Is This Seat Taken? Demo analysis

hello this is Chris sukowski calling you from uh the internet I'm just here uh playing seat taken or is this seat taken uh it's very close to being is the seat taken to this seat is taken um but uh we're going to play this game now I'll be getting into it and this one's going to be a little bit more relaxed yesterday I'm sorry for rushing so fast I just had a hard stop at 18 minutes and I accidentally went over to 19 minutes almost 20 minutes um this one is a casual more cozy game so I'm slowing it down today so that I don't hurt anybody's eard drums or you feel rushed I don't want you to feel rushed today so we'll take it a little bit slower I still got a lot to do today but uh you know we'll take it slower so um this is is the seat taken and the reason I wanted to cover this game in particular is cuz it's a puzzle game and one of the things if you

follow what I work on I always recommend to against puzzle games because they are very very very very hard to do well on Steam because for a number of reasons we'll kind of go into it um puzzle games are just they don't work on Steam as well and I I've seen a lot of broken hearts over puzzle games and a lot of Indie devs make puzzle games as their first game and I'm like oh no you've just jumped into the hardest thing to do it's like uh anyway so we'll look at it but this is doing well on Steam and um so the first half of this video is I'm just going to play the game a little bit and I beat it I beat every single level folks I beat them all um but I'll only play a couple so you get the gist and then I'll flip over and we'll look at what um how Steam Works like what it's doing in the Steam Works in Steam nextfest how how how it's doing there uh we'll look at some stats to see why it's going so well but yeah this thing's in the top basically 20 it's above the for on some

of the charts and we'll take a look at that but let's do it so first off let's just talk about this game it is so crafted I mean look you can tell just look at this tasteful use of a sarap font anytime somebody can Tastefully use the sarap Fant you're in good hands um also not too many colors um here's the deal there's a lot of um people who are you know first time game devs maybe they are programmers they're not artists and their art looks like program it looks terrible here's the thing folks if you're an art if you're an artist you don't have to listen to this if you're a programmer here's the deal folks programmers you know how to have good Art here's the secret fewer colors I feel like programmers are like well I can I can I have full 64bit color range I'm going to use them all no no no you got to play it cool dude play it cool cuz look there's like this dark blue this greenish green kind of purple there's really like three colors here

notice this green is the same as this green is this blue is the same as this blue is the same I bet as the outline of this pencil and I think this kind of indigo blue is the same as this indigo blue there's really this this thing has like four colors that is the secret to you non artists pick four colors now don't pick four colors CU it's really hard for a non- artist to pick a color just search four color palette or like sixc color palette and you can just copy that palette and you just got to stick to it I've SE I used to work in Corporate America the Powerpoints and the presentations from from artists and the design team was only like four colors the presentations from artists was like a thousand color like every single slide was a different color and I was like what is this color scheme artist uh programmers for some reason it's actually cooler and more artistic to use fewer colors it's a free art tip so if you artists and I I've called you out and i' been like hey you don't your colors aren't very good uh or you're like this is program just remove colors

just pick three colors make your whole game three colors and you instantly look like 300% th% cooler you just do fewer colors equals cooler all right so anyway here's the main menu um uh it's got the stuff I like which is play the game settings add to your wish list right there up front this is the way you got to do it and exit uh the funny thing is this game is like as Anonymous as you can get I I I wonder if somebody's like in witness protection who made this game I tried looking them up seeing who the company is maybe they made similar games something nothing they don't even have a credits page there's no credits that's a company and they have like four Instagram posts and all that stuff so it's kind of I don't know maybe some of these shouldn't be working on a game they they work for a cool company and they're like doing this on the side who knows but anyway so we're going to play it um as you can see I starred everything um and it's in Barcelona uh you the the triumphant end I even beat the secret level if you get perfect Stars you get the secret level

