JamalDolleyGames

Super Ninja Ball Dash Steam Greenlight Post-mortem

This will be a multifaceted blog on the status of Super Ninja Ball Dash on Steam Greenlight, in addition to some conclusions that I have made thus far.

I started my Steam Greenlight campaign on 27th April and in the first 2 days, I was able to get mostly positive feedback on the game with the only exception being the following:

- Game being a mobile port

- Someone disliked the GUI

- Someone complained that the clouds in the background are static

Other than those comments above, it’s been all positive.

The first 2 days I got a 94/295 YES/NO vote ratio and I was 11% to the top 100 and the top 100 is basically the sweet spot where you are almost guaranteed to be Greenlit. These stats was quite disappointing however, I knew that most people will probably dislike my game, as you can’t please everyone right? Day 5 my YES/NO vote ratio was 108/394 and I was still stuck at 11% to the top 100, at this point my daily page visits went down to a crawl.

I was a late and missed the first 2-3 day traffic spike, however I was able to put together a demo of the game, my last attempt to positively impact my YES/NO vote ratio. I put the game on both Itch.io and Gamejolt. I figured if people can play the game then, they might be convinced of how fun Super Ninja Ball Dash is and hopefully vote YES instead of NO. Based on my overall stats the demos didn’t have any effect on my campaign, most probably due to me missing the first 2-3 day traffic spike. This also helped me realize a painful truth, which I will elaborate on more below,

You can try the demo of Super Ninja Ball Dash on PC, MAC and Linux using either one of these links. I would love some feedback smile emoticon

Jamaldolleygames.itch.io

Gamejolt.com

Today I checked my stats again, that’s after 16 days of being on Greenlight and my votes did not change much, I’m at 115/433 YES/NO votes and I climbed to 17% of the way to the top 100. This I'm assuming is due to games ranked higher than mine being Greenlit recently, this is only speculation though.

To put it bluntly those stats for lack of a better word suck! Some game got 600+ YES votes in the first day of Greenlight and i’m still stuck below 200. It’s not all doom and gloom though and I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As Super Ninja Ball Dash is a completely overhauled version of the mobile version Ninja Ball Dash, I thought that the 2 months + worth of graphical upgrades, gameplay enhancements and overall polish would be enough to get me through Steam Greenlight, this was not the case.

I know it’s possible to get your game Greenlit even if the game is not in the top 100, as some devs who got Greenlit at 64% of the way to the top 100. My first Greenlight campaign was an amazing learning experience even though I ultimately feel that it has been a failure. After thinking about how I will proceed with my Greenlight campaign, I realized that I have 2 options.

Option1:

Ride it out with my current Greenlight campaign and wait, with the hope of eventually getting Greenlight by the Steam Overlords, how long this will take if ever it will happen is impossible to determine.

Option 2:

Restart my Greenlight campaign and throw away all my current progress. This would ultimately end with the same result, if I do not make some significant changes to Super Ninja Ball Dash.

I now know that the graphics of my game is pleasing, people like the music and some people liked the gameplay. I do believe that the biggest thing contributing to my negative YES/NO vote ratio was the overall gameplay and the presentation of the gameplay in the trailers and gameplay videos.

I have decided to go with option 2, ironically I decided that only today. The ironic thing is the that today I have finally completed all of the bug fixing and polish, which means that Super Ninja Ball Dash is official done with development and ready for launch.

I have decided to make significant gameplay improvements, in order to make the gameplay look faster and more varied, this will ultimately require a lot more work however, I feel that it’s better than just sitting and waiting for something that might not even happen.

This will be my last attempt to make something of Super Ninja Ball Dash and I’m pretty excited about it! Please stay tuned for future blogs!

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