Making all your old games free is quite the move! Congratz with all of the progress you've made in your dev journey and hope Sacred Forest continues to go well for you! 3000 wishlists already is pretty nuts!
Oh man... combining 3D graphics with 2D pixel art actually looks amazing. I can already tell you it will outsell all your other games. Also, cool to watch an actual indie game developer's video about how much he made, instead of all those 100k+ subs youtubers who obviously have an insane free marketing and sales purely from their viewers. I'm not saying it's bad (no way!), I'm just saying it's cool to watch a normal person like us. Edit: Okay, I watched the whole video now, and I guess I was right about Sacred Forest outselling all your other games 🤣
I think making your past games free is a great move! It'll get you a lot more exposure if nothing else. The feedback you get on them now that more people are playing could be valuable too
Your next project looks SO GOOD, nice idea to make your older stuff free! I’m currently working on a road crossing sim, I’ve uploaded a few clips from super early dev on my channel
Making some games free to play is a way to market followers to your work and when they see a great looking game that comes out later on they are most likely to pay more the better the games get in the future.
Man, Sacred Forest is looking sick! Congrats on all your previously released games, the quality jump in all your games as time goes by is pretty awesome to witness. Good luck!
Love this look into how your games have done on steam, and love the mindset you have for making them free! Wanted to ask before doing so, is it alright if I bring some exposure to Sacred Forest on my TH-cam channel?
I never put it together that you were the same developer from Sacred Forest. I had seen your previous videos on this channel, and some Sacred Forest devlogs. When you mentioned it here I severely shocked lol. Keep up the great work making games
Your process is really inspired me and many other indie dev as well. Hope you will get your goal and never give up to make more and better games (sorry for my bad english)
This is the first video I've seen of yours, it just popped up in my recommended and I was completely unfamiliar with your work before watching it. But man, Sacred Forest looks so unique, I've already wishlisted it and I'm gonna be watching the devlogs tomorrow when I have some time. Looking forward to seeing it continue development!
Love the mechanics in SF!! Also looks beautiful. Do hope the game challenge scales, and content is there too in the form of progressively harder monsters and quests. Can see myself buying it at some point, which is rare for me to say theses days
Wow! Sacred Forest looks awesome. I think you are going to do well on that game because it looks soo unique. Keep polishing that gem! Was it easy to go through hole process of selling games on Steam? (To be honest to me that part sounds like the scariest part of making games)
@@KimTiger777 Thanks! Selling my first game on steam was a little daunting but after doing it once it’s actually pretty easy hah! It’s mostly learning all the settings in steamworks and of course the part that takes the longest is making all the little images that show up in various places on steam. I definitely recommend going for it if you have a game you’re happy with and if you get stuck steam support is extremely helpful. Good luck! :)
It seems to me that there are about 14k bots on steam that just claim all free games. PS. Sacred Forest looks great. It has potential. +1 sub I'll be looking forward for it's development.
the video was super interesting to watch! How and why did you spend so much money on the marketing for your first game? good luck with your upcoming game !!
Well in 2019-ish there was just a lot less stuff on how to market a game (at least on youtube) and it being my first steam game I just sort of sent different types of Ads not really knowing what I was doing. Also, back then Google Ads especially would easily overspend your budget. You could set something like $20 a day and it would choose to spend $100 in a day because it decided its daily budget on Monthly amounts (where the average daily amount would be $20 but it would spend whatever it wanted to early on) whereas now there is more control on limiting daily amounts. So me being naïve I thought it would stick to a daily budget (because that is what you set in the dashboard) which I believe I set to $50 a day hoping to turn it off at around 4 days which I started it at the game release time but it definitely did not stick to that and because the analytics were delayed it spent $700 before I could turn it off.
