Outpath: Steam Next Fest October 2023

so this is how it's going to work um we are now live uh hope hopefully you can see me okay everybody good welcome sorry for the delay I was trying to get everything started here um so what is going on is I am looking at steam game demos from uh the steam nextfest if you go to steam it's the big thing a lot of demos are there um um so thanks Tommy for the the mic recommendations we'll have it next stream I promise uh we'll have a louder mic for some reason the gold mic just doesn't do loud enough I don't know why there isn't a loud button like just be louder I can't I am I am dialed up to Max on everything uh so I'm also going to turn these down just so that it's just me um how's the voice how's everything good now I am I'm like literally screaming as loud as I can I've got everything turned up to as high as it can possibly go sounds pretty

awesome right now good for some reason some microphones are like no we don't need all volume why would you make a a microphone that doesn't do all the volumes okay so here's what's going to happen um I'm going to go through this great game called outpath outpath is awesome now a lot of people uh make the wrong type of game for steam they really do and it's the problem with i i WR about marketing and things you can do to promote your game but here's the thing folks I'm going to be straight dead honest with you it's the game it comes down to the game and if you even if you make a high quality game that has no bugs good controls if it's the wrong genre wrong type of game it's just not going to sell and I'll be dead honest with you and so I want to make this Channel all about the games that actually sell on Steam and the games that typically sell on Steam is uh the type of games that sell on Steam are what I kind of call crafty buildy simulation games they revolve around you building stuff crafting

things um um everything and Le yes everything is maxed out like even the input I've got a special little red box and it is cranked as High Let Me Tell You Folks I am cranked cranked it's just the stupid microphone anyway so what I'm saying is the crafty building games don't have to be super complicated these are the types of good games that'll be doing well on Steam and outpath is one of them all right so here is this is what I mean by crafty building games outpath is the excellent thing I'm just going to go into it I'm not going to I'm going to stop CH chatting here let's go back to it this is outpath behind me great game uh let's take a look so um couple things menus are very important about this like getting those wish lists up first thing wish list down here I'm not a big fan of so low and it's like the the darkest text I I would say if you're going to do it

I would I would make it fully thing let me let me even C I'm a little off prop here okay this should do I'm I'm working on Ultra wide and we're gonna adjust this real quick sorry sorry folks um and what happens here is this uh this little display here for the um for the game if you look uh it's very it's almost like they're ashamed to wish list your game you want that thing big and bold I'd put it at the top above play um anyway so that's kind of what it is and Twitter I mean why still even point to Twitter huh how about a newsletter or your Discord both of those are better uh options for this but anyway let's go in and play the demo now here's the thing like I said steam the players and steam love crafty buildy games and this is the most crafty buildy game before now what I did was I already started playing just to make sure this game wasn't hot garbage or something and it's not this is an awesome game and you should be taking notes all of you okay

so outpath um made by I I did some little background research one developer a lot of people were like I I like to kind of to mix up the games uh you know it's like some are small some are big yesterday we did like huge team it was 50 people making uh the game um enshrouded it was 50 people on that team huge game okay and a lot of people are like well what's the Indie dream how can I do it just as one person this game is made by one person um and there are a couple musicians oh I should have done credits there's a credit section one names on there and then two people for the music and sound effects that's it folks so this is possible and this game I estimate but and we'll go into it in 30 minutes is made uh has earned about 60,000 wish lists by based on my estimate and they're probably doing much better and I found this by on Steam nextest it's a little hard right now but one of the most popular Demos in the simulation subg genre this is not the top this is like a good medium-term game

and I wrote that blog post called missing middle this is a missing middle game okay now I think it's taken about n months maybe I'm I'm finding out but anyway um I'm gonna activate this thing it's it's basically there so um it's I love this game so this is this game here it's a it looks very like rudimentary but this game is hot so if you've if you are aware of a game called forager this game came forager came out a number of years ago is it been like a decade it's been a long time super hot game but the audience for forer likes is so so hot like they want this game uh like these kind of crafty buildy games and what I'm doing right now is I'm just collecting resources and what you do is you just expand your Islands so here's uh these little islands and what you do is the forger like the the this whole Sub Sub sub genre of Builder games is these forger likes and basically the I think the kind of tropes of the genre are very small

islands that you're on and you collect resources very Minecraft style uh then you craft things like here's your resources inventory very simple inventory um you if you press this you can you can build stuff like I'm going to build they really want me to build a crafting table so I'm going to build this crafting table I need uh fibers some fibers I'm tree popping right back up whoops um so that you get I think you get the fibers from grass this is basically what you do and you craft and build and you start building stuff just like Minecraft and the thing I love about this is I am already crafting things collecting stuff if you remember this is a very similar Loop to enshrouded which I played yesterday and you can watch the stream there uh you know just down below um watch this I remember I had that game I spent like 30 minutes playing that game and um I spent in all that time I still

