These 3 Mistakes Will Destroy Your Game

Okay, how do you how do you launch a good game on Steam? How do you launch a game that gets very positive reviews on Steam? I'm definitely not perfect and all of my games have flaws, believe me, and we're working through some flaws right now with my third commercial release, Twisted Tower. That said, I pretty much always stick the landing of my games at very positive. Now, to be fair, Twisted Tower is really close really close to overwhelmingly positive. In fact, it was overwhelmingly positive at 95%. It's at 94.5% at the record at time of recording this video. So, I want to give you guys my two cents on how I've done this on three separate occasions. No, the answer is not, "Well, Thomas has an audience." And and and the truth is is that yes, I do have an audience now, but even when I didn't have an audience, even when I wasn't a YouTuber, I was getting very positive with my game. Pinstripe, and that game is still at very positive on Steam. Never Song, same

thing, it's at very positive. Twisted Tower, very positive. It's my highest rated game so far. And it's on track to be my highest performing game in terms of sales. Um So, this is not me gloating. This is not me saying, "Look at what I've done." This is me saying, "Guys, I want to give you what I had to do, and believe me, it was a pain in the butt, what I had to do, and what you need to do to be as sure as you possibly can, almost be able to predict the future, that your game is going to get very positive or maybe even overwhelmingly positive. AKA, what do you need to do to release a solid game? And it's not what you think. It is not what you think. Okay? It is not some gimmick. It is not going viral on social media. Right? It is not some viral gimmicky game idea. It's actually things that you don't even think about while you're releasing your game, while you're building your game. You're so focused on

the art style, you're so focused on making this game hyper polished that you may forget about these things, okay? And I focused heavily on these three things, okay? All right, so let's go ahead and jump in to the first one here. And by the way, this video is sponsored by Xsolla. Look, most of you already know that it's pretty hard to sell your games directly to consumers, but the truth is you don't have to use the typical storefronts. Believe it or not, you can actually just sell your games directly to consumers and avoid things like platform fees. The Xsolla Web Shop ecosystem is everything you need to build and grow a successful D2C business. See, every component works together across the entire player journey from engagement, getting players to make that first purchase on the store, through to retention and long-term LTV growth. Everything's built in, payments, tax handling in every market, fraud protection, customer support, analytics, and with LiveOps, use the canvas, which is a no-code drag-and-drop tool to run discounts,

loyalty programs, and seasonal campaigns. It's the same way a studio runs live events in game. Look, you're not going to need an extra dev team. It works as a fast templated setup for smaller studios or a fully custom build for larger ones. And if you're curious, Xsolla actually has 800-plus web shops launched since 2021 with studios seeing meaningfully higher revenue once LiveOps is running on top. They operate as a merchant of record across 200-plus geographies with over 1,000 local payment methods. And by the way, there's a bonus here. There's also buy button, a one-tap purchase link inside the game. The player taps and they land on a pre-filled checkout, they pay, and then they're right back to the game. Setup takes just under 15 minutes to get to your first transaction and about a quarter of players who buy once through the buy button go on to purchase again through the full web shop. So, if you're a developer and this is relevant to your game, click the link in the description and it takes you straight to Xsolla, where you can see how the web shop and

buy button work. All right, let's get back to the video. Okay, again, third time's the charm. I I I'm going to be honest with you guys.
[laughter]
I lost a lot of confidence in the last year and a half. Um I really did. I I I didn't want to make a video like this because I didn't know if I still had it in me. I had done two very positive games. I didn't know if my third game, Twisted Tower, was going to be a very positive. I expected I expected some mixed, maybe maybe mostly positive. I didn't expect almost overwhelmingly overwhelmingly positive and then it dipped down to 94.5%. Um I I don't know if I'll let that go. Uh but
[laughter]
But um yeah, again, I've been published on three separate occasions, all very positive scores. And so, let's move into these three steps, okay? What are the three steps, the three secrets, the three things that I did to basically predict very positive. I'm going to prove prove to you prove to you at the end of these