Hah thanks! During that time I worked on a number of game projects that didn't work out, and then just some projects for fun like making a gameboy game and a commodore 64 game. The projects that didn't work out are on this channel as Ex Versa and the VR Devlogs. There is a long reason for why I stopped Ex Versa, but for the VR one I just kept feeling sick when putting on and taking off the headset every time I needed to test the game which was really often. Then my headset broke and I didn't have the money to replace it lol
I've been learning game development for a while now and get stuck and demotivated often, thinking if this is something ill ever be able to do or not. This video was weirdly motivating to me. The progress that you have made from your first game to the current one you're working on is HUGE. the current project absolutely blew my mind away. it is so fucking polished dude. And you started from the bottom too. you have inspired me in some ways. i can create my own beardy mcstrong arm. It is an achievable target, maybe in a month, maybe in a year. and game-by-game, month-by-month, year-by-year, i will be able to improve. even if it takes a lot of times. Eventually I will be working on my own Sacred Forest. Congrats Blekoh. All the best for Sacred Forts Also just a question - how did you get to 3300 wishlists? That seems like a big number, more than what I would expect from a game released by someone of the size of your YT channels / your previous game sales. Was it because of free sales after free did the games previous? Thanks
Awesome! It has definitely been a journey hah! For the wishlists they all came from making the Sacred Forest youtube channel. I knew launching devlog videos on this channel (Blekoh) wouldn't perform well so I wanted to create a dedicated channel just for following the progress of the game. I made the steam page before I launched the first video so that I could point anyone interested to wishlist the game for every devlog and I tried to make all of the branding for it look at least somewhat polished (which I need to update now that I'm further along haha) since generally the first devlog is usually the most popular and then they kind of fizzle down in views so it was important to me to make the most out of everything right from the beginning. Hope that helps and good luck! :)
@@Blekoh damn yeah i just checked you almost got 100k views on your first video thats fucking huge. i have wishlisetd the game as wel all the best, this is your big break i feel it brother
Oh, man, I love that I found this channel! I've been following Sacred Forest for a while, and it's easily one of my favorite devlogs here on TH-cam. I love your vibe with those videos, and this was a nice, laid back and chill update. It really paints a picture of how brutal the market can be, but also how much you can learn when developing these smaller releases. I can't wait to try out Sacred Forest. As for projects, I'm making a medium-sized project right now in Unity. At it's core. I want it to have a character-action feel, but with immersive sim elements. I'm currently prototyping systems, abstracting logic where I can so I can try to have more mingling of systems. I'm also trying to build a library of animations to accommodate custom characters, but when I tried extending my rig in Blender with some extra bones for hair and clothing I got some weird bugs and now my rig won't re-generate, so that's been put on the back-burner while I remake my rig with Rigify. It's been an interesting time, haha.
Great Video man, thank you for sharing your numbers. I wish you best of luck and success with Sacred Forest and all your future games. Keep on coding :)
This is inspiring. Even if you didn't make a living wage, you still published your games. I'm coming from the art side, learning development now. I'm taking Godot classes and an animation class. Hoping to make some beautiful zen style games like Flower and Feather, but more on the 2D side kind of like Gris, because at the end of the day I love to draw. Thank you for sharing your experiences and games.
Hello I dont know why but seeing your progress has motivated me so much, I am currently working on making one game each month in Godot and actually make videos on my progress. and one day hope to inspire people like how you have inspired me. thanks for the video
Sacred Forest looking good. Hope it will go better than previous games. Also, KIRO is looking pretty nice. Maybe I expected better numbers overall, especially for KIRO. I'm preparing to publish my first game and I have no expectations since I didn't market it huh 😅
I am not a 2D nor a pixel art fan but I liked the hedgehogs in that last one. I like seeing what others are working on and how it turned out for them. Good learning tools and reality checks. The one you are working on now looks cool. I think the 2D sprite in a 3D world looks really cool. Wish listed that one. Since you asked I'm working on a 3D platformer about monsters who enter your dreams to take your "entity" which is food to them. This causes nightmares. So Monsters Inc but you are the bad guy on purpose. lol
While your other games weren't profitable, Sacred Forest looks like it has potential to at least make 5 figures. I guess you could say your other games were practice before you make a game everyone is really interested in, I wish you best of luck like Jonas Tyroller who also had a similar route before success.
It's interesting to see all those stats! Great vid and can't wait to play Scared Forest! I can see how much you grown as a GameDev 😄 For me, I'm currently working on a small puzzle/maze game called AquaDream, set in the ocean, and it's my first game ever, so I'm still learning! It's been 6 months so far that im working on it 😁
Was wondering where you've been! Glad you're still making games and videos. Sacred Forest looks amazing! I just launched my first game last year and I'm working on my second one now. Hopefully I can get it out by/in October :/ It's an arcade game where you play as a dragon! Unfortunately, productivity has hit a bit of a lull. This video has given me some inspiration though for sure!
Haha yep I'm still chuggin along! Thanks! That's awesome you got to launch your first game! I definitely have times where I'm super productive and times where I'm not lol good luck on your dragon game! 👈👈🤖
Congratulations on your Achievements since your first game!🎉.May I ask a personal question? Judging from the Profits of your games,U must have a main Job to make a living right?What is it and Do U recommend going full time or Part time for game development??
For most of these games I worked a full time software engineering job and developed them for around 3-5 hours a day after work. For the past 1.5ish years I've been working full time on game development (generally 10 hours a day, 7 days a week) by burning through my life savings (about 10 years of savings). Now I'm pretty broke and I'm struggling to get any interviews for jobs because of the work gap (companies usually don't like seeing any gaps between jobs and they don't count self employed game development lol) so I would definitely not recommended doing what I did haha! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh 10 hours a day and 7 days a week.Wow,No Wonder U made a lot of progress with your New Project.😅Take a break sometimes man.Your Mental health matters. Btw,tq for answering my questions.Hope U have a blessed day!
this is something that feels relatable and achievable. But how did you manage to go for so long without generating profit? That is the scary part. I am not a game developer maybe someday I will try doing it. but I would really like to know how you handled the hardships and keep yourself motivated, or if your family is financially rich to support you for all these years then that's a different story.
hey idk if i’m wrong but if the blur on the pixel art character isn’t intentional there’s a setting when importing sprites into godot that does automatic anti-aliasing, forgot what or where it is but yeah
To me it seems there is a huge leap in graphics and visual quality between Okashi Towers and Sacred Forest, great work! How did you learn to make such clean pixel (and 3D!) art in such a short time, or do you have other artists working on the game?