couldn't build my starting base here it is 5 minutes I've already built my starting base which is this little workbench here like this this game has like stripped everything away it is down to like the most core it's kind of like an idler idler game we'll get to there mixed with a crafting building minecrafty Style game and it's made by one guy uh like a a man from Spain there's one man from Spain making this game and it it is amazing look it's got day night cycles but what I love about this is you don't have to make the biggest game in the world and I love how look at these trees and this is no dig on the art I love how pure this is look at this it's it's like one billboard it's not even two different Sprites it's one Sprite in a cross like I love it this is so good it is focusing on exactly what steam players want they don't want all this flash stuff I mean some people do but AAA space triple I and shrouded that I played yesterday let them have it you can uh you can create a

game if you are one person in Spain or one person anywhere in the world okay you can do it and and I'm doing it right now I'm playing this game this is amazing so um here's what you do you just basically haul this stuff in and the core is expanding your base and so here it is so expand B that's what I want to do and you get these points um and you got to get to 350 to expand it now this is the part see these um that part that looks like a V like a double v thing that that's your like experience points or something something like that and uh you collect those and I'm still not entirely sure how to collect them uh and I think it's just like everything you do gets you a few points here and there and that's all we're doing um and so I want to expand my base and I can just jump remember how I jumped in and shrouded and I just died you can just jump in the ocean you can swim around a little bit then you can kind of just like climb yourself up on here folks this is pure this is so pure

I love how pure this game is and it just shows you like and like we're going to go in in at the 30 minute Mark and we're going to look this game's sitting on 60,000 wish list this game is hot right now perfect steam when I say crafty building game this is it and you remember how enshrouded like I picked up a journal and it had an entry from somebody named balazar and there was like the curse of the Embers and I'm the last of the kind and the Seven Keys of M2 and the coming in and all this is so pure look at how pure this is it is just a person clicking a tree and then logs come out and then I got to go over here and I can jump into here and then I go and I ah this this is indie game development folks this when I say the missing middle this is what I'm talking about and this I God I just love this this this makes me still love this industry is like stuff like this is just so pure it is me just chopping down

flowers that look like that I just ah God it's so fun and it's it's doing well and we're going to go into why it's doing well but this really is what it is and this is why I'm um I'm trying to get to my goal here is to get to the 350 so I got to go off and chop stuff I think I can do things like uh let's let's look at the workbench and I know I'm not optimizing this I'm not been maxing but come on let's have fun um why does everything have to be been maxed okay let's see what I can do um sand I love how just simple the menu is it's just like a couple floating squares uh you just it's just so good oranges I'm I'm a little low on food let's make oh let me get an axe okay so I can get these trees I need to get what is that a little bit of Flint let me see if I can find some so I got to find some Flint again this is pure this you know how like Minecraft uh has like all this stuff built up you got this like huge open world this game is just like nope just these islands that's all you need it is just everything is Stripped Away and when you are um working on your

games you're like what should we make a copper deposit um what should we make it's like you don't need to go maximalist you know you can find this stuff I hope this is Flint it's always about the Rocks it's like these games always come down to finding the right Rock I mean really that's just life but um it's like there maybe that's Flint um but anyway um what I'm saying is like you don't have to build this giant world if you just focus on what's fun about a game did I get flint let me see let me look at my inventory is that Flint that I got um artif look at this Stone Flint got three I think that's enough um so I am G to get this axe so yes craft it and then it just it just does it it just it starts bumping that little table around that tables Jing on it and then not enough not enough still got to get some more points here but what I'm I'm saying is folks it doesn't have to be like a huge

linear narrative game and we'll get to I'll do a linear narrative game that's doing well in Steam nextfest but guys it just it can be as simple as coal deposits bumping on the top of a rock like this it is just so pure so pure and that's what I'm trying to show you all is that play these games that steam loves because they're a little bit different like most I I find that a lot of Indie devs kind of come from the Nintendo kind of the uh switch where Nintendo games are very specific they're Platformers uh pretty much Nintendo is the only platform that really sells Platformers anymore uh they're a lot more narrative they're much more linear a lot of Indies come from that discipline but those type of games just don't do as well on Steam these craftier Builder games like outpath are really uh really where it is this one oh did you see my my Island expl exploded let's see

let's see if I can find there it is see see over there new new stuff out there so there's probably going to be new resources I think my new axe showed up let me see um let me check my my tools U there it is look at that little thing okay right click to equip okay so now let's see if I can do it am I am I gonna be aing now let's see um I should research recipes look at this tutorial isation it's just like just research recipes in the research table so I'll I'll make the research table let's see if this work I think that I don't they don't even have like an axe hammering something there's like you just have the axe there's no animation the tree bounces a little FAS this is so pure this is so pure and this is what I mean by crafty ability games it just it's you are not necessarily doing this deep linear story where you have to make a boss and all this you're just making some trees that bounce when I click them and stuff comes out I didn't have to make a creature Creator you saw from the beginning there's no I don't have to make my