uh slides here that I basically was able to predict the score. Um which is very very interesting and I want to show you how to do it, okay? The first secret is to capture the right players, okay? You do not want players playing your game who don't like the game. You don't want players to play the game thinking the game is one thing that it's not. You really want to I in a way under promise or simplify your message, okay? Simplify your game's message, simplify what the game is in its trailer, in its screenshots, in its title, in its description, on the Steam page, in your emails, on your social media. Simplify it to to basic core identity. And by the way, this is not simple. This is actually very difficult to do. Most I think most game developers can't do this. And it takes a lot of practice to be able to simplify your game idea to its most core basic form and shout that core basic

form, that single sentence, or those four words, shout those from the rooftops while you're building your game so that the wish list you get are people who know what the game is. So that when they buy it, they get exactly what you promised in its most simple form. So here's what I did for my games, okay? Pin stripe, it was as simple as a minister in hell. That's the game. Now my games are story games, and so you're going to see a lot of sort of story hooks here and story promises, story motifs in what you see in this slide. But for you, I always go back to Portal. It might be a game about portals, a puzzle game about portals, right? Um for for John Blow, for Order of the Sinking Star, it might be four puzzle games in one or the biggest puzzle game ever. The most complicated puzzle game ever,

right? What's your What is your core message? That hook, right? And so for me, my core message for Pin Stripe was a minister in hell. Boom. Got it. That's the game. That's the idea. That's what I'm buying. That's what I'm wish listing. And then deliver it. Never song, a boy in a coma. Boom, that's the idea. That's what I'm promising you. When you buy the game, that's what you get. Twisted Tower, demented theme park. Boom. There's the game idea. That's what this game is. That's what wish listers are wish listing. And when they buy it, they get it. And we'll talk about delivering on your promise in a second. But in order to ensure you capture the right players, your message has to be simple, clear, and concise. No doubt in the player's mind what they're going to wish list, and when they buy it, they get it. Okay? That's the first secret to getting good reviews, okay? So, at the end of the day, you're marketing it to the right people, and

you're capturing the sale with the right players. Period. You kind of want it one-to-one. You market it to the right people, and they buy it, and they get it. How many times can you have you seen a game that promises this, and then the players get this? Or, how many times have you have you seen uh games promise some weird abstract idea that is very unclear? And so, when players buy it, they're like, "Wait, what? I thought it was this." Cuz they didn't understand it to begin with, but maybe they made weird assumptions. And then they got this, some
[laughter]
some other weird thing.
[gasps]
Clarify your message, clarify the marketing, so that when they buy it, they know exactly what they're getting. You do not want players that do not understand your message. It seems easy, right? You're thinking, "Oh, I'll just do that. Great idea, Thomas." It takes a lot of effort to distill down your idea into like two, three words. But, if you can do that, your players

are going to better understand what they're buying or what they're wish listing. And quick tip here, little asterisk, look, what do you see here? Contrast. I love contrast. Contrast is a is a great way to like create clarity and to hook people and to make them understand your idea, right? Um [snorts] so, a minister who goes to hell, right? Contrast. A boy an innocent boy in a coma, contrast. Demented theme park, contrast. Secret two. Secret two. I'm going to call this bops, okay? BOPS. Assuming your game is actually fun, right? That's the sort of precursor here to BOPS. Um BOPS is the ultimate review score killer. And I'm not going to take uh credit for this. I learned this actually from Gavin uh at Two Star Games. He made a game called Choo-Choo Charles and also Cuff Bust. Um and I'm sure lots of lessons were learned with Cuff Bust.

Um and I wish Gavin all the best. I seriously do. I love Gavin. Um but also I learned I think some of this stuff from Jonas Tyroller as well. And um plenty of other conversations with other game developers. BOPS is is my little acronym for bugs, optimization, price, promise, and settings, okay? And I haven't just pulled these out of my butt. These are the one the the uh These are the five things that constantly come up. And every time I see a game that flops, it's because of these five things over and over and over and over again. Now, of course, your game needs to be fun. Minute to minute, it needs to be fun, okay? And that's a whole other thing. But assuming your game is fun, you have to iron out these five things to the nth degree. You need to be borderline obsessive about these things. You need to be obsessed with BOPS, especially like 5 months prior to launch.