Sacred Forest is looking very cool and I definitely will be trying out your games. I'm soon to release my 2nd game on Steam ( I'm Not Crazy). I have also thought about changing my first game to be free, but somehow I feel betraying those who have paid for it. Have you had any negative feedback? Seems like it has been a great way to get more publicity.
@@luotigames Second game that’s exciting! I have not gotten any negative feedback from making the games free however I did make a community post for a while before I did it to warn people not to buy the game in the meantime. Good luck with your next release! :)
o man i dont think i even proper realised you were the sacred forest guy lol came across this channel and that one at different times independently and didnt click ig
Hey, its cool you made all your past games free But is there a reason you arent cross promoting your sacred forest game inside the free games steam page?
Congrats on all the wishlists for your new project! Did you advertise on your old games (that you switched to free) that your new game was coming out? Maybe I'll try that strategy of releasing a game for free to bring traction to my other games. My current game releases tomorrow on Steam, wish me luck! (Decipher The Deck)
Thanks! The only advertisements I've done for the new project were making the devlogs on the @SacredForestGame channel where each devlog performed slightly worse than the last (which is usually how it goes since people watch the first one or two and then end up not watching the ones later on). It roughly broke down like this: Devlog #0 - got about 1500 wishlists Devlog #1 - got about 1000 wishlists Devlog #2 - got about 400 wishlists Devlog #3 - got about 100 wishlists Good luck on your game release! 👈👈🤖
If you got the boom after making it free, why not start with a free game and then after updating it add a small price tag for new players who download your game? That way you would get some positive reviews while it’s free and then hopefully be showed more in steam.
@@denkkab1366 I’ve worked full time as a game developer for a little over a year and I funded myself by burning through my life savings from working as a software engineer 🤖
Yes they do both. There is an initial fee of $100 to create a store page/sell a game on Steam (You can technically get this back but your game has to sell over $1000 which I've never done hah). Then Steam takes a 30% cut of any sales you make.
Your last project looks sick, I think I'll start a youtube channel and start developing something too.. You inspired me a lot. Actually the fact you made more money while not marketing is mindblowing, and I think I would have a chance to turn my life around by following your path.
Hey @blekoh, your video really helps me as a brand New game dev(if I can even call myself that) to just start out and make stuff. When you talk about a 6month dev time how many hours per day would that be?
@@Daanvinchie most of these I worked on after working a full time job so I would work about 3-5 hours a day on them. Okashi Towers I worked about 10 hours a day 7 days a week but I don’t recommend doing that. Good luck with your games! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh Thanks for your reply! Are there any lessons worth sharing you haven't shared before? I've only just started out and I have limited time each day. Thanks in advance!
Love this. Would like to know when you say took 1.5 years etc is that full time or alongside a job, would be great to know how many hours of work. Thanks
@@mattallenclosedforum9505 most of these were working about 3-6 hours a day after working a full time job. Okashi Towers was about 10 hours a day 7 days a week working on it full time 👈👈🤖
really awesome power move my man ! incase for me I am working on my first commercial game and I am aiming to make my steam page in a bout 9 days! very excited at the same time sacred i will fail :D , do you happen to have any tips or advice ?
@@TheMaJestic14 That’s awesome! Hmm tips well a good gameplay trailer goes a long way, if you can make a demo version then joining steam next fest is great to increase wishlists, once the game releases try to push the game to get 10 reviews as soon as possible since you get a decent bump from a positive rating vs not having any rating. Good luck with your game! :)
@@Blekoh thank you! yess my aim is steam fest and i am hopping to get a nice push! hopefully i will release the game by the end of the year if everything goes well! appreciate your kind words!
I think your games didn't sell well because they were too expensive. Maybe you could release them them on mobile, Facebook etc and get some revenue from advertising
@@nubemuffin It was back when Gamemaker announced they were only going to offer GameMaker Studio as a subscription service and for people who had bought a one time payment license they wouldn’t get certain features unless they switched to the subscription tier. So I switched to Godot because I don’t like paying a subscription for software.
How do you like the idea of doing microtransactions?) The game is free of charge, but the player will have the opportunity to support the developer with a donation
Microtransactions are definitely a strat for making money (which I'm not against anybody adding microtransactions to their game to try to earn some income) but even though I make these videos about money they are really just for me to look back at all the games I've made to try to be a better game developer in the future. So while it would be nice to make money by making games, my number one goal is to make a great game that I'm really proud of and I just personally don't enjoy games that have microtransactions so even if it was successful money wise I don't think I would be satisfied 🤖
Indie Game dev is not about money i supose I have a desire to make few games But As I invested in self education for few month (Godot) It looks like i need about 2 years to gain enough knowledge to make what i want while throwing away my job As electrical engineer And i am a bit too old for that My problem is I dont want to make another copy of what is But to make something original So in order to make it I have to make my own play ground And it looks super hard
Hold up… your games made more the 100 bucks for steam. Doesn’t that mean you *didn‘t* have to pay the 100€ fee? I thought 100 bucks get returned once your game made more than that via sales. Did I get that wrong? Or are all your calculations off by 100 bucks?