character creator you don't see oh there's a chicken all of a sudden so so just innocent I just love how innocent it is okay um let's see if I can let me see if I can craft that research station which they really want me to do let me see if I can find it look at that any there all of a sudden there's a cow whoops um Let me let me see if I can get that research station going here let me see um research I think that might be this research station whoops research table got enough research is based on flowers you got to get enough flowers and let's see here there it is okay look at that just just doing it so let's see what we can research here let's a tech tree every steam game needs a tech tree that's like if you want to know what type of game Steam likes it has to like most of the time it has to have a minimum of of a tech tree and here it is uh so we're going to start uh researching it so in about 10 minutes I'm going to going to cut away from this and we're going to

look and diagnose what's going on so we're going to do a thing how much research doing I need those 50 things research this thing look at it just bouncing everything just bounces like that's all it is it's not like they had to do all this complicated stuff these are the type of games that just just are perfect for steam Let's do let's do the shovel I need Flint that that Flint um all right let's see what I can just craft here I think I'm getting oh I'm getting low on food so I'm going to craft let's get a bunch of these remember how I had to do that like meat last time and I accidentally ate the wrong meat no worries here folks it's just berries um so I'm just watching bounce I think I got this thing let's see here copy build I think the research is done let's let's take a look here now we can do Anvil sleeping bag let's do the sleeping bag Spinning Wheel I'm definitely going to go for the bag let's research it all right um let's

see there we go we got that okay so I'm gonna eat my stuff here again this it just you know it's simple here's the thing is when I talk about these crafting games it's simple presentation wise you know we got the trees that look like this we've got very simple Graphics very simple text but the depth is there that is what's what's unique is I've got food meters which is draining on right now I'll get it um but you have recipes and research and Tech trees and all that stuff that is if I could if I could sum up steam this is the perfect steam game it is deep but the graphics are simplified they're just as as pure as could be and I hope this is not like a dig on all this uh let's see what I have to do here how do I oh there it is like it doesn't even have to do the animation me like stuffing an orange in my face it's just a little circle around the thing if you are um hitting steam in the numbers you know just like the right

type of game that they like the world's your oyster folks and um we'll take a look at the numbers again in 10 minutes um but um and this is what I write about in my blog so if you're new here you just I don't know how you would randomly get here but I write a blog called how tomarket a game.com just head over there uh I I have a newsletter every week where I write about this stuff um look this isn't even written by balazar they're just like this allows you to see here's a book not written by Bazar uh there you go now no no dig like no dig on enr that I played yesterday with a huge story about like it had like a sea shanty like I found a book with a sea shanty somebody wrote a sea shanty that's totally cool steam also likes that but if you are and there's no no no shade on enshrouded but if you are a small developer who who's doesn't have the time to make a 4-year project and 50 people you can cut all that stuff out Steam still like it um and so what I'm

trying to tell you all is if you if you focus on the type of games that steam really likes these crafty build simulation games it is possible and uh you the audience is just there for it um and it's just so important to just gonna break this but just destroy a book I hope I I got that research um and that's it um now U we'll look at it at the history of this developer but this developer has made several games several games on Steam this is not this is not their first um time making a game so it is there but I I I find a lot of people um quit after their first game now I I can't remember if the first game did okay I think it did okay but their second one did much better and then this one um did really good let's see how many I need 800 of these points um and so I just yeah it's just just totally jazzed by these type of games I just I just love them so what I recommend for you all is play a lot of these crafty building simulation games because these are the games that just hit steam now a

lot of the this might one this one might actually do okay on consoles but that's the big lesson I have people like maybe you want to become a a game developer because you played a lot of games on switch and you're like or growing up playing Nintendo I was a Nintendo kid uh but after you play a lot of those console games you you every a lot of console games are about you what I call going around it's a it was a quote from this podcast that youed they still around but this one um her name was an scantlebury and she used to say oh this game you go around I'm actually going to do a whole lecture on this somay um most console games triaa games are just a dude going around you just go around and I know this is going around but really what's going on here is you're building something that's the the that's the Crux of the game is you are building something as opposed to just like going in content runs past you instead I'm here I am you know keep coming back to this place um these are really you know for the

money I mean you can still do all right if you maybe do a Metroid vein or something but that's why um linear games are so hard is because you as an indie have to generate so much content that it is ridiculous um how much work you have to put into it um in order to make a game that satisfies the tastes of the audience whereas this game I am just I'm just like I love just just animations B look at that they don't even have a run cycle for the cow it's just a cow that kind of bounces this is so pure my goodness my goodness I'm just in awe of this game I just love how pure it is um this is this is what you got to do and like I fall off the island but I get right back up again um you know it just really talks to the struggle of man you know uh you know we we're born on the island and then we just fall off but we get back up again I can even just jump right on there I love love how just it just is so permissive about you getting

