Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?

[TheVampire100]

Okay, so you are fascinated with Rabi Rabi for... what?
I don't see any appeal to the game except the obvious fanservice. And fanservice is never a selling point to me, it actually turns me off.
now, when I say fanservice, I mean stuff like anime-style characters, overly cute drrawn characters (the anime fans call them moe I think) and the obious point: Boobs.
Neither the art style of the game (not the anime-style, I can live with that, I mean the actual style of the gameplay) nor the gameplay seem to encourage me to buy this game.
All in the store page scremas to me "Plain!"
Also the obvious: Plattformer. if I wanted to play a plattformer, i would buy a plattformer. Peopel that don't look for plattformers will pass rabi Rabi but give SR a chance.

This game reminds me of another game I started playing but didn't finish (because it wasn't entertaining enough to catch my attention): CHelasea and the seven devils (or something liek that). You played a buuy girl there too and it had a rimiliar visual art style (anime-style pixel art). What the game made at least a litle inetresting was the time manupilation feature where you could stop (or slow, I don't quite remember) time to solve some of the puzzles. Not, that it had many puzzles to begin with...

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah that can also be a factor for people I can only speak for my own perception.

Also that said, I watched the Scot Manley video of this game and .. well.. Scot Manley and bullet hell, what were you guys in PR thinking, can't believe he picked the worst mutator in the game by accident too ;P

Scott picked it up on his own accord I think.

[Misery]

Nhhhh it's a bullet hell game with loot, and it doesn't drop interesting crazy loot, and it doesn't look unique. That's the problem right there (I mean bullet hell and no interesting unique look and loot) ... if you click on the tags within steam itself, you will see why.

So why you ask anyway, despite me just telling you to look that up yourself ;P

Rabi-Rabi - http://store.steampowered.com/app/400910/ (This is a big one)
Space Moth DX - http://store.steampowered.com/app/425340/
Starward Rogue <--
Close Order - http://store.steampowered.com/app/383800/
The Bug Butcher - http://store.steampowered.com/app/350740/ (another big one)
Endica 4 the Dream King - http://store.steampowered.com/app/343150/
Sora - http://store.steampowered.com/app/390730/ (Something SHMUP fans especially know about, but very niche)




So lots of bla bla and text and links... I just wanted to show that chronologically, SR released right between 2 big SHMUP / Bullet Hell releases one of which even I (someone that hates bullet hell) would want to play at some point (That's Bug Butcher obviously ,p). Look at the sales of the games I listed above on steamspy and you see... Shadow Rogue.. .. Stalwart Rogue.. Starward Rogue fits right in the middle sales wise. (Btw, that was a joke on the naming.. don't just type Rogue, you never find this game in steam :p)

Also for the record Bug Butcher steam discussion has a very Interesting topic about Spanish translations in case you ever thought translation work was as simple as translating words ,p

Point being: Genre flooded in January, very unusual to see that many games in the same genre (kind of) And tons of other games I didn't even list released, the week SR released especially.. so lots of contenders, huge swath of other games. Market flooded, literally. Still not even half way through my discovery queue for LAST month. ^^

Honestly, MOST games of the type that this is dont drop "crazy loot" or use synergies.  Isaac is, actually, the only one that does.  Which is part of the problem.  People play that just a BIT, and expect every other game of this type to do that.  Aint how it works.  And even in Isaac, it has.... issues. It works there because nobody expects actual REAL balance, which is good, because there isnt much, not to mention that it obliterates what difficulty the game has.  It also utterly deletes the need for thinking or tactics when a synergy occurs (fun for awhile, but honestly, this is what makes for by far the least interesting part of Isaac to me).  I own a bunch of games of this genre though, and... yeah.  Isaac is the only one that does that.  And frankly.... I think that's a good thing.  I actually can get some challenge out of those.  I cant get that out of Isaac, much as I like it.   Every run is a guaranteed win in that game.  ALL of them.

Also.... those games in that list dont make sense for comparison. 

