack of a demo though. This game does kinda need one. There's already been plenty of people asking for one.