back onto the island let's go back over to this little desert island over here I don't know why I decided to spawn all the way over there but another thing is like they didn't have to make a huge world just on these little self-contained Islands now let me let me talk to another point about this so if you haven't I would also recommend that you play forager forager was the game that kind of invented this super sub genre and it's basically like I said uh little islands and you keep doing these Island and um and you craft and create your base and mine these resources and eventually you don't have to mine these as much you generate tools that automatically do this stuff for you in fact I'm going to go to research to see what else I should be researching um and um the game had a lot of life in it but it was a 2d top down pixel art game and a lot of people think when they see a game they're like well I'm going to do this genre mix with this genre this genre this game is still very similar to forager like from the gaml you know the

tech Tre is a little bit different but a lot of it is very similar they didn't say like oh we're going to mash crossword puzzles with dating Sim plus forager they're just like it's just forager in 3D and I have found that if you find a game that's really good you think there's a lot there there's two ways that you can do it you can um just take the game if it's a 3D game and make it 2D which a game I talked about earlier was called um um zero uh that was a game I wrote about they took a very complex 3D AAA quality like extraction shooter as they're called and they just flattened it and made it single player and that was in the game hit that audience because even though that game was popular that was based off of these kind of extraction Shooters uh there's an whole audience that's like it's just too complicated for me it's too intense it's too complicated I don't want to play multiplayer just want to play single player and what they delivered was just a single player flat more relaxed in flat top down is just more relaxing as a as as a medium and

they were like great this is great and the game did so well with this they took forger which is top down and they just added the third dimension to it so you can like Run and Jump to these islands but graphically I actually think it's more simple like that I think their characters whenever they had something they'd actually have Run cycles this is just a bouncing cow and that's great that is fine and that is what Indie devs like true solo devs is about stripping away what can you get rid of what can you strip away because that's really what matters here there's other side things here what's it bu leather bundle um just a bundle of leather uh leather um and that's it that's that's what this game's all about so what I'm GNA do let's see how many more of these points let me research something really fast I know I'm probably like it's really hard for me to talk about this while I'm looking at it but um I'm gonna see if I I probably I'm probably missing some key upgrade that just allows me to like just automatically mine stuff let's

see what these things are what's this spinning wheel allows you to craft various useful items allows you to craft various useful tools look at that the description is just this it didn't say the the Anvil of balazar with the gold enchantments of the the the Nethers of bivel um no they're just like it's just an anvil love it love it um all right collection net catches objects from time to time in the sea sometimes even fish that seems like such such a clutch thing to do what oh I need like 14,000 V points um let's see if there's something else I can do I think I might um Flint sword Flint shovel um sand just you just want some sand um let's see let's do it let's craft this sword um I guess I could just attack that cow let's attack the cow let's see how much time I got left let's it's 30 minutes let's attack the cow see what happens happens and then uh go from there um let's see

here's this thing up this I this I I I kind of improved but just give me the sword like I just picked it up just put it in my inventory uh let's let's attack whatever creature I see first whatever you let's get you all right a bottle I need an item let's do it let's just see what happens I'm sorry Cal let's see what we got we got hide and meat meat and hides so there it is that is um outpath I again these are the type of games that this stee just goes crazy for and the the whole point here is these games are deep not necessarily like super beautiful I think the graphics are neat they're Charming but it's not like you have to like render it in like Unity or like unreal like unreal uh Vector you know shaders and stuff like that look at this long as long as it's deep and so you can prioritize now if you if you have an artist on staff

that's amazing then you can go that way and just go super detailed art but I find if you can cut the art budget if you go in depth and that's what these forager likes these forager crafting building games they just they just keep expanding there's so much to build and collect and optimize it's like a clicker and so these games just have hours of content and the content is provided by the metag game by the structure of the build tree and the the values collecting these V points whatever they are that I have 71 of oh I'm starving too so uh I'm just going to quit um we'll just pause it right here let's take a look I'm gonna I'm gonna switch over and we're going to look at some of the steam page and kind of look at the marketing and how they got to where they are because as I've estimated this game has about 60,000 wish lists which is hot this is a hot game okay so let me switch over real quick hopefully I don't like uh um do something let me let me see if I can do

this um me I'm going to do a new browser window here um let's see here let me and we are here we go we we did it okay uh I just got to put myself in the front um so we're gonna look at I'm GNA look with along with you all the ways that I've kind of looked at this game so here's their steam page um experimental clicker game craft gather manage resources build your base and buy more Islands to exploit and expand it's not actually that fantastic of a of a um short description I would do a little bit more unique I'd even say like Forge or like I would just go for it um because I again I I always ask myself anytime I read a short description could this describe a different game and this could describe like Minecraft basically right other than the um uh let's see clicker Base building game other than that it's basically a description of Minecraft I don't really like that I always like to put at least