@@Blekoh damn... for some reason I thought it was lower... mea culpa ^^D well looking at your sales-history. your chances seem good, that you'll get your 100€ back when you release Sacred Forest. Also: did you make use of steam's "visibility rounds"? tried discounts? have you tried handing out keys to "influencers"? like that Pirate Software dude has about 2 million followers, about 10k-15k folks watching the stream, and views in the multiple hundred thousands range... just saying a 5$ donation placed at the right place and time (you want to be relatively early in the TTS-queue, to make sure he gets to your message)... even if thor doesn't give it a second look, which seems unlikely, you still bought a targeted advert that hits at least 10-15k indie game nerds... combine that with a =>20% discount ... Anyway, good luck with the dev and release of your next title(s). o7
I have for a little over a year but I'm actively trying to find another software job since Sacred Forest is a long term project and I burned through my life savings hah!
I bet the same 14000 people just claimed all your games, but that means those same 14000 people have a huge chance of being interested in your new one. So, that will hopefully boost you up.
@@Blekoh Ah good to know. Maybe something to include in the video as I think you stated how many months you worked on a game, but not how many hours per week. That sets the income from those games more into context as well, as you werent earning really anything with those first few games
Yeah I did but nowadays it doesn't really seem to do much and steam kind of hides their reviews on the store page anyway (since you have to actually click a special section to see curator reviews). It also doesn't count for your review score. Also, a lot of the curators ask for actual steam keys instead of going through the curator system but most of the time they just do this to get your steam keys and then they sell them on 3rd party websites at reduced rates. This also happens with people emailing your support email too. So I don't really bother with it anymore and I pretty much ignore any email asking for keys hah
🌳Sacred Forest🌳: store.steampowered.com/app/2864350/Sacred_Forest/
Do you do any contracted dev work?
@@sweatt4237 I haven't done it in the past usually because I spend all my free time working on my own projects hah
Looks awesome dude! I really like the combination of 2d and 3d
Making all your old games free is quite the move! Congratz with all of the progress you've made in your dev journey and hope Sacred Forest continues to go well for you! 3000 wishlists already is pretty nuts!
Thanks! :)
It’s so good that you’ve been super transparent. Helps people understand what they’re getting into.
Oh man... combining 3D graphics with 2D pixel art actually looks amazing. I can already tell you it will outsell all your other games. Also, cool to watch an actual indie game developer's video about how much he made, instead of all those 100k+ subs youtubers who obviously have an insane free marketing and sales purely from their viewers. I'm not saying it's bad (no way!), I'm just saying it's cool to watch a normal person like us.
Edit: Okay, I watched the whole video now, and I guess I was right about Sacred Forest outselling all your other games 🤣
I think making your past games free is a great move! It'll get you a lot more exposure if nothing else. The feedback you get on them now that more people are playing could be valuable too
Your next project looks SO GOOD, nice idea to make your older stuff free!
I’m currently working on a road crossing sim, I’ve uploaded a few clips from super early dev on my channel
Hah! Thanks dooood! :)
Making some games free to play is a way to market followers to your work and when they see a great looking game that comes out later on they are most likely to pay more the better the games get in the future.
Well done Blekoh! Been following your journey a while back and happy to see results
@@EmeraldWizardStudios Thanks! :)
Man, Sacred Forest is looking sick! Congrats on all your previously released games, the quality jump in all your games as time goes by is pretty awesome to witness. Good luck!
Thanks! :)
Love this look into how your games have done on steam, and love the mindset you have for making them free!
Wanted to ask before doing so, is it alright if I bring some exposure to Sacred Forest on my TH-cam channel?
Thanks! And yeah of course you can make whatever you want about it hah! 👈👈🤖
I was launching all my games on Itch so far, Now I am working on making my Steam and Play Store account. You're video is a perfect guide for me.
Liked and subbed within 30 seconds. Congrats on all the great work! Giving it away free is boss move.
I'm one of those wishlisters! Def excited for sacred forest
I never put it together that you were the same developer from Sacred Forest. I had seen your previous videos on this channel, and some Sacred Forest devlogs. When you mentioned it here I severely shocked lol. Keep up the great work making games
Your process is really inspired me and many other indie dev as well. Hope you will get your goal and never give up to make more and better games (sorry for my bad english)
I really respect you for all that hard work, I'm sure it will pay out in the end!
I want to follow the same path, I hope I can keep going like you did
Awesome thanks! Good luck with your projects! :)
Sacred Forest is gonna be one of those games where people will go "This was made in GODOT?!"