Like Bug Butcher... that's not even close to the same sort of game OR a bullet-hell.  Neither is the original arcade game (from a million years ago) that it copies/mimics (which is one I've played to death actually, very fun game).  And the less said about Rabi-Ribi the better; it's a Metroid-vania sort. And a platformer.  It has bullet-hell bosses, but... that's about the only real similarity.  And even then, the differences in design are extremely dramatic.   Understanding alot about bullet-hells and metroid-vania sorts, and all of that... I can say, it isnt exactly going to attract the same sort of players.  You'd think "bullet hell" might mean it would, but not in this case.  As we've already seen with THIS game, and as I myself have witnessed 10 squillion times over the years in that blasted community, fans of THAT specific aspect tend to be a bit.... picky.   Tell one of them that "platformer" is involved, and you typically get "NOPE" in response (frankly, tell them that, well, all SORTS of possible things are involved, and you still get "nope" in response... sigh).  Obviously there's exceptions, sure.  But they arent the main ones drawn to that game. 

In the end though, it's also still just a Metroidvania game, as is Endica for that matter.  Metroidvanias and roguelikes.... VERY different from each other.  It's another set of genres that just isnt very comparable. 

There is Space Moth, but.... ehhhh.... I'll just say, that one didn't come out so well, honestly.  The really boring patterns kinda kill it for me.  But I need more time with it before I can fully judge it.

I was going from the perspective of needing replayability in order to stand out. For this genre I will get bored very quickly if things are too much of the same. Having items that are powerful to have me adjust my tactics on the fly would be a very large positive for me to investigate and ultimately buy a game.

That's the thing about really powerful items though:  go too far with them, and "too much of the same" is *exactly* what you get.  Because suddenly, every time you have those items... same boring run as the last time you had those items.  Like what happens in Isaac if I get the Stopwatch (a cure for insomnia, basically, and I mean that literally; I actually started to fall asleep the last time I played it with that, it was so boring).  Or Brimstone + ... er... anything.  I dont even take Brimstone much anymore because it's insta-wins against nearly everything just got so bloody dull. 

The only reason why Isaac avoids this being a chronic problem is the sheer ridiculous nature and ridiculous NUMBER of synergies that can happen.  They're so hilarious and bizarre that even if they ARE utterly destroying the challenge/balance of the game, you keep going anyway.  Yet when you get right down to it... all of the strongest synergies really are the same.  Enter room, HAHAHA CHAOS, next room, repeat. 

That sort of stuff is hard to do to begin with, and COMPLETELY impossible on a low budget and low time frame.  There's a reason why Isaac and it's expansions took a bazillion years to come out.

Now, that being said, I'm well aware that, for what this game is, the items do still need to have more to entice the player to them.  Weapons and special weapons right now arent very desirable, a number of items that DO have special effects (instead of stat boosts) dont have ENOUGH of them, some items are so stupidly powerful that they make the rest of the run boring (blade module, among others), and consumables arent very desirable.... there definitely are issues with them.  I'm going to be diving into these myself starting today and making some changes, and seeing what can be done.


However, we CAN also use some ideas/inspiration for future items, if any of you guys have any.  It's not stuff that'd get added immediately of course; this'd be for later down the line.   But it would help alot.  So by all means, let us know if you have any ideas for any.

But for right now... I'm gonna work on sorting out some of what we already have.

[chemical_art]

Honestly, MOST games of the type that this is dont drop "crazy loot" or use synergies.  Isaac is, actually, the only one that does.  Which is part of the problem.  People play that just a BIT, and expect every other game of this type to do that. 

If the concept is truly unusual  (I am taking you at your word) then the only people who expect it are people who have never played the genre before Isaac. In other words, it brought new players to the genre. Or, perhaps, it is more of a matter that the player misidentifies the genre, but there is a shortage of games that are similar so players are grasping for straws. Regardless, the whole point about standing out is that it is the only one that does it. That is not always positive, nor it is a negative, but it is a fact. It is certainly not a problem, it is different strokes for different folks. Before Isaac I had zero interesting in this genre. None. Now I have just the most cautious of attempts.

It may be different. But it is a game with that sold millions (far, far more then the average game of the genre according to https://steamspy.com/tag/Bullet+Hell ) and has an absolutely positive reception. If someone was to make the case that Isaac butchers a genre, on the face of it I would Issac then is a distributor of the genre that signals a niche that needs to be filled.