something that's unique uh maybe the 3D I would just say 3D forg or like I know it's that's weird but um okay one thing look at this um great capsule by the way look at this capsule got that pickaxe I always say if you're doing a crafty buildy game you got to include a pickaxe or a hammer you just have to this signals to people look at this I'm crafting they've got resources the islands the chicken it's beautiful and people always ask me if I have a pixel art game do I to do illustrations yes I think you do because if you just see a screenshot like this or this people are gonna be like who's is this Mrs Johnson's first grade class that made this I'm no no shade on the art but this game works better in motion and when you see the depth of it but the art by itself is charming but some people might think this is an asset flip cheap game and what happens is when you see this beautiful capsule it tells you that this is a a game with substance okay now part of the

thing I looked at was I looked at steamdb my favorite site um like if I just type St it actually brings me to steamdb and not steam that's how much I go to this site so I look at the charts and we're going to look at how many wish lists estimated does outpath have and if we look they have a ton so um that at last count now you can see the up swing during steam nextfest they're at about 60,000 so right at start of steam F I counted it it was like right at 6,000 followers and what you basically do is you multiply your followers by 10 sometimes nine it depends on how they did their marketing but we're talking 60,000 wish list this is doing really well and look at this upswing when they did so they started in December 2022 so about a year a little less than a year they've been out on Steam which is perfect that's really what you should be doing is U making sure that you have this um oh we've got do we have the Devon here I'm I'm kind of a two Min here um so is that David are you saying uh you

do have 100,000 um comat okay um but anyway so here's what here's what's happening is uh they've marketed very well um I went back and I couldn't find the exact tweet I went through the the developers tweets just to kind of see what their progress was and then what they did was they actually launched with a demo um which they launched their steam page so they did steam page and demo at the same time that's fine it's it's done well for them I always like to do um I like to do a couple steps like I like to put up the steam page see how much traction I get with a trailer and that sort of thing see how much traction I get there and then do a beta see how much traction I get there then do a demo get a lot of traction there in other words it's like it's like having a birthday and Christmas on the same day you don't give as many presents you want to space those out so you give as many presents now they're doing fine it's okay and part of the reason is they've got an amazing game and you can tell that it's amazing I always say like people like do I have an amazing game it's like I don't know

let's look uh see what the community wants from it and so what I did was I just searched YouTube for um outpath just to see like what is going on do they how are they doing and if you look one of the best signs I've seen is if a streamer a single streamer will play the same game multiple times like a demo and if you look here's wanderbots played it 11 days ago that means they got an early copy of it if you scroll back down keep going down wanderbots played it again 9 months ago look at that and then you go down here and wonderbots played it a third time there's me playing it right here um I think I counted three times there's I think it was yeah wbot has played this game three times three times and it's the demo the demo three times this is a sign that this game is hot and that's the type of thing that's why these buildy crafty games can do this because it's about optimizing it's about trying A New Path it's not about um hey

did I beat the boss because when you make a linear game where it's like linear content it is just like well I beat the boss I don't need to play this game again that is so hard on Steam whereas these crafty building games can just generate so much traffic and so so many people are playing this game that that is what's giving them the lift now the other thing that's interesting here um here's uh their steam page I did a little poking around and looks like this is cool they did the um prologue trick they did the prologue trick which if you don't know just search my blog how tomarket game.com uh search uh for prologue trick I wrote a whole article on how this works and basically if your game is hot and by what I mean is a hot game is if like a streamer will play it three times that's a hot game that's a game that people love if you have that type of game you can do the prologue trick where you basically you buy another hundred bucks you throw the game up there they called it first journey

usually they use the term prologue or something and it's basically your demo it's the same code I don't know if they did a slight difference you do it and basically if you can get this game up into new and trending popular upcoming all those like ladder of visibility that steam gives you if you can get the game up in there you you get steam to promote a free demo and you get so much visibility look at how many reviews this has this has 3,800 reviews this is how you Market a game on Steam if your game's hot you can do this and so they did that I think that's why wanderbots played it um and this is just such a test of how markable is my marketable is my game and they did it when did this game launch December oh so they did it real fast I think they may have even launched with a prologue which is nuts that is brave that is brave you have to know that your game's good I would not be that brave um I would have tried um uh doing the beta prologue demo demo before the prologue if I detected that

