HN Explorer

Ask HN: How to further validate my indie game project?

5 points by throwaway3699 ↗ HN
Hi Hacker News,

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

Recently I've been working on an indie game project. After some upfront work of about 2-3 months, I published a Steam page and started to build a community.

Without revealing too much, I was able to build a Discord community of over 100 people in just a few days. However after a few initial successes on Reddit and Imgur, my traction has fallen off a cliff.

I'm worried that my game isn't as enticing as I thought, but this early success plus some recent playtesting makes me think there may still be potential here.

How can I further validate my game?

I know the indie market is tough, so I want to be sure before investing further.

6 comments

[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] thread
fraud
I don’t really have a lot of experience with game development or indie development in general, but I think that you might be approaching this wrong. I think that you’re basing the future success of your game on stats and measures that are deceiving. You will really only know how successful or well liked your game is when you have released the game. I like music so the best example I can think of in regards to this is Nirvana’s album Nevermind. The album barely sold for the first week or so it was on the market. However, MTV decided to play a music video of Smells like teen spirit one night and the rest is history. Nevermind is now triple (i think) platinum. If you are able to continue the project, do so. However, if the development is a chore or you can’t afford to keep developing it, don’t. Your potential success will be a weird combination of luck and merit, and your potential failure will be something you can learn from. TLDR; complete it if you can and have the time, and don’t worry about potential failure or success.
throwaway3699
For context: It's a hobby project, with an partially educational slant. So if it flops commercially, I'm hoping to make sure schools and students will enjoy it for free.

Either way, I guess I'm trying to work out what people think of my early builds. So far, people have enjoyed the narrow slice of the game I've presented. I'm kind of going with a "ship it and iterate philosophy" with playesters, without having to sell it.

fraud
I would continue with what you’re doing but that’s just my opinion. Try not to worry too much about traction as long as the people who are playing enjoy it and play it consistently.
d--b
Why the secrecy? You’ve published a steam page and built a discord community about it. Why not ask people here what they think about it?
throwaway3699
I will do at some point. But I don't like to spam HN without something for the community here to actually try.
dusted
Without being able to see the game/discord/stuffs you're talking about, it's impossible to tell, and using a throwaway further detracts from (my) willingness to help.. Be honest about what you're doing, you don't have to be proud per se, but at least stand by it :)