um it ends well you don't actually get to see it they tease it I it's kind of like Czech out's gun I was like oh man I got to go to sagata Familia I got to see it there's no sagata Familia there's just like some Bandit Place uh I've been to the ciga Familia I've been to Barcelona Spain Barcelona I've done it I had a lot of ham that's a big thing you do over there do eat a lot of ham no ham in this game this game is too tasteful for a pile of ham although the Ham's pretty good but everything is uh interactable speaking of tasteful look at how tasteful these interactions are you can't rip the tape up but anyway um so these are the this is the level select screen um it doesn't say see to be continued this is how they end the demo um and really this game doesn't take very long it takes like maybe 45 minutes to get through half an hour 45 minutes um so this is what I'm talking about with puzzle games where it's like there's just not much content like again steam players love like 40 hour games when you come to a puzzle game there just not a lot there so let me stop the Yammer in here and I'll just start the way this game is basically this game is like human seduko if you've

played it so it's like everybody has these rules like I'm I'm just you place people in in in seats that's what you do and everybody has little rules the first one you know it's a puzzle game so you don't start and uh so this human seduko you kind of do all this stuff um then this person just vanishes they just disappear um so look I want to sit by the window of course there's two of us in the window seats oh yeah you're right so when you hold over it says I want to be alone so they don't want anybody to him this person wants to be in a window that's it see they're all happy everybody's happy you could do this guy here there but if I put this guy next to the seat he's not unhappy cuz he wants to be by himself that's it that's the whole game that is basically it again it's human seduko it gets complicated there'll be grids of people and they all have to kind of like interact and line up and and and that's what it is but everything is Tastefully designed again to you programmers pay very special attention to this programmers with

programmer art look the art is simple it's like squares and circles and stuff but the reason it looks good is they've used like four colors look at that the same Blues all over the place same Blues same Blues same Blues POA yellow POA red that's it the seats are the same color as the bar is the same color as this is the same color as the pause button is the same color as this little progress that's what you got to do folks that's all you got to do so programmers with your programmer art today after you watch this YouTube cuz this will be the last YouTube you watched today remove colors remove colors from your game okay even the smoke the smoke is the same color as uh as the pause button see one three colors that's it all right anyway so um that's all you do with this game see and everything is interactable I can just pop trash out like nobody's business um just Bes spoiling this beautiful um European city anyway so that's the whole game now here's why um here's the thing about puzzle games and I think a major reason why

they don't do well I'm going to skip this there's there's an interesting thing they put a little um dialogue flavor a little narrative on top of this um and and on top of this there's like this little sub story where this person that got their like entire side of their head pierced wants to be in an indie movie and this person I think they're a writer they're kind of like you should audition and they're like I don't know I've always wanted to be an indie I think you can always be in an indie film The indie films are like hey we need people in there like but anyway so she or they rhombus at one point they refer to themselves as a rhombus um um they just want to they want to be in a movie and that's that's mainly that's the stakes of the narrative folks it's it's adorable see they want to be together so you got do that and then me in the window I just solved oh wait there's a problem a good view all right we will get you the good view uh uh uh uh uh uh that's that's the puzzle and

here's the thing here's the thing folks the problem with where I was going with this is the problem with puzzle games is they're mostly made by programmers who are super smart they're super smart programmers and they love puzzles because programming is basically constant um constant puzzle solving that's what programming is and it's hard to do and so programmers make their puzzles way too hard there is one level this movie theater one level took me a long time it was and not a long time it took me like 3 minutes versus everyone those three puzzles that I did in the tutorial there it never gets that hard that is like as hard as it gets there's one in this this level I'm not even going to do it I'll do the last level cuz I'll show you the last level so that you can see this one thing that I want to show you about how to do it these puzzles are not hard okay and that is not a dig on this game it is not a dig on this game to say the puzzles aren't hard that's a good thing and I think a big reason why puzzle

games don't do well on Steam is because a major major major driver there's two big things about the drive visibility on Steam one is to get covered by streamers playing the game and when it's a puzzle game and you get stumped in a puzzle and you have to think about it you have to close it and think about it and come back to it a day and try something and it fails and then you come back another day programmers love that nobody else does okay so when a game is that hard the streamer are like I'm not going to play this on stream it is way too hard and so there aren't many streamers that play puzzle games because they don't want they want their YouTube videos to be Lively and talkative and all that stuff and a puzzle game shut that right down because it's like this is so hard it's like man I'm doing my tax documents here who wants to watch that but this game is so easy and that's not a dig I'm not saying this game's too easy it's just it's enjoyable it's like filling out a seduko a seduko is not a hard puzzle um and so that's what this is and there was never a point where I was stumped there was