the demo was doing hot I got wanderbots to play it like two times then I would go and make the prologue because if you do the prologue without it it's not like it's not like valve hates you and slaps you down it's just you wasted all this promotional effort on something that doesn't go because if if your prologue does not take off it just flatlines and you'll get like maybe 100 reviews and then you did all this work all this Promotional and it just doesn't really do anything the strength of the prologue is if you can get it up into the Ste algorithm so that it gets like a thousand wish lists that is the secret with this and so this game's fun people played it over and over again I'd love if the developer does show up ask him what the median play time is of the prologue we'll get some great stuff um that that's that's basically how you do it and that that's outpath and that's why if you look at their let's see that their first month basically they got 40,000 wish lists I estimate in their first month and I I think it was from the prologue trick all the streamers playing it and then you can see it's just a nice steady increase and then

there's another Boop right at the end this is how you do it but you have to have the game that steam likes for this to work um my my bet is and I haven't I kind of went through but I think the developer has about 1700 thereabouts somewhere in the thousands of Twitter followers this game is not and again I think it's Charming but it's not the type of game that goes viral on uh Twitter it just it just doesn't have that graphical fidelity that Twitter and most people like it has depth of play and this is one of those games I've I've given a talk about this if you look up one of my talks just search uh how to Market a game talk about games that sell themselves based on how deep they are how fun they are to play this game new we live and die based on how well we play and they did they did great this game is so fun to play it's so pure so fun I don't have to listen to the I don't have to read about Bazar before I get to craft my stuff that game gets me crafting within like five minutes so is so fun that is how they that's their marketing strategy

it's not based off of tweets and Reddit I mean they may have done some but I have a feeling most of the lift came from the prologue trick that's what I'm thinking um and so um they launch pretty soon so we'll find out exactly how well it converts but based on the fact that their prologue has gotten 3,000 reviews that's a good sign that when the game fully launches and I think it's like in a week or two it's going to be fantastic um and I found them because I did some fil I did most played demo that is simulation and if you look at their uh tags here buildy crafty management games this folks this is the type of game that steam wants everybody's like well I've done genre research I don't know what steam actually wants it's this they want crafty buildy simulation games games with really deep Tech trees you collect resources you build stuff and a lot of people say like well is it going to be popular in like a year or two years yes um and the thing is you can't you can't can't dive down and say this specific one sub genre it's really like it's more

of what I mean by like a kind of like a suite of features which is that's why I call it crafty buildy simulation games it's not like one specific type of game it's more of like what you're doing you're not going around exploring and then battling a boss like you know most AAA games you're really just like you're plopped down and you got to kind of build yourself out and so that's why I wanted to cover this game is it's really all about that sort of stuff I want to show you a couple other things that I thought was interesting one look at this Dev awesome you clicked his name right here Davy projects um this is the developer he's got his developer page set up he's got 212 followers that's great I mean it just takes time to build these up um but as you can see the developer has made several types of games um he's been the guy's like 23 now that's that's insane so he was 18 doing quick math he's 23 now it's 2023 um at age 18 he made medieval shopkeeper

simulator this guy's released I think three games three four because I can't tell if I think himno is this is a sequel himno is a sequel to this one the guy is putting out the games this this is these are the games like okay so he's already started with a great game look simulation management Adventure even at 18 the guy knew Steam games are all about buildy crafty games I don't know if he consciously did it or did the research but this this this this guy look at that menu that is a this is a steam menu a steam menu with a bunch of little boxes and you got to pick things that's steam right there so there's that um and then he did make a platformer pixel art platformer so how well did uh shopkeeper 254 reviews is fantastic I mean it's mixed it's your first game you were never going to succeed I the guy didn't quit at age 18 he kept making games even though they only got 2584 reviews which is very good for our first

game especially if you're 18 at age 18 I had no games out so I got essentially zero reviews uh when I was 18 I don't think steam fully existed so everybody got zero reviews but what I'm saying is fine he carried on he didn't like give up uh then himno a pixel art platformer actually did well this guy knows but it's not just a pixel art platformer it's like a um um it's it's much deeper procedurally generated it's deep oh it's free to play that's probably why it's so it didn't cost anything um but you you'll see it's already got that buildy crafty so the guy just has a good sense of the type of games that do well on Steam I I don't know how conscious like if he planned it out there um and then I think he did a paid game yeah he did do a paid game um it only got 220 so it didn't do as um as well as the other free one so but that's typical for platformer games they just they just don't sell as well I don't

know what it is um and then uh his newest one is outpath which is just doing very well now this is again a free one that got up to 3,000 um I hope for good things for outpath and I and I think it I think it'll do well just based on the fact that the game's playable the the big thing is somebody has played the game and they reviewed it wanderbots played it three times so we know it's quality a lot of these games where that you know like the conversion didn't work very well um the game had never been played in other words like people put out demos and that sort of thing well they had never put out a demo they just had screenshots and stuff like that and then when people play it they're like oh this game's not actually that fun this game we know is fun I just played it wanderbots played it the free prologue played it so you can really see how how you can really understand what's going on here so I'm GNA go for about 10 more minutes uh because you all need to get back to making games to see if there's any questions from anybody in the in the chat um um oh do we have the dev there oh out path because I love forager and I feel