Let's say 2 to 5 months prior to launch. If you're making a smaller game, maybe it's 2 months. And we'll talk about those 2 to 5 months in just a second in secret three because well, you're going to think you got BOPS under control, but you don't. And we'll talk about that. Hang on. Bugs, easy, right? You cannot have bugs, especially what? The big the lockers, the game breakers, soft lock or hard lock where the player cannot progress or they lose their save data, right? Or what I had, a big big fat bug. I'll probably do a whole other video about this like a week before launch of Twisted Tower where players were losing their save data and losing their weapons. This is the the review score killer. Optimization. Your game cannot run at 30 frames per second. Your game cannot have an inconsistent frame rate. It even the coolest game idea ever, let's say it was Resident Evil 4, um one of my favorite games, if the the frame rate is all over

the place, right? If it's crashing, players are going to leave bad reviews. They don't care if the game is a cool idea or it looks pretty. The product doesn't work. Notice how a lot of these things here, actually all of them, are what? They're product-oriented. They're not artful. They are not related to uh the creative side of game development. They're related to the technical side. The technical and the product side. All of these things are related to the product side of game development, which so many indie game developers, including myself, struggle with. You don't want to think about your game as a product, so you just ignore these things. These are related to the product side. A product is something that is what? Worth people's money. It's an even exchange. In my opinion, it should be an uneven exchange. The player should actually be getting more than the price of the game, but that's a whole other conversation. So, bugs, obviously, optimization, obviously. By the way, I optimize my

sort of base layer level of optimization is Steam Deck. I That's just kind of where I decided to optimize the game for for Twisted Tower, and that was always my base layer. It's like, if I if I can get it running on Steam Deck, I'm happy.
[gasps]
I'm going to move to settings, actually, because that's related to optimization. Settings are how you ensure optimization. If you don't have settings, it's really hard to optimize for everybody. So, settings, this is a huge one. Down here are all my settings for like one category of Twisted Tower. Hours and hours and hours and hours, weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, months and months of time was spent on the settings of Twisted Tower, making sure every little thing, these high-value, low-hanging fruit things that players really, really care about in that genre. And by the way, genre tends to determine your settings. AKA, look at other games that you're trying to build. Similar games in that genre, look at their settings. For example, with first-person shooters, a field of view slider is absolutely a

must, right? Uh V- turning Vsync off, absolute must. Uh brightness values for a horror game are really important. That's an absolute must for settings, right? Settings can ensure optimization. If you have good settings and you have good quality settings and I can turn off real-time shadows and I can turn off volumetric fog, I can turn off post-processing, I can turn off film grain, I can turn off bloom. Yeah, I can change my resolution. I can lock my frame rate. I can turn off and on Vsync. All [snorts] of these things, if I can change them, I can then what? Ensure solid optimization for players. If you're just trying to solve optimization issues with no real settings available to the player, you're going to have a hard time and eventually you're just going to basically build your game for the lowest common denominator, which you don't want to do. You want settings that are available for the lowest common denominator, but you don't necessarily want to build the base

build of the game, the default build of the game for those base settings. So, you you absolutely need rock-solid settings and you need to look at every other game that did well in your genre and just replicate those settings. Price is crucial. And unfortunately, a lot of indie games and a lot of people probably wondering, "Why did Thomas do a $15 game? It should have been 20, right? In fact, most people on my survey for Twisted Tower during beta testing and play testing uh said $20. But I chose 15 because I wanted to give number one, I wanted to give you guys um everyone an opportunity to play the game because you supported the game for years. Thank you so much. But I also wanted to provide well, more value. I kind of believe in a lopsided value where you get way more game than you paid for. And that's just kind of how I see things. I want you to get way more value than I get from the game. But price is super duper important in