sometimes when I had to like kind of around some people and move them around and stuff at the mostly the movie theater one the movie theater level but it wasn't hard it was just like oh okay now I got to count for this it didn't take long um I'm going to do these last few levels these are the hard these aren't even as hard as the the movie theater levels just so you can kind of see um I I don't like I don't like storying games but I kind of went through let's see IND okay so it's a music um you kind of look see this I'm in the Band so you got put these people in the band so anybody with sunglasses cuz band has cool you're cool if you wear sunglasses people in the band are cool and then people are say like I want to dance you put them that and there's a big thing about odors like kids are either stinky or people are wearing cologne so you got to watch out who's next to them again they just keep adding these different layers of who could stand next to them like I do not want to dance so you put

them in the seats um this tree should wiggle and like little Acorn should fall out or something um acorns that feed the the the the the pigs the uh I they called the humo um pigs that feed off of acorns they should do that anyway um I want to be with Alexis and it's there so they want to be next to each other so that's Alexis you can tell with the arrow and I want to dance boom all right everybody's happy confirm this is this is as hard as it get this is the last level before I basically beat the game and then it was like you can unlock the the the secret levels if you got a perfect score I was like of course I got a perfect score like this is not a hard game which is not a thing I'm not digging on this game um and so I'm just going to do this I prefer to sit but they're wearing too much cologne I like how they just know they're wearing too much cologne um they're just like yep I just I'm just just rocking the cologne um and so that's it I think I just let's see who's

left who's left there somebody oh here they are um want to be the near the speaker I feel like I've got three speaker lovers let's see okay you just put that here there that's it oh wait who who hates this I can't breathe oh cuz there's they're next to a stinker um let move the stinker over here who's who now hates it who hates it now I can't breathe oh there's another stinker okay let's see that's it this is the hard as this game gets again I am not digging on this game because know your audience um we'll get to it but this is published by wholesome games wholesome games are just about um just like who cares like people who like this game had a rough day at work a rough social life a rough whatever they're just looking to just like chill out it's like very satisfying um and everything just just feels good like and it's just like I just need something to kind of burn through my brain just keep my brain

running at like 20 extra per I just get through it that's the thing and so I think a lot of people are like oh I got to make this puzzle so Dynamic and it's got to have unique challenges and I have to make no this this the developer just like let's let's just chill it I'm just chilling it um so let's see here I'm just trying to like get through this one there's usually somebody who wants to be by the speaker Tio they have no rules what does Tio want set it can be stinky uh let's see dance put them right there uh this is the stinker table right here put a little couple stinkers on there um I smell like too stinky over here let's do this guy there's a stinker here can I do this yeah like again this game is not hard uh one thing I was kind of thinking about this game here's one thought I had

about this game it's like people do your own thing like this game is so I kind of feel like it's paternalistic it's like you know it's like let people just sit where they want just like go go sit and I as this I was a feeling I was like God it's like it's like that person who tries to craft their friends so much you know it's like no you shouldn't wear that you should wear that you shouldn't hey don't go out with him go out with that person it's like just it's one of those friends that like micromanages their friends that's what I feel like by the time I was playing this game you know if we're talking Ludo narrative dissidence or you know how the the the play brings meaning to this by the end of it I was like these people just need to live their lives like just just relax just don't try and make everything perfect and then I was thinking like speaking of perfect this game part of the reason this game's doing so well and a puzzle game we'll get to it is it is perfect like the art style is perfect the every single Pixel is perfectly placed like