Looks incredible.
I really hope youre next project will be fire 🔥
Sacred Forest looks extremely innovative. Well done. Subbed.
Thanks! :)
This is the first video I've seen of yours, it just popped up in my recommended and I was completely unfamiliar with your work before watching it. But man, Sacred Forest looks so unique, I've already wishlisted it and I'm gonna be watching the devlogs tomorrow when I have some time. Looking forward to seeing it continue development!
Love the mechanics in SF!! Also looks beautiful. Do hope the game challenge scales, and content is there too in the form of progressively harder monsters and quests. Can see myself buying it at some point, which is rare for me to say theses days
It is actually a very impressive portfolio. You are still at the beginning of the path, but it seems to me you are doing everything right. Congrats!
Wow! Sacred Forest looks awesome. I think you are going to do well on that game because it looks soo unique. Keep polishing that gem!
Was it easy to go through hole process of selling games on Steam? (To be honest to me that part sounds like the scariest part of making games)
@@KimTiger777 Thanks! Selling my first game on steam was a little daunting but after doing it once it’s actually pretty easy hah! It’s mostly learning all the settings in steamworks and of course the part that takes the longest is making all the little images that show up in various places on steam. I definitely recommend going for it if you have a game you’re happy with and if you get stuck steam support is extremely helpful. Good luck! :)
congrats brother hopefully your game goes viral
Finally !!!!
someone Without clickbait ❤❤❤
Sacred Forest looks really good! Really looking forward to the day it finally releases.
It seems to me that there are about 14k bots on steam that just claim all free games.
PS. Sacred Forest looks great. It has potential. +1 sub I'll be looking forward for it's development.
the video was super interesting to watch! How and why did you spend so much money on the marketing for your first game? good luck with your upcoming game !!
Well in 2019-ish there was just a lot less stuff on how to market a game (at least on youtube) and it being my first steam game I just sort of sent different types of Ads not really knowing what I was doing. Also, back then Google Ads especially would easily overspend your budget. You could set something like $20 a day and it would choose to spend $100 in a day because it decided its daily budget on Monthly amounts (where the average daily amount would be $20 but it would spend whatever it wanted to early on) whereas now there is more control on limiting daily amounts.
So me being naïve I thought it would stick to a daily budget (because that is what you set in the dashboard) which I believe I set to $50 a day hoping to turn it off at around 4 days which I started it at the game release time but it definitely did not stick to that and because the analytics were delayed it spent $700 before I could turn it off.
@@Blekoh Damn that sucks. thanks for the answer tho
Oh cool didn't realize you are the sacred forest dev! Excited
i respect how honest you are and zero bs just stats, im subscribed
but what happened during the time skip between 2020-2023
Hah thanks! During that time I worked on a number of game projects that didn't work out, and then just some projects for fun like making a gameboy game and a commodore 64 game. The projects that didn't work out are on this channel as Ex Versa and the VR Devlogs. There is a long reason for why I stopped Ex Versa, but for the VR one I just kept feeling sick when putting on and taking off the headset every time I needed to test the game which was really often. Then my headset broke and I didn't have the money to replace it lol
sacred forest looks insanely good man i seriously hope you get more subscribers because you make cool looking games
awesome journey so far. subbed to see how you future as a game dev unfolds
Woah those claims definitely jumped going free! Great video 🍻
Numba go up! 🤖
I've been learning game development for a while now and get stuck and demotivated often, thinking if this is something ill ever be able to do or not. This video was weirdly motivating to me. The progress that you have made from your first game to the current one you're working on is HUGE. the current project absolutely blew my mind away. it is so fucking polished dude. And you started from the bottom too. you have inspired me in some ways. i can create my own beardy mcstrong arm. It is an achievable target, maybe in a month, maybe in a year. and game-by-game, month-by-month, year-by-year, i will be able to improve. even if it takes a lot of times. Eventually I will be working on my own Sacred Forest. Congrats Blekoh. All the best for Sacred Forts
Also just a question - how did you get to 3300 wishlists? That seems like a big number, more than what I would expect from a game released by someone of the size of your YT channels / your previous game sales. Was it because of free sales after free did the games previous? Thanks
Awesome! It has definitely been a journey hah! For the wishlists they all came from making the Sacred Forest youtube channel. I knew launching devlog videos on this channel (Blekoh) wouldn't perform well so I wanted to create a dedicated channel just for following the progress of the game. I made the steam page before I launched the first video so that I could point anyone interested to wishlist the game for every devlog and I tried to make all of the branding for it look at least somewhat polished (which I need to update now that I'm further along haha) since generally the first devlog is usually the most popular and then they kind of fizzle down in views so it was important to me to make the most out of everything right from the beginning. Hope that helps and good luck! :)
@@Blekoh damn yeah i just checked you almost got 100k views on your first video thats fucking huge. i have wishlisetd the game as wel all the best, this is your big break i feel it brother
Ayyyy thanks! Still have a long way to go hah! 🤖
Oh, man, I love that I found this channel! I've been following Sacred Forest for a while, and it's easily one of my favorite devlogs here on TH-cam. I love your vibe with those videos, and this was a nice, laid back and chill update. It really paints a picture of how brutal the market can be, but also how much you can learn when developing these smaller releases. I can't wait to try out Sacred Forest.