[Misery]

Honestly, MOST games of the type that this is dont drop "crazy loot" or use synergies.  Isaac is, actually, the only one that does.  Which is part of the problem.  People play that just a BIT, and expect every other game of this type to do that. 

If the concept is truly unusual  (I am taking you at your word) then the only people who expect it are people who have never played the genre before Isaac. In other words, it brought new players to the genre. Or, perhaps, it is more of a matter that the player misidentifies the genre, but there is a shortage of games that are similar so players are grasping for straws. Regardless, the whole point about standing out is that it is the only one that does it. That is not always positive, nor it is a negative, but it is a fact. It is certainly not a problem, it is different strokes for different folks. Before Isaac I had zero interesting in this genre. None. Now I have just the most cautious of attempts.

It may be different. But it is a game with that sold millions (far, far more then the average game of the genre according to https://steamspy.com/tag/Bullet+Hell ) and has an absolutely positive reception. If someone was to make the case that Isaac butchers a genre, on the face of it I would Issac then is a distributor of the genre that signals a niche that needs to be filled.

Hm, dont get me wrong here: I know I might sound kinda negative (but to be fair, I *always* sound that way), but I have nothing against Isaac.  Far from it.  I've been a huge fan of the game since the original version and have put some damn silly number of hours into it.  But it does remain that it really is the only one that does the synergy thing much.  Now, that's not to say that other games NEVER have synergies.  Even SR here definitely has a few.  But Isaac is the only one that basically builds an entire game out of it, and as it's the one that jump-started this genre, it does tend to put those expectations into the minds of players.

And in the end, for most other games... the idea just isnt feasible.  For THIS game, it would have needed a MUCH longer development time to even begin to try for that.  Much much longer.  And that wasnt possible, unfortunately.  I sure would have liked more development time, but... that's how it goes, I suppose.

Now, that being said, I'm going to try to make quite a number of items more interesting/desirable, things the player wants to grab and things that are just fun to have.  Many items do seem to have the potential for this, but just arent quite there yet. 

I've started a feedback thread for all of this sort of thing, individual items and whatnot, if you'd like to post any specific thoughts you have about any of them.  It really would help a ton.  The more feedback, the better.

[chemical_art]

I'm sorry if I wasn't super clear either. The concept has both positives and negatives, and the negatives sure are very off putting. In essence it takes a LOT of work. I agree with you 100% in that regard. Just balancing it in terms of numbers is already hard. However, coming up with concepts that go just beyond number crunching (new tactics, etc) is almost impossible unless you integrate that concept from the beginning I would imagine. Just because a popular game does it doesn't mean every game should as well, especially due to the detriment of other game factors.

But it does go back to having *something* that drives me to want to play again. Item combos are just one way. The only arcade-style shooting game I ever bought was r-type final. There were only at most 12 stages (maybe less). However, what drove me to play it was that there were 101 ships. Granted, many of them were clones (which actually made some sense: the game was presented as a war and the clones were slightly superior versions of the originals as they went through their trials) however even removing the clones there still were at least two dozen ships to try. Yes, some were clearly stronger then others, but that is not the point. If you were a perfectionist maybe you would need it, but the majority just wanted new ships to try.

[eRe4s3r]

Okay, so you are fascinated with Rabi Rabi for... what?

I mention that because steam lists it when you click on the tags And to see why your sales are how they are, the releases that happened "aside" SR are kinda related after all, specially when steam tags put them next to each other ^^

All I tried to showcase is that there a plenty of games released aside SR that have some genre overlap (no matter how wide) but also a unique thing that puts them apart... and to point out that even other indy games released next to SR don't have tremendously better sales....

[Rushyo]

I've been looking at the numbers around bullet hell games, intrigued by the apparent failure of Starward Rogue. I've correlated data from Steam Spy and I'm wondering what the market strategy was for the game.

To put it bluntly: Bullet hell games do not make very much money at the moment, and Starward Rogue is about as successful as you'd expect for a high quality bullet hell game.