the way that you you determine price is you need to beta test and play test thoroughly and ask real players what they think the price of the game should be. That's really, I think, the only way to determine price for your game. Also, look at comps. If your game is overpriced, you're going to see uh the review scores reflect that. There's been a lot of games that I've seen released that they're just overpriced themselves. And you you can think of some developers who have done this and I love them and I've talked to them and I know it's hard. Pricing is incredibly difficult to do for indie games. Um but I have just seen a trend. I I've seen a trend with indie game developers where they overprice their games.
[sighs and gasps]
And they think their game is worth more than it is and then you see the reviews and people just don't feel that way. Also, the economy is tough right now. It's tight. The value of the dollar is tight. Um also, there's more games than ever, especially more indie games than ever. So, yeah. Uh price is a big challenge. And so, my

theory was with Twisted Tower is I'd rather get, you know, more players at a lower price. And I'd also try and reflect the value of the game in the price. Promise is a big one. Uh it's related to secret number one. If you're marketing the game incorrectly, you cannot deliver them on the promise You have to market the game correctly so that you can deliver on the promise. So, I would rather you sort of backpedal and figure out what your promise is based on what your current product is. So, as you're playtesting, we'll talk about this in a second. Playtesting is huge and that's related to secret number three. As you're playtesting your game with playtesters, you then determine what the promise is. Okay? I've I have done it in the past. I think I even did it with Twisted Tower where I've created the promise first and generating the um delivery of the promise, aka the game, generating that was really really challenging. So, don't over-promise on the front end

when you're marketing your game. It's not worth it. No matter how many wish lists you get, you get 500,000 wish lists, I don't care because you're if you can't deliver on the promise, your wish lists are worthless. Well, they may they might not be worthless. You might get, let's say, uh 20,000 sales of your game, but you're going to sit at mixed reviews and the game will stop performing. So, it's better to create a promise from your product. Look at what you have. Look at what playtesters are saying about your game and say, "Okay, what can I promise with this current product?" I understand that's hard to do when all you've got is vertical slice or a demo. Um but you need to be thinking, "Okay, what am I willing to promise?" For me, I was willing to promise an indie love letter to BioShock. That was I was willing to promise that and I know that seems scary and I was scared making that promise, but I think deep down, especially after playtesting, I realized that I could deliver that promise at least to 95% of players uh who who who liked the game. Okay.

Okay. Um though that's bops. Huge. Bops is huge. Let's move on to the last secret here. Uh Uh the last secret here is pri- a private launch. Uh
[laughter] [gasps]
You can actually launch your game to a private audience 2 to 5 months prior to launching. AKA, by the way, this is called beta testing or play testing. But, it truly is I call it a private launch. And you need to treat it as such. Um I had a total of It says 159 there, but I actually had a total of like 170 playtesters. And I did it for 5 months. And it was horrible. I hated it because every day you're looking at negative feedback all day, every day. You pull down the beta testing and you just get a huge pit in your stomach. But, looking at the percentage that would recommend the game, and by the way, the playtesters that I had were actually game developers. It was you guys. Thank

you so much. And we'll talk all about playtesting in the future with future videos. But, the total responses I had was 170 playtesters who are game developers. So, you would think game developers are people who want to, what's the word, glaze Thomas Brush. But, in truth, what I got What I got was very critical game developers. Game developers are very critical and I I love it. I appreciate it. They had a ton of feedback about the game. Um that maybe not a lot of gamers would would find. Um but the percentage that would recommend is 97.5%. Um what we're sitting at is 94%, 94.9% on Steam. Point being, I pretty much not perfectly, but I pretty much predicted what this game how this game would perform. Now, I my theory is is that the game is not going to stay at 94%. Uh this is

just true. I talked to um Jake Birkett about this with his game, um uh Forbidden Solitaire, he just said, "Look, as you open the gates, as the game gets bigger, as you get more players and Steam pushes it to a broader audience, you're naturally going to see lower scores. But, at least in the terms of this first week, I'm looking at a pretty pretty solid prediction here of 94%. And you can do the same thing. You just need to test the crap out of this game with real people. I'm lucky because I have a big audience now, so I was able to get this many players to test my game. But, it is possible to find friends, family, and people who follow you on social media, and join communities and groups and Discord servers to to to play test your game. Now, down here is the big mean 79%. This is driving me crazy, but it's totally fine. But, it's at 79, so I'm going to call it a nice even 80, okay?