As for projects, I'm making a medium-sized project right now in Unity. At it's core. I want it to have a character-action feel, but with immersive sim elements. I'm currently prototyping systems, abstracting logic where I can so I can try to have more mingling of systems. I'm also trying to build a library of animations to accommodate custom characters, but when I tried extending my rig in Blender with some extra bones for hair and clothing I got some weird bugs and now my rig won't re-generate, so that's been put on the back-burner while I remake my rig with Rigify. It's been an interesting time, haha.
Thanks dewd! And that's awesome! Good luck with your Unity project! 👈👈🤖
Great Video man, thank you for sharing your numbers. I wish you best of luck and success with Sacred Forest and all your future games. Keep on coding :)
Great video man!
Good for you man. Keep going!
Sacred forest looks bad ass. Keep going and improving!
This is inspiring. Even if you didn't make a living wage, you still published your games. I'm coming from the art side, learning development now. I'm taking Godot classes and an animation class. Hoping to make some beautiful zen style games like Flower and Feather, but more on the 2D side kind of like Gris, because at the end of the day I love to draw. Thank you for sharing your experiences and games.
Sacred forest looks gorgeous. Keep up the good work !
Great little video. I’m following Sacred Forest, but haven’t wishlisted. Doing that today!
Thanks! :)
I like the style of Sacred Forest. Would be cool listening about 2D in 3D environment or 3D to 2D conversion.
Sacred forest actually looks gas dude, keep it up!
Thanks! :)
OMG your new game looks so good! I love the LOTR vibes and the bow shooting part looks sick!
Good luck on Sacred Forest, looks cool 👍
Thanks! :)
Grappling hooks make every game 100% better
Really good video!
I wish you best luck on your future journey!
Thanks! 👈👈🤖
Hello I dont know why but seeing your progress has motivated me so much, I am currently working on making one game each month in Godot and actually make videos on my progress. and one day hope to inspire people like how you have inspired me. thanks for the video
Awesome good luck with your games! :)
good luck buddy
ngl sacred forest looks insane its definetely gonna do well
the reality is much harsher, but it is the truth
Sacred Forest looking good. Hope it will go better than previous games. Also, KIRO is looking pretty nice. Maybe I expected better numbers overall, especially for KIRO.
I'm preparing to publish my first game and I have no expectations since I didn't market it huh 😅
@@RootGames Good luck with your game!
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wish you luck, this project will pay you the 4 years of hard work
@@bhuvneetsaggu4011 thanks! :)
I am not a 2D nor a pixel art fan but I liked the hedgehogs in that last one. I like seeing what others are working on and how it turned out for them. Good learning tools and reality checks. The one you are working on now looks cool. I think the 2D sprite in a 3D world looks really cool. Wish listed that one.
Since you asked I'm working on a 3D platformer about monsters who enter your dreams to take your "entity" which is food to them. This causes nightmares. So Monsters Inc but you are the bad guy on purpose. lol
@@milantiquestudios7460 Thanks! And nice that’s awesome good luck with your monster game!
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U lost Monay and time but gained experience that's priceless ceep it up
thanks for making ur games free. i will give one or 2 a try for sure :)
While your other games weren't profitable, Sacred Forest looks like it has potential to at least make 5 figures. I guess you could say your other games were practice before you make a game everyone is really interested in, I wish you best of luck like Jonas Tyroller who also had a similar route before success.
Thanks! :)
@@Blekohman steam be raking too much in from everyone's own games 😢 that's rough
It's interesting to see all those stats! Great vid and can't wait to play Scared Forest! I can see how much you grown as a GameDev 😄 For me, I'm currently working on a small puzzle/maze game called AquaDream, set in the ocean, and it's my first game ever, so I'm still learning! It's been 6 months so far that im working on it 😁
@@GossiamGames That’s awesome! Good luck with AquaDream! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh Thank you so much ! You've been a huge inspiration for me, you and so many great youtubers ! 🤗
Was wondering where you've been! Glad you're still making games and videos. Sacred Forest looks amazing! I just launched my first game last year and I'm working on my second one now. Hopefully I can get it out by/in October :/ It's an arcade game where you play as a dragon! Unfortunately, productivity has hit a bit of a lull. This video has given me some inspiration though for sure!
Haha yep I'm still chuggin along! Thanks! That's awesome you got to launch your first game! I definitely have times where I'm super productive and times where I'm not lol good luck on your dragon game! 👈👈🤖
Congratulations on your Achievements since your first game!🎉.May I ask a personal question? Judging from the Profits of your games,U must have a main Job to make a living right?What is it and Do U recommend going full time or Part time for game development??