The median income for a bullet hell game is $27k, with ~4000 sales. Starward Rogue has (probably) already exceeded those values. In the past 4 months, there have been only a handful of games that have made more than Starward Rogue, and they have been on sale for much, much longer.

Perhaps for an Arcen game Starward Rogue performs poorly, but in the bullet hell market it's not unusual for very highly rated games to sell at this rate. A comparable game would be Bullet Heaven 2. Exceptionally very received in terms of critical reviews (99% score), sold at the same price as Starward Rogue, but only shifted ~2500 copies in total since it was released in early December.

I can only assume that Arcen were either using their other games to drive financial expectations for Starward Rogue (failing to account for the fact bullet hells are a tough market), or failed to account for outliers in their initial analysis (as every so often a game like Nuclear Throne comes along and completely skews most market data).

It seems to me bullet hells rarely earn enough to pay an individual developer a passable wage, let alone a team. This isn't even accounting for the survivorship bias of only analysing games that were successful enough to get shipped on Steam. Whilst I think Starward Rogue is a fantastic game it has been released in to a very harsh market, and has performed as well as I'd expect it to, even accounting for its quality.

Perhaps the market has fallen apart since the decision to make Starward Rogue, and the data I'm looking at is not representative of how the market was back then. But, then, that would explain quite neatly why Starward Rogue isn't a commercial success, and Arcen would surely be aware of that fact.

Perhaps it was a case of exceedingly high expectations: that Starward Rogue was expected to out-perform the market like a game such as Nuclear Throne - but then given those games are so rare it would have been very clear that there was a significant risk, even if Arcen were certain the game was going to be a critical hit.

Looking at the data I just can't be surprised by how Starward Rogue is doing. I can only assume that in command of plenty of data about their own releases Arcen were operating under the assumption it would perform similarly to the rest of their catalogue, without fully accounting for the fact Starward Rogue is a bullet hell and those simply do not sell very well, regardless of how great they are, bar some freak marketing success.

I have a further theory: Given The Last Federation had the same issue of lower sales than expected, and is partly a bullet hell game (although less so than SR), perhaps the eventual success only came from bringing in people who would otherwise never have seen the game on the basis of what it was, requiring an additional marketing push to bring in a disproportionate number of strategy/4X players to make up the numbers. In other words, this is the second time this has happened, but it's going to be harder to address this time as Starward Rogue isn't going to benefit as much from taking advantage of  genre overlap.

I bought TLF as a strategy player, not a bullet hell player, and I bought Starward Rogue completely against my purchasing habits. It's great, I love it, but I am not a statistic in the bullet hell market, and relying on people like me to buy Starward Rogue is a losing proposition. I'm also suffering from severe roguelite exhaustion, as I suspect many others are. I own Starward Rogue *solely* due to brand loyalty. The game does not overlap with my traditional genre interests at all, like TLF did. I think, therefore, that the last ditch strategy of appealing directly to brand loyalty for SR is going to have a lesser effect than it did with TLF, since you're asking more of the typical brand audience.

[Misery]

I've been looking at the numbers around bullet hell games, intrigued by the apparent failure of Starward Rogue. I've correlated data from Steam Spy and I'm wondering what the market strategy was for the game.

To put it bluntly: Bullet hell games do not make very much money at the moment, and Starward Rogue is about as successful as you'd expect for a high quality bullet hell game.

The median income for a bullet hell game is $27k, with ~4000 sales. Starward Rogue has (probably) already exceeded those values. In the past 4 months, there have been only a handful of games that have made more than Starward Rogue, and they have been on sale for much, much longer.

Perhaps for an Arcen game Starward Rogue performs poorly, but in the bullet hell market it's not unusual for very highly rated games to sell at this rate. A comparable game would be Bullet Heaven 2. Exceptionally very received in terms of critical reviews (99% score), sold at the same price as Starward Rogue, but only shifted ~2500 copies in total since it was released in early December.

I can only assume that Arcen were either using their other games to drive financial expectations for Starward Rogue (failing to account for the fact bullet hells are a tough market), or failed to account for outliers in their initial analysis (as every so often a game like Nuclear Throne comes along and completely skews most market data).