every you know you could tell it's a super graphic design like the distance from here to here everything is just gritted up perfectly perfect layouts perfect color design perfect fonts this person is perfect the person who makes this is a perfectionist and I could feel that in the design it's like in the design of the play it's like I can make it perfect so every person is Happy everybody is enjoying this party in the exact right way they are exactly experiencing this concert and nobody is smelling something they don't everybody sits who wants to sit everybody stands who wants to stand you could just feel the artist who's making this game be like I wish I could just make all my friends happy I wish I could put them in the right place where they should be and it's just like relax like I was actually I know this is a cozy game I'm supposed to be feeling cozy by the end of this I was feeling a little overbearing of my friends and I was like I just want to let my friends exper like hey if you're if you're

unhappy you take care of it that's not my problem just because you're you don't like staying ex person solve your own problems I'm not here to help all of you okay I'm just going to enjoy the party if you don't like it you fix it okay that's what I felt and now I'm not somebody who can make this game this perfect this game is way too perfect for my my ability to make games like every like look at this thumbs up it's got a little tiny fold cuz it's a sticker it's got a little like the way the sticker fold like everything in this game is designed and perfect and I could feel how perfect this mysterious person is this why I was trying to figure out who is this person that made this game cuz everything is perfect and everything's in its place and nothing is incorrect and I like I could feel that oppressiveness and I mean that in the nicest way like this game's good but it's it was a bit like I feel like if I was a friends with this person I'd be afraid of what I should wear when I worked with this person or talk to them because I'd be like they're judging me I

bet they want to change the clothes that I'm wearing you know and it's I don't know maybe it's an American thing where I'm just like hey as long as you're happy do whatever you want it's none of my business I just felt like this game was like I felt like I was minding other people's businesses like I was a little bit of a busy bud I like this game but the art the feeling of the play you know how play influences design and and the way you play a game is the artist's intent that's all I'm feeling all right so I'll I'll I'll stop that narrative dissidence and you know Ludo MFA analysis here let's just look at this from a a dirty marketing perspective this is I just beat the game like that was the most chillest last level in a demo of play that was like as as heightened as it gets it's like oh my gosh is is somebody gonna have to dance next to a smelly person let me tell you if you ever gone to a party or concert you're going to you're going to dance next to a smelly guy you just are uh I know we we want this perfect world where nobody has to dance next to a smelly

person but it's going to happen but anyway that's that was the stakes we're dealing with here folks um this is a cool end screen I like this so when you end the demo you should always say thanks for playing Go wish list and that's what they're doing um see perfect hey don't forget to add to game so reinforced here little rhombus person here saying don't forget to wish list add to wish list it's got Blinky Blinky perfect perfect just like this says um and it's like solve all the levels with the perfect sore unlocked and when I solved it I was like I think I just always did perfect cuz this game is not that hard that's I was like oh okay this is chill this is casual okay so there it is so I added to the wish lists and um you can go back or restart I just went the levels that's it this is the whole game um it's great they did stuff these are the secret levels oh wait secret levels are here it's just a wedding I think you have to you have to put you can put people in the back like in the back thing um and there's some food so you get a little tease of some of the other things um again I didn't do that but everything

is just so perfect I wish little pieces of cheese would bounce off of this or like stinky fish stink would come off um but again this game is perfect so um let's let's take this um so that's that's it's a seat taken um again um I really it really connected with me once I uh look at all these eyes look at their eyes um when I was playing this game it was this it was this wedding level and it it reminded me of my wedding where we were placing where people would sit and I was like people can just sit wherever they want just like let people just just let like why is it my business where people sit if they want to sit over there they can if they if they have a problem with a smelly guy tell them to sit somewhere else I just like what that's just my personality I don't know it just felt to I could feel the designer's personality in this game which is the fun of puzzle games and I think that's why a lot of designers make puzzle games is because you can show Your Design chops very blatantly in the

puzzle design in the graphic design whereas these more crafty building games the ones that I talk about the the artist and the designer aren't is present the designer lives in this metadata and it's like oh the design the smartest designer for a crafty building game is like well you know what I did was I decreased the cost of a wheat field by $5 instead of $10 because uh that interacts with this object over here and and so the the design is not as front and center and I think that's also why journalists do not cover crafty buildy games as much because let me tell you writers of these review sites and stuff love to talk about like oh the design and the artist and the designer you can't do that like who the designer is you can't see the fingerprint of the designer in a crafty building game so I think a lot of bloggers and journalists don't like to cover those crafty building games because you can't do these like pronouncements of like oh this game represents you know the