For most of these games I worked a full time software engineering job and developed them for around 3-5 hours a day after work. For the past 1.5ish years I've been working full time on game development (generally 10 hours a day, 7 days a week) by burning through my life savings (about 10 years of savings).
Now I'm pretty broke and I'm struggling to get any interviews for jobs because of the work gap (companies usually don't like seeing any gaps between jobs and they don't count self employed game development lol) so I would definitely not recommended doing what I did haha!
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@@Blekoh 10 hours a day and 7 days a week.Wow,No Wonder U made a lot of progress with your New Project.😅Take a break sometimes man.Your Mental health matters.
Btw,tq for answering my questions.Hope U have a blessed day!
Sacred forest looks amaazing!
Thanks! :)
Making your games free is actually a good marketing strategy
this is something that feels relatable and achievable.
But how did you manage to go for so long without generating profit? That is the scary part.
I am not a game developer maybe someday I will try doing it.
but I would really like to know how you handled the hardships and keep yourself motivated, or if your family is financially rich to support you for all these years then that's a different story.
sacred forest looks sooo sick
hey idk if i’m wrong but if the blur on the pixel art character isn’t intentional there’s a setting when importing sprites into godot that does automatic anti-aliasing, forgot what or where it is but yeah
To me it seems there is a huge leap in graphics and visual quality between Okashi Towers and Sacred Forest, great work! How did you learn to make such clean pixel (and 3D!) art in such a short time, or do you have other artists working on the game?
@@denkkab1366 Thanks! Sacred Forest is just a solo project for me and it just took a lot of practice
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@@Blekoh that's super impressive, thanks 👌🏻
Sacred Forest is looking very cool and I definitely will be trying out your games. I'm soon to release my 2nd game on Steam ( I'm Not Crazy). I have also thought about changing my first game to be free, but somehow I feel betraying those who have paid for it. Have you had any negative feedback? Seems like it has been a great way to get more publicity.
@@luotigames Second game that’s exciting! I have not gotten any negative feedback from making the games free however I did make a community post for a while before I did it to warn people not to buy the game in the meantime. Good luck with your next release! :)
sacred forest looks amazing
Sacred Forest looks like its going to be your breakthorugh game. Congrats!!
Thanks! :)
damn your game looks sick! Nice vid
@@alsethe2nd656 thanks! :)
o man i dont think i even proper realised you were the sacred forest guy lol
came across this channel and that one at different times independently and didnt click ig
Hey, its cool you made all your past games free
But is there a reason you arent cross promoting your sacred forest game inside the free games steam page?
Sacred Forest looks dope af
Sacred Forest somehow reminds me of Attack on Titan :D
Congrats on all the wishlists for your new project! Did you advertise on your old games (that you switched to free) that your new game was coming out?
Maybe I'll try that strategy of releasing a game for free to bring traction to my other games. My current game releases tomorrow on Steam, wish me luck! (Decipher The Deck)
Thanks! The only advertisements I've done for the new project were making the devlogs on the @SacredForestGame channel where each devlog performed slightly worse than the last (which is usually how it goes since people watch the first one or two and then end up not watching the ones later on). It roughly broke down like this:
Devlog #0 - got about 1500 wishlists
Devlog #1 - got about 1000 wishlists
Devlog #2 - got about 400 wishlists
Devlog #3 - got about 100 wishlists
Good luck on your game release! 👈👈🤖
If you got the boom after making it free, why not start with a free game and then after updating it add a small price tag for new players who download your game? That way you would get some positive reviews while it’s free and then hopefully be showed more in steam.
Have you been working as a full-time game developer since your first game? If I may ask, how do you fund yourself working on the games?
@@denkkab1366 I’ve worked full time as a game developer for a little over a year and I funded myself by burning through my life savings from working as a software engineer 🤖
@@Blekoh awesome to hear, because that's exactly my story right now :) gives me some hope that I can get to the same point as you!
Am I not understanding? You're taking 2 steam fees out of your profits?
They take a cut of sales AND have a flat $100 fee? I'm confused.
Yes they do both. There is an initial fee of $100 to create a store page/sell a game on Steam (You can technically get this back but your game has to sell over $1000 which I've never done hah). Then Steam takes a 30% cut of any sales you make.
Your last project looks sick, I think I'll start a youtube channel and start developing something too.. You inspired me a lot. Actually the fact you made more money while not marketing is mindblowing, and I think I would have a chance to turn my life around by following your path.
Hey @blekoh, your video really helps me as a brand New game dev(if I can even call myself that) to just start out and make stuff. When you talk about a 6month dev time how many hours per day would that be?
@@Daanvinchie most of these I worked on after working a full time job so I would work about 3-5 hours a day on them. Okashi Towers I worked about 10 hours a day 7 days a week but I don’t recommend doing that. Good luck with your games! 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh Thanks for your reply! Are there any lessons worth sharing you haven't shared before? I've only just started out and I have limited time each day. Thanks in advance!
