Lessons from Publishing Our First Steam Game

I’m releasing a project on Steam after 2 months of development.

This year, I’m starting a series of projects under the umbrella name Reima Project, which aims to publish 1 game every 2 months. The goal is to quickly build our team’s capabilities, and also quickly learn how to publish premium games well.

This month we’ve completed and published our first game, Solar Serpent Squadron (SSS). You can check it on Steam here.

Solar Serpent Squadron on Steam

Within this post, I’ll share what I learned from developing SSS and some results.

Concept

SSS is the first game for Reima Project. Before the idea is formed, I define the constraint of SSS like this :

• Make a game that’s small enough to be completed in 1 month,
• Not requiring that much amount of art, since I am not an artist, but put heavy emphasis on the “juice” (effects)
• Have some depth and replayability.

Based on that constraint, we find some game in the market that fits into the category. On of such is SNKRX, the game that I enjoyed a lot due to its art simplicity but still very enjoyable to play and watch.

SNKRX, the reference for our Art & VFX Style. Go play it!

Therefore our next game would be mimicking SNKRX’s look and feel (only using basic shapes and simple-shaped effects). I also enjoyed playing Vampire-Survivors game a lot, so I thought I’ll give it a try to make VS-like game here.

So the concept of SSS are :

• Recreate the feel of SNKRX’s art and polish
• Use a survivor game formula
• Just ship the game in 1 month, really

We decided on that concept because in the end I want to game to be finished quickly so that I can learn more about how to publish game in Steam (this is our first time).

(Note that I don’t do any market research at all. Don’t go blind like me! You should always do market research for your commercial game)

How the development went on

I quickly jump into design and implementation, and during the development, I found some challenges and issues.

First, the project’s scope was actually too big for 1 month project. The shooter mechanic was pretty simple, but the “survivor” system (upgrade exp, handling snake spawing, abilities, etc.) was much more time consuming than I thought. Mixing and matching abilities was more time consuming than I thought, so I spent a lot of time making it work.

Next, I was also still figuring out how to do a SNKRX art style, like the shadow, colors, etc. It looked simple, but the layer of polishing is enormous. This time I realized that polishing the game into a good level requires a lot more time. I also had difficulty in learning some tools that helps me achieve the look and feel that I want (VFX tool, shaders, etc.). Finding SFX that fits with each of the actions is also time-consuming.

One of the biggest obstacle that I found is that I am not used to do fast prototyping. During my previous project I was used to build a mobile game which usually expected to run for years, but that knowledge is actually dragging me down for 1-month project. So in this project, I also had to “unlearn” what I knew and acquiring some new mindset and skill to prototype fast. I really need to get used to code “dirty” 😁

Making the game looks like this is not that simple, apparently.

Core Loop Redesign

All the above are issues that slows the development. But the most time-consuming problem is in the design:

I had a major core loop redesign during the development.

Initially I want the snake bodies to have HP and destroyed, but when I implement it it feels much harder to design because I don’t have any game design reference that I can copy / get inspired on.

But, I also don’t have time anymore to prototype new ideas and test it (It’s already entering the 2nd month!). And because of this design challenge, I felt stuck and starting to think that the game design is “failed”. I really wanted to abandon this project and move on.

But I knew it will cost me a lot of time if I started over, so I decided to revamp the growth mechanic and super-simplify it. The result are that the snake growth will be using auto-chess formula (merge two same units to level up).

This makes the design scaling easier, but consequently I need to change and re-code a lot of aspect and this takes a lot of time (again).

The takeaways from this is that I have to settle on core game design pretty early in the development. Either by figuring out ~90% of the design early and not tweaking it, or by quickly prototype it so that it can be locked ASAP.

Wrapping it Up

After I completed the re-design, I am still not 100% happy with how it turned out. But I knew the deadline is coming soon, so it’s time to wrap things up.

I started to implement what’s necessary to make the game complete, and boy I didn’t realize it was quite a lot! There are menus like Title Screen, Pause Screen, Game Over and Ending screens that I totally forgot. There’s also some VFX & Music that I haven’t done yet, and the text in UIs are still placeholders.

A very quick-made title screen, without much thinking.

Submitting and Publishing to Steam

Afterwards, I started to prepare for the Steam store assets, and apparently alongside the trailer and screenshots, there are a lot of forms and graphics that needs to be filled. Since this is also my first time creating Steam developer account. I needed to go through with the registration and verification process, which takes couple of back and forth to complete. Looking at the Steamworks dashboard, I looks quite similar to Google Play / App Store one, but there are far more forms and texts needs to be filled in.

Still not sure why they call it “Capsules” for the Graphic Assets.

The one that astonished me the most is that in Steam, you cannot immediately release your project after completing everything.

There are some rules that you need to wait for weeks after you creating your first app and completed review before you can publish your game. This is interesting because it means that Steam wants you to build up interest for your game first before publishing it.

Publishing and Sales

As I’ve written above, I didn’t do any marketing at all with this game (aside from telling some friends). So when the game launch, it only have less than 100 wishlist, and there’s not much sales to be expected. I feel like I should market the game first, but the goal of this game is really just get it out there and understand the process of launching the game. Nevertheless, here are the sales result :

Takeaways

So, SSS is finally out. Here are some takeaways that I learned:

• Be very strict and rigorous in determining the game’s scope. Polishing and wrapping up the game can take more than half your total development time.
• Because the project’s deadline is short, I need to build capability to execute fast, and put focus on what matters most.
• Doing marketing for your game should be included and calculated in your time scope.
• Do your market research first! Make sure you get the rough idea how much potential revenue you’ll earn before you start building the game.
• Because Steam makes you wait for 30 days before you can release, Start setting up the Steam page early.
• Don’t get too distracted by shiny ideas.
• If you’ve already far in your development and you feel you want to rework on things, consider very seriously to “just wrap it” before make big decision to revert back your work.

See you in the next project’s sharing!