It seems to me bullet hells rarely earn enough to pay an individual developer a passable wage, let alone a team. This isn't even accounting for the survivorship bias of only analysing games that were successful enough to get shipped on Steam. Whilst I think Starward Rogue is a fantastic game it has been released in to a very harsh market, and has performed as well as I'd expect it to, even accounting for its quality.

Perhaps the market has fallen apart since the decision to make Starward Rogue, and the data I'm looking at is not representative of how the market was back then. But, then, that would explain quite neatly why Starward Rogue isn't a commercial success, and Arcen would surely be aware of that fact.

Perhaps it was a case of exceedingly high expectations: that Starward Rogue was expected to out-perform the market like a game such as Nuclear Throne - but then given those games are so rare it would have been very clear that there was a significant risk, even if Arcen were certain the game was going to be a critical hit.

Looking at the data I just can't be surprised by how Starward Rogue is doing. I can only assume that in command of plenty of data about their own releases Arcen were operating under the assumption it would perform similarly to the rest of their catalogue, without fully accounting for the fact Starward Rogue is a bullet hell and those simply do not sell very well, regardless of how great they are, bar some freak marketing success.

I have a further theory: Given The Last Federation had the same issue of lower sales than expected, and is partly a bullet hell game (although less so than SR), perhaps the eventual success only came from bringing in people who would otherwise never have seen the game on the basis of what it was, requiring an additional marketing push to bring in a disproportionate number of strategy/4X players to make up the numbers. In other words, this is the second time this has happened, but it's going to be harder to address this time as Starward Rogue isn't going to benefit as much from taking advantage of  genre overlap.

I bought TLF as a strategy player, not a bullet hell player, and I bought Starward Rogue completely against my purchasing habits. It's great, I love it, but I am not a statistic in the bullet hell market, and relying on people like me to buy Starward Rogue is a losing proposition. I'm also suffering from severe roguelite exhaustion, as I suspect many others are. I own Starward Rogue *solely* due to brand loyalty. The game does not overlap with my traditional genre interests at all, like TLF did. I think, therefore, that the last ditch strategy of appealing directly to brand loyalty for SR is going to have a lesser effect than it did with TLF, since you're asking more of the typical brand audience.

Regardless of all of that though, the thing is that the advertising and "getting the word out" just didn't really happen (I think Chris went into more detail in some part of his blog there).  Regardless of what the market is or isnt, and all of that, you cant sell what people just dont know about.  Even some people that were big fans of Arcen and tended to follow them said "Wait, what?  Where did THAT come from?" when the game came out.  Which wasnt a good sign, I tell ya that.

That and it was never pushed forward as a pure bullet-hell game to begin with.  At it's core it's more of an Isaac-ish thing.  The bullet-hell aspect mostly exists because of my own influence in it, as that's my design style when it comes to bosses & enemies (I also did the Obscura and other new ships in TLF's first expansion, for that matter).  Which is also why it became important to bring in other people to design enemies too, so that not EVERYTHING was absolute pure bullet-hell style.  If it were up to just me you'd be drowning in bullets in every room.  Which is what would have happened if it WAS intended from the start as a pure bullet-hell idea.  But instead we've got a pretty nice mix of styles going on, which works well in the game's favor.

I've forgotten what else I was going to say.

[Rushyo]

Regardless of what the market is or isnt, and all of that, you cant sell what people just dont know about.

That alone, though, wouldn't explain why it outperforms other similar games. SR is already beating my expectation of how the game would typically perform in that market, and in record time. That implies it was relatively well exposed compared to the competition I'm judging it against (some of which were similarly highly acclaimed), even if it's less exposure than Arcen is traditionally used to. That is, in fact, entirely consistent with my argument that Arcen expected more than the target market can be reasonably expected to provide, and the success of SR is being judged against how much Arcen would typically shift instead. That makes it a relatively risky proposition, since it was reliant on Arcen performing equally or as well as they as they have in the past, rather than on how the market would be anticipated to receive the game. Any failure to meet Arcen's usual standard in terms of sales would have greater consequences than it would to similar competition. It's understandable that Arcen might have chosen to accept that risk, but it would then not be surprising if that risk didn't come off.