I'm so happy that we're able to get these developers into the chat thank you so much for coming outpath developer um I I I'm just really impressed with the game I think it's it's so classic steam I don't maybe if you talk about how you develop these games like how you decide to do these games you're just so uh you just have a really good sense of what the Steam Market likes so I'm really impressed with it you do um I thought a lot about and research before making um sorry just the way the interface of for the chat Works a heart button right over what you're saying so can't quite see it um oh yeah yeah I kind of I knew he was in there but um let's see here let's see what's saying here let's see two hours two hours median play time for the game that is hot so we've done research where I've asked a lot of developers how long was the median play time on your demo and uh what we find is that once you get above like 25 minutes that's a good sign

if you're meeting in play time for your game is like seven minutes eight minutes that means people a significant portion of people are going like this game is not for me this game's just not for me out and if you got too much of that um that's a bad sign um now there's a few games that I saw that are very very very very very Niche that had short play times but they had a few a dedicated audience that played for hours and hours so if you see n minutes and then you see a big spike at the end that means you just filtered out all the people but that's for a very Niche game if your game's like not Niche like this was a game that was like simulating War um I think it was like if you were running a a spaceship and it was very technical a very technical game and scared away everybody but a very hardcore audience I think it did okay that's one case but for the most part if you see medium play times over 25 minutes that's a good sign if you see

somebody like wanderbots play it three times that's a good sign if you put out a free prologue and you get 3,000 reviews that's a good sign so if you go to my site how marketing game.com benchmarks I've collected a lot of these kind of benchmarks based on how games have done success wise and there's no one figure that you can look at and say oh I got a medium play time of uh 30 minutes so my game's going to be a success it's not like that it's I I say you kind of assemble a constellation of success metrics and if you see lots of positive signs that indicates that you might have a good success again nobody knows but what I typically look at for Success metrics are a lot of wish lists like they're able to generate them not it's never we never know how well they're going to convert but if you're getting a lot of wish lists that's a good sign if you're median play time is above 25 minutes that's a good sign if streamers are playing the game over and over and over over that's a good sign um if you put out a prologue and it goes viral and you have 3,000 reviews on your

prologue that's a good sign so again you're just assembling all these things and you're like okay we're feeling pretty confident of it if a lot of those things that I just listed are not going positive then it's like cut development let's get the game out let's go uh let's go on to our next one that's the name of the game folks and I I find one of the big problems that Indies do is they spend way too long on a game that's just not showing the signs and they try and add stuff and add stuff and keep building on top of the game that's never going to convert well uh it's best just to like ship it say sayara like maybe do a 21 gun salute in the air with not real bullets don't shoot bullets in the air but have a 21 gun salute and then send it off into the ocean like dump it in the ocean and and be proud of it but you know move on from there okay um uh let's see a couple other things let's see if there's any other chat from outpath so we did some research to see um I I I can't believe at 23 and Mike knows we

were total idiots I I've been I've known Mike since we were like 17 I think uh up there in the chat we were total jackasses at age 23 I don't know how you've released so many games and done so well at age 23 so congrats to you I don't know do do you drink mineral water what is it how how do you do it yes Mike we still are jackass but but you own an automobile um so anyway uh let if you've got any other tips like uh do you do push-ups in the morning how do you do it at age 23 um whatever it is um you're doing great and I'm really excited to see how outpath does going forward but um you've really just keyed in on that um and a home mic that's very true you've just keed in on on really what the steam audience likes um I I hate Mineral Water by the way but I will drink it if if it does as well for you

if it if it that's what it takes to put out a game like outpath bring in the mineral water I'll choke it down um yep uh so outpath Dev says I researched why players keep playing a game what makes them continue playing and it's um human behavior and how we think so just you have that Insight um so yeah and I should I should put it out there that the outpath developer did have a uh publisher so they are working with a publisher but let me tell you folks a publisher can help but um a game with a twoh hour median Play Time a prologue that does that well that is the game um and not not to shade on the publisher they did a great job I really like their their commitment to doing um prologues putting the game out putting the demo out um if I could ask um uh to the developer of outpath um are you going to keep your demo up what's your what's your thoughts as far as the demo once you do your full launch I know it might be the publisher doing

some decisions I'm just kind of curious what they are thinking as far as as the um getting the demo out whether you're going to turn off the demo or keep it up um either way is fine I can see arguments on both sides my hunch I would have to look at the stats but I have a feeling um if the cuts off in a very exciting way like let's say you build two islands and all of a sudden it says oh here we go and you really tease it well if you see good stats of like a lot of people reaching the end of this demo like if you put in analytics and you see a lot of people stop and then they click a button that says wish list after that if you're seeing a good conversion rate that means your demo is actually converting very well and I would just keep it up even after launch um but uh so if the developer yeah he's going to keep the demo and the prologue up after launch so we'll be we'll watch how this goes I think the game seems like it's very strong and um I didn't have time to get to the end of the demo how are you cutting off the demo how are you constricting the content because this is the big challenge with these deep