feeling of of managing your friend group and stuff you can't do that with a crafty building game you just can't and so I think that's why a lot of writers cover these types of games puzzle games because if you look at the the games journalist cover it's a lot of narrative games and a lot of crafty or I mean a lot of puzzle games and narrative games because again you have something to write about not so much with crafty ability anyway okay so that's enough philosophizing for one day we've done way too much I'm G to flip over and let's look at this game on Steam nexist so here we are we're back at top demos and game sorted by the Demo's daily user count using recently daily active data okay I was thinking about this so the game right here where is it where is it um it is is the SE taken it is right above top of the fold now if you remember when we did the research it is above some of these games like is coming remember he is coming had about

300 um concurrent users 300 I looked up um and the king is watching it is also that game had I think a thousand just about a th000 concurrent users and here we've got U where is is a SE taken somewhere in between there like 300 more than 300 less than a th000 if we were to sort it like this but then if you pop over because what you can do is you can use steamdb to look at the charts for this actually you want to go is this seat taken demo let's see here demo they always pop it down here this is steamdb now puts the demo down here like this I like this because the demo allows you to see 24-hour Peak is 183 which doesn't make sense how could it be above a game that was 200 here's my theory I I was thinking about this um so this is concurrent users and is this seat taken takes like 45 minutes to beat like I

beat the game with you live while I was chitchatting it's not a hard game doesn't take very long so it's hard to get concurrent people because every person takes like 45 minutes to play the game I think that that chart is looking at number of demo plays even though it kind of said it kind of said number of users per day I think that's just counting how many people did it so if each person takes 45 minutes you can fit a lot more people in that time period than a big crafty building game which each person plays for like four hours which you totally could I could totally play that game for F four or eight hours every day throughout nextfest so your concurrent count is higher but you maybe not have as many users and I think that's probably what that chart is doing I bet this um steam nextfest chart is um is doing that just the number of users and so that's where it's like if you folks here's here's the reason I'm I'm talking about this so much don't stress about the numbers too much don't try and

analyze because steam is so noisy and there's so many different types of games and so many ways into games like I can wish list this game and this counts as an impression there's no click-through rate stop trying to calculate clickthrough rate just look at like wish lists wish list counts CCU kind of helps but for the most part you can't you can't predict everything um let's see what um let's just see this is most wishlisted I don't think it's there popular upcoming games sorted by total alltime wish list counts oh that's alltime this is upcoming game started by trending of recent which just count let's just see um if it's on here because I'll show you in a second um they launched is the seat taken in January and right now let's let's do it let me let me zoom over here to um that is the seat taken charts here it's the parent page that will tell you wish list um this game launched announced in January like the end of January look January 31st was when this game's page launch and then it cranked up real fast and

about 2 weeks ago which is Valentine's Day it cranked up to about 10,000 wish lists thereabouts and now it's sitting at about 26,000 so this game is really doing well wish list wise and so I think that sampling was taken in the last bit and so basically it went from it basically got like 10 to 20,000 wish lists within whatever sampling period so that's kind of the other saying that I'm I'm basically again it's not perfect you'll never be able to calculate but that's kind of the the velocity that this game had coming in so that's where that type of game so notice it did very well um notice I think it's like the only puzzle game in this entire list um which again puzzle games there's a lot made but they're not all there so you might be asking well why did that puzzle game do well when all these other ones um didn't and um uh let me tell you why I think this

game did so well why there's it's the only puzzle game I'm just trying to look to see if there were any other puzzle games that popped up oh another oh no um it's a farming game I was like oh a 2d platformer nope it's a platform plus pzz puzzle or platformer plus farming which is a crafty buildy 2D platformer uh which is good um but yeah that it's the only really puzzle game I think and I think there's even um there was a re I think I saw a re-release of um Talis principal on here but anyway so what's the deal why is there one puzzle game on here well most part puzzle games don't do as well on Steam um but how did this game break through one it is graphically beautiful it is a beautiful beautiful game I find a lot of puzzle games just don't look as good and they don't immediately arrest you with their vision and this game is just so beautiful like it just looks like it's paper it's stickers it's a popular visual style um two I think it's an easy