Love this. Would like to know when you say took 1.5 years etc is that full time or alongside a job, would be great to know how many hours of work. Thanks
@@mattallenclosedforum9505 most of these were working about 3-6 hours a day after working a full time job. Okashi Towers was about 10 hours a day 7 days a week working on it full time 👈👈🤖
@@Blekoh amazing thanks. Keep up the great work.
very cool! So many games
Thanks! :)
really awesome power move my man !
incase for me I am working on my first commercial game and I am aiming to make my steam page in a bout 9 days! very excited at the same time sacred i will fail :D , do you happen to have any tips or advice ?
@@TheMaJestic14 That’s awesome! Hmm tips well a good gameplay trailer goes a long way, if you can make a demo version then joining steam next fest is great to increase wishlists, once the game releases try to push the game to get 10 reviews as soon as possible since you get a decent bump from a positive rating vs not having any rating. Good luck with your game! :)
@@Blekoh thank you! yess my aim is steam fest and i am hopping to get a nice push! hopefully i will release the game by the end of the year if everything goes well!
appreciate your kind words!
I think your games didn't sell well because they were too expensive. Maybe you could release them them on mobile, Facebook etc and get some revenue from advertising
“Too expensive” lol
Honestly that's not the reason
Why did you move from GameMaker to Godot while still making a 2d game?
@@nubemuffin It was back when Gamemaker announced they were only going to offer GameMaker Studio as a subscription service and for people who had bought a one time payment license they wouldn’t get certain features unless they switched to the subscription tier. So I switched to Godot because I don’t like paying a subscription for software.
I would love to have such friends.😂
How do you like the idea of doing microtransactions?) The game is free of charge, but the player will have the opportunity to support the developer with a donation
Microtransactions are definitely a strat for making money (which I'm not against anybody adding microtransactions to their game to try to earn some income) but even though I make these videos about money they are really just for me to look back at all the games I've made to try to be a better game developer in the future. So while it would be nice to make money by making games, my number one goal is to make a great game that I'm really proud of and I just personally don't enjoy games that have microtransactions so even if it was successful money wise I don't think I would be satisfied 🤖
Indie Game dev is not about money i supose
I have a desire to make few games
But
As I invested in self education for few month
(Godot)
It looks like i need about 2 years to gain enough knowledge to make what i want while throwing away my job
As electrical engineer
And i am a bit too old for that
My problem is
I dont want to make another copy of what is
But to make something original
So in order to make it
I have to make my own play ground
And it looks super hard
Now add some pay to win elements to make up for free game.
Support
Hold up… your games made more the 100 bucks for steam. Doesn’t that mean you *didn‘t* have to pay the 100€ fee?
I thought 100 bucks get returned once your game made more than that via sales.
Did I get that wrong? Or are all your calculations off by 100 bucks?
@@ClashClash89 I’ve never recouped the steam fee, according to the steam documentation you can recoup it if you get $1,000 in sales
@@Blekoh damn... for some reason I thought it was lower... mea culpa ^^D
well looking at your sales-history. your chances seem good, that you'll get your 100€ back when you release Sacred Forest.
Also: did you make use of steam's "visibility rounds"? tried discounts? have you tried handing out keys to "influencers"?
like that Pirate Software dude has about 2 million followers, about 10k-15k folks watching the stream, and views in the multiple hundred thousands range...
just saying a 5$ donation placed at the right place and time (you want to be relatively early in the TTS-queue, to make sure he gets to your message)... even if thor doesn't give it a second look, which seems unlikely, you still bought a targeted advert that hits at least 10-15k indie game nerds...
combine that with a =>20% discount ...
Anyway, good luck with the dev and release of your next title(s).
o7
Do you work as a fulltime game dev?
I have for a little over a year but I'm actively trying to find another software job since Sacred Forest is a long term project and I burned through my life savings hah!
I bet the same 14000 people just claimed all your games, but that means those same 14000 people have a huge chance of being interested in your new one.
So, that will hopefully boost you up.
Gl dude
Are you working full time on those games?
@@eliashrebik6786 most of them I just worked 3-5 hours after work. The past year and a half has been full time 🤖
@@Blekoh Ah good to know. Maybe something to include in the video as I think you stated how many months you worked on a game, but not how many hours per week.
That sets the income from those games more into context as well, as you werent earning really anything with those first few games
Did you even use Curator Connect?
Yeah I did but nowadays it doesn't really seem to do much and steam kind of hides their reviews on the store page anyway (since you have to actually click a special section to see curator reviews). It also doesn't count for your review score.
Also, a lot of the curators ask for actual steam keys instead of going through the curator system but most of the time they just do this to get your steam keys and then they sell them on 3rd party websites at reduced rates. This also happens with people emailing your support email too.
So I don't really bother with it anymore and I pretty much ignore any email asking for keys hah
You're the sacred forest guy???? Yoooo
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You can always make a store in your game or sell dlc. Its not over for your games 😢
lol should calculate into $ per per hour, er fractions of a penny? rough but real. can confirm
Brazil like.