That and it was never pushed forward as a pure bullet-hell game to begin with.  At it's core it's more of an Isaac-ish thing.

My data was based on games that incorporate bullet hell aspects. Not (for lack of a better term) 'pure breeds'.  There's overlap in the categorisation I'm using to account for this. It could be skewed as a result of not all the other data points not being exactly the same genre combination as SR is, but that's not a realistic way to judge expected return from the games market as a whole. You can't only compare against identical games because the entire point is it's a creative enterprise and there should be a margin of error for different blends of styles, different players tastes, and designs which fall short... and a game like SR clearly does not fall short in terms of quality - from what I can tell it's seen to be fantastic no matter what genre you judge it against. Not to mention there aren't enough highly similar games to do a solid statistical analysis, so relying solely on analysis against only really similar games would always result in the game being an unacceptably large risk to any company that doesn't have cash to burn!

Unfortunately whilst it correlates to a good degree, quality is not a massive influencer of financial success when you look at games incorporating bullet-hell mechanics. A really high quality game doesn't generally make significantly more return than a middling quality game, even though it's very likely to make a little bit more. Comparing SR to Isaac would forget that Isaac is a total outlier. Isaac was so much more successful than it had any right to be. No business could reasonably expect to enjoy similar success, even with a superior game. There's simply not that sort of purchasing power being spent on those sort of games except under extremely difficult to predict conditions.

It's not like, say, modern multiplayer survival games, where a superior quality game will steal all the fans getting bored of 'last season's' survival game or strategy, where its adherents are relatively likely to buy the highest quality game on the market every so often and play it to death.

By the standards of similar games, Starward Rogue seems very successful. What I would deem the natural competition of Starward Rogue could not generally expect to have achieved more than Starward Rogue already has (although one could hope!). That makes it a real shame to see that isn't enough... and I genuinely hope I'm wrong to expect that SR will not have the same bounce-back that TLF had with a second market push.

But instead we've got a pretty nice mix of styles going on, which works well in the game's favor.

Personally I love the variety, and I think the combination works really nicely. I have to say I particularly like the Demesne whenever it pops up in combination with one of the more esoteric mobs.

[crazyroosterman]

okay 2 things
1 tlf sold less than expected?! I vividly remember saying that tlf sold more in a short period of time than ai war(the game that arcen is most well know for as we know) did in years(I think) unless I've gone made at long last and am imagining things
2 without misery's influence this game would probably have felt a little hollow to me since personally my favourite parts of the game are the bosses and if designed by anybody would have probably not been challenging enough

[Rushyo]

okay 2 things
1 tlf sold less than expected?! I vividly remember saying that tlf sold more in a short period of time than ai war(the game that arcen is most well know for as we know) did in years(I think) unless I've gone made at long last and am imagining things

Oops! No it didn't. I was mis-remembering the paragraph here:

I’ll save you the trouble of pointing out that this has happened to us before.  Back in 2010 we had a lot of trouble, and then promptly were pulled out of it by an outpouring of support.  I still had to lay off about half the team that worked on Tidalis, but the company itself continued on and eventually grew larger than ever before.

We had some more woes in early 2014, right before The Last Federation came out.  These were not particularly public, but we lost a bunch of staff then again.  By making a lot of personal financial investments and by making the staff cuts, I managed to get us to the finish line on that game without us having to cry for help again.  It wasn’t something I ever wanted to do again — particularly after in 2010, that became part of our reputation.  This isn’t exactly something you want to be known for.

I had meant Tidalis, but was thinking of TLF because it was on the following paragraph.

[Matruchus]

Puppygames made a nice blog about the Steam changes and their effects on them. It seems the sale issue as probably with Arcen is in the Steam refund system.

Here the graph showing what happened to puppygames sales after the refund system was implemented: http://www.puppygames.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/oh_valve.png

[ptarth]

I'd like to see the chart of sales, returns, and not just the net sales chart. Do you happen to known which blog post contains their data analysis of the original version of that chart?

[Matruchus]

I'd like to see the chart of sales, returns, and not just the net sales chart. Do you happen to known which blog post contains their data analysis of the original version of that chart?

This is the only blog they made: http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1708