[laughter]
Just to feel better. But, I look at this. This was the This was the average review score from my playtesters, okay? Look, there was a recommended review score, which is different cuz it's binary. It's yes or no. And then I also had a actual one out of 10. And you could see 7.95. It's directly directly reflecting the Metacritic score um from critic reviews. Um Metacritic has a user score as well, and it's all whacked. There's only like 10 of them, and I think that they're not a It's like looking bad. It's like five out of 10 or something. And I'm not going to read them, but I'm I'm going to assume that it's people who Maybe they don't like the game, or maybe they don't like Thomas. Um but I don't I'm not too worried about Metacritic, to be honest with you. But, yeah, in terms of the the critic score, we're looking at kind of a here.

So, it's possible to kind of predict your score, okay? So, there's a bonus tip here, and that is ask for reviews, okay? It's totally fine to ask whoever you can for, wait for it, an honest review. Do not ever ever ask for positive reviews. That's unethical. But, just ask for re- for reviews. And I included here a screenshot of my own game uh Pinstripe. And the reason I included this one was because you're probably thinking, "Well, Thomas, you can ask your audience for reviews." And yes, I can, that's true. But, even back in the Pinstripe days, when I was making a game for Pinstripe, uh when I was making a game called Pinstripe, I was able to ask my Twitter following, which was small at the time. I don't think I I didn't have a YouTube or a big YouTube, and I still then would ask for reviews as well. So, it's totally fine to just ask ask your player base, ask on social media, send out email blasts, ask your friends and family to just leave an honest review. Say, "Hey, I'd love to know what you thought about

the game." And when you can do this, you can signal to Steam that people are playing and reviewing. Steam values reviews. Steam likes to look at the number of reviews. Um and so, don't be afraid to ask for reviews. So, those are well, four things four things that are going to help you know if your game is ready for launch and if it's solid. AKA, this is my launch process. And I learned a ton from this launch process. Okay, that's all I've got for you. Thanks. And by the way, this video is sponsored by Xsolla. Look, most of you already know that it's pretty hard to sell your games directly to consumers, but the truth is you don't have to use the typical storefronts. Believe it or not, you can actually just sell your games directly to consumers and avoid things like platform fees. The Xsolla Web Shop Ecosystem is everything you need to build and grow a successful D2C business. See, every component works together across the entire player journey, from engagement, getting players to make that first purchase on

the store, through to retention and long-term LTV growth. Everything's built in. Payments, tax handling in every market, fraud protection, customer support, analytics. And with LiveOps, use the canvas, which is a no-code drag-and-drop tool to run discounts, loyalty programs, and seasonal campaigns. It's the same way a studio runs live events in game. Look, you're not going to need an extra dev team. It works as a fast could it set up for smaller studios or a fully custom build for larger ones. And if you're curious, Xsolla actually has 800-plus web shops launched since 2021 with studios seeing meaningfully higher revenue once LiveOps is running on top. They operate as a merchant of record across 200-plus geographies with over 1,000 local payment methods. And by the way, there's a bonus here. There's also buy button, a one-tap purchase link inside the game. The player taps and they land on a pre-filled checkout, they pay, and then they're right back to the game. Setup takes just under 15 minutes to get to

your first transaction and about a quarter of players who buy once through the buy button go on to purchase again through the full web shop. So, if you're a developer and this is relevant to your game, click the link in the description and it takes you straight to Xsolla where you can see how the web shop and buy button work.