simulation buildy games is that once you either open it up to all the content and people can try as much as they want but then they kind of get tired of the game you have to like let them have the freedom but still constrict them so is there some gate where it's at the end you just slam the the gate down and say no more is it a Time based is it based off of upgrades what what's it based off of um I'd love to hear it because this is the big question I'm not a I'm not a game designer that's not my primary thing uh so I always I I don't like to give game design game design advice I just like to say Hey try these games so I really for all of those watching um I mean we're wrapping up here I would just recommend play this game like this is people always ask like oh how do I make a game I'm a solo developer uh how do I make a game the steam lights it is this it is Crafty buildy you don't have to have the

best graphics as long as you've got this depth like you saw those Tech trees like the tech tree keeps expanding the um Islands keep expanding and this isn't the most revolutionary game I'm sorry I'm not saying that uh to be Grudge it's based heavily on forager like I would play this game and I'd play forager you don't have to reinvent what a game is you can take a game polish off the parts that you think are too rough uh maybe bring a 3D game to 2D or take a 2d game and make a 3D like outpath did um you don't have to like totally reinvent and you also don't have to mash up genres like I I think devs the lesson I was talking about yesterday these games that are doing very well aren't necessarily like these crazy mashups like oh it's a it's a a you know visual novel mixed with a clicker mixed with um you know a rhythm game and a dating Sim that'll get them it's not it's like hey we're just like forager but 3D and we

really improve some of the the the quality of life issues and that's the sort of stuff that does well so U just checking to see what they say um no time based because it's a chill game I'm I'm checking to see how he's gating the content um he's saying uh but limiting the content so it sounds like maybe you're you can't go to the upper tiers you can't unlock all the upgrades you unlock all the stuff because it um let let me let me pull up the steam page while we're kind of rounding it out just to kind of look at a couple things like one thing I like about these games and I always say in screenshots and I think you did a great job here is show that variety you got to show that depth because that's what's selling these games on Steam is dep and if you look at all the screenshots like oh we've got like a desert environment we've got a purple grass kids love purple grass we've got a grass environment we have these pink trees uh we've got all kinds of things we have these little cute little you know marshmallows that come after you like uh snow biome the fall

biome there's like so not a single screenshot looks the same and that just shows people it's not like they purposely judge that they just subconsciously are saying this game is deep this is a deep game and so I think he did fantastic there you got the bouncing trees um I just I am just so impressed by this this game and and I just recommend even if you're like oh I don't like for I don't I don't like Minecraft try it just try these games because you got to learn what steam wants and it's not like a genre I'm not saying like go off and make a forg or like uh because who knows maybe in two years forger likes kind of get stale I don't think they will genres don't go as way away as fast as a lot of people think but what you need to pick up on these is like the depth what does a game that's not linear feel like and I feel like a lot of people who come to Indie Games came from Nintendo where there isn't necessarily this like open world

crafty buildy simulation maybe a little bit with um you know Animal Crossing but really the types of games that do well on Steam are these games that I really only see kind of flourish on PC and so before you make a game your next game for steam really play these crafty ability games I think you're just gonna You're Gonna Learn so much so um I think that's it we're gonna wrap it up I I I I want you to um do one thing how to Market a game.com slf free I write a book about 60 mistakes that you make when you're making your game um I'll tell you all the how to fix it what common mistakes traps that you're going to get into so how to Market agame.com free um do the Subscribe thing because I'm just trying to get to a thousand I don't want to say like And subscribe every time I don't care I just want to get to a thousand that's it I'm very close so let's get to a thousand and then I'll stop asking about this the real thing I want you to do is how Market game.com free I read a Blog every week about stuff like how to do the

prologue trick how to get purple grass how do you like um you know get the kids to like you um how to drink mineral water and become a game dep by 23 I don't know what it is was it mineral water what is it um you never did say I I think he just did the homework I'm gonna say try some mineral water too we'll see if that works try a Fresca okay um that's it I'm just going to end it right here uh I'll see you tomorrow I'm going to be I'm going to be back tomorrow I don't know what game it is but come back tomorrow we'll do something else um I'm not going to do specifically a crafty building game I know I I I just I did two back toback it's GNA be something slightly different we'll find out but it is going to be a game that I think steam likes and that's what I'm really want to do with this channel is show people the type of game that steam likes because I find journalists uh the games you like from Nintendo aren't the types of G like nobody's really talking about these GES I want to

talk about them so that's what I want to do so um I'll see you all later good luck enjoy your Frescas I'll talk to you later if I could just find the end stream button it's all the way over here okay by I'm Still Here by