puzzle game I think that's huge you could play casually and streamers who don't normally play puzzle games it's it's basically like doing a seduko it's it's no harder than seduko it's super easy I accidentally beat this game while I was yammering on and third and this can't be um this can't not be underestimated wholesome games is publishing this game um this is Jenny I've actually interviewed her I I had a conference and Jenny was there um and if you want to find out about the conference let me show you if youve ever wanted to you go like this how to marketting game free this right here is how you find out about all these events that I so Jenny was on my conference and I interviewed her about how to get influencers to cover your game because she's an influencer Outreach and she helps run wholesome games she's super smart so if you ever want to see these events that I do don't subscribe to my YouTube channel YouTube sucks okay guys YouTube sucks I don't want you to subscribe to my YouTube channel don't

even don't even push that subscribe button what I want you to do is come to here how to Market a game.com free I told you how easy it is how tomarket agame.com freee you come here and you just put your email address in there that's all you got to do hit subscribe that is where you find out about the real stuff see these YouTube videos they're not organized they don't do anything this is where you get thoughtful stuff you can't do thoughtful stuff on YouTube it's got to be like personality based it's fun it's enjoyable but it's not information information comes from reading reading is cool kids and my blog and my newsletter is cool and that is where you get the real details all the stuff that I'm talking on these YouTube things that's why YouTube sucks you can't go deep you can't go deep and stuff because people click away I can look at the stats as soon as I get too complicated as soon as I show a chart people will leave this the blog is where the smart people go so be a smart person and join the newsletter sign up for my blog but anyway back to Jenny who is an awesome person that I interviewed for one of my

conferences because I do an online conference every year um the wholesome people are super smart and they have a huge um network of influencers on all social media platforms content creators all this stuff and so when you get published if you are making a wholesome game you unlock this entire ecosystem that they can just deploy and wholesome games has built this awesome network of wholesome Community thing of of creators and stuff very smart wholesome games and this cozy aesthetic is so powerful so if you're making a wholesome game and you can't just make any game wholesome it has to hit every single box just like remember how you have to lay out the people and everybody has to be happy uh in is the SE taken it's the same thing with wholesome games it can't be violent there can't be weapons there Can't Be Blood you can't just say like oh making a horror game but that's wholesome and you have big eyes no it has to be relaxed it can't be violent it can't be too stressful it can't be all this if

you take all those boxes maybe just maybe wholesome games will publish you and you you apply and they publish they do events multiple times a year and basically whome just did its magic whome games presents this publishing this game that's how it has so many wish lists so it's a combination of hitting the the right thing for wholesome players it's using the network of wholesome games and it looks good that's how a puzzle game managed to boil up to the top that's what it takes to get a wholesome or a puzzle game to the top of the charts do you have that you have the graphics the easy gameplay the network of wholesome games if you don't it's going to be an uphill battle to get a puzzle game to the top of the steam charts okay I'm just being honest um because the honesty is what you come here for and I'm going to be honest YouTube sucks and so what I want you to do I'm glad you're here because this is the last video that you're going to do what I'd like you to do is I want you to go over to how to Market a game /f free and then I want

you to fill out this box and hit the Subscribe button here to get my newsletter and you'll get a free book and then what I want you to do is close the browser as soon as you do that close this browser and get up and work on your game watching YouTube is not working on your game it's it's not real YouTube is not real folks newsletters are real having fun in real life going outside seeing the sun um having dinner with somebody you love that's real YouTube is not real so please close YouTube this is the last video you're going to watch today do something all right with that positive me message I hope I inspired you you're inspired somebody said I watch YouTube to get inspired well you're inspired you are now inspired close YouTube go off and use that inspiration um but also Chuck Close famous artist said Inspirations for amateurs the rest of us just get to work so here we go get to work thank you for watching