failing/flailing at marketing + intrinsic/extrinsic (de)motivation + full release date temporarily limbo

Caveat I, I'm going to make an effort not to let this post--which probably not nearly enough people will read in any case--be overly negative and/or wallow in the absolute despair I'm very much feeling. I will really try.

Caveat II, if you are actually following this game's development, it's impossible to overstate how much I treasure you for that. But I also am acutely aware that the count of such people, if not zero, is in the low single digits. I am acutely aware that I am, at least to a degree, "screaming into the void" here with this discussion of my marketing flailings and failings. 

This is an in depth analysis of my mostly unsuccessful efforts to market this game over the course of its existence with a special focus on what I've been up to for the last three months and why it hasn't been actual development work to actually finish the game. At least part of the reason for writing this is an effort to work through and understand my own thoughts and where and why I've failed and how I can try to do better. 

When I released my last devlog three months ago (HOW CAN THREE MONTHS POSSIBLY HAVE PASSED WHEN I'VE ACCOMPLISHED SO LITTLE?) I genuinely believed that at least half of the time spent working on this game between then and Halloween would actual development, actually finishing the game, the implementation of the final game sequence leading up to the 'good ending' and the final round of polish. I was monumentally wrong. I have worked on this virtually not at all and here are the reasons why (or if you're feeling uncharitable, the excuses):

A game without an audience has (ALMOST) no point to its existence. It is no secret, and is probably shamefully obvious to those in the know, that I have struggled mightily to find any kind of an audience for this game. So almost all of the time I've been able to commit to this project in the last three months has been in an effort to get anyone at all to notice it, talk about it, help me test it, spread the word about it, wishlist it on steam, or rather importantly, actually purchase it. This has been an unqualified failure although not an absolute one:

Before I spent hundreds and eventually, by my rough estimate, at least a thousand hours developing this game, I should probably have asked myself more probingly if there was a market of people interested in buying it. It's not that I never considered this at all--the Corpse Party franchise, Ib, Mad Father, The Witch's House, Fear and Hunger, these are games that to me appear similar to my own and they move some amount of units--but I did operate on the perhaps naïve ASSUMPTION that the answer was yes. This project was deeply important to me on a personal level as an opportunity to expand upon and finish a story I started ages ago and demonstrate a mastery of the RPG Maker engine and game development in general that had improved by massive leaps and bounds since developing the original game as a fresh-faced 19 year old kid. I think I greatly underestimated the influence this had on my poorly grounded assumption that there existed an audience that would want to purchase this game.

But while I am aware, at least intellectually, that this is uncomfortably close to the "Sunk Cost" logical fallacy, I feel like with the massive amount of effort I've put into developing this game, not to mention the deliberate decision to pay $100 USD to get it on steam and in front of an actual audience of potential customers--I understand some people actually sell games here on this website, itch.io, but I personally have moved almost zero copies of anything either tabletop or digital on this platform, and if you have any idea why and how to change that PLEASE PLEASE tell me)--I cannot just give up at this point. I have invested so much time and also some actual money in this project. It is 98% complete, not just a massive improvement on its ancient predecessor but a massive improvement on the shape that it itself was in two years ago. Without getting too far into the weeds of my dismal personal circumstances, it is too late to shift gears to another project, or to iterate prototypes until I can hit on something with broader appeal. I have to at least TRY to get this game noticed, even if it means the frankly terrifying step of reaching out to professional games journalists who might very well agree with the odd redditor or twitter commentator that this is a game without a market for it that should never have been a commercial product and candidate for public release, should never have been anything but (yet another) personal, hobbyist endeavor.

Repeating it because it bears repeating: I HAVE TO AT LEAST TRY. And the last thing I need to do is care at all, in the slightest, in any way, about anyone who says that the game looks like amateur slop that no one will have any interest in, not even because they are wrong, but because I have poured all of my heart and soul into this game for three damn years and I *NEED* THAT TO FINALLY PAY OFF. 

In any case, for the past three months I have been attempting to market this game as aggressively as I can manage on social media, without success. And realizing far too slowly that my attempts to market this game all year have been producing essentially no meaningful progress. And then considering if what I really need is a publisher. And then trying to make a list of publishers that might possibly have any interest in investing in bringing a niche RPG Maker horror game to market. And then struggling to make an appealing pitch deck for the game. And then questioning whether this is a remotely appropriate time in the game's development cycle to seek a publisher, and deciding it's too late in the game's life cycle for that to be a workable idea. And then settling on the conclusion that to drive traffic and attention to this game I needed to find someone in the game press willing to cover it. And then flailing/failing some more in an effort to compile a list of press outlets that had a non-zero chance of covering the game if I approached them with an exclusive (previews, interviews, etcetera), confronted with the harsh reality of having absolutely no marketing budget at this point (this process is still ongoing). I also took the time to create a press kit for a game that I must admit is not made by a professional developer or studio in the best light possible for any game journalists who might be willing to do me a huge favor and cover it. 

If I were physically or mentally well, I might have been able to balance this with actual development time improving and completing the game, but unfortunately I am both physically disabled (Crohn's Disease) and mentally ill (Bipolar Disorder Type 2, Anxiety/Panic Disorder, ADHD, who really knows what else).

All of this has been incredibly draining and demotivating. Effectively it's telling a few thousand strangers a few hundred times, strangers who don't know, don't care, and didn't ask, that this game exists and can be purchased for real money if they want, something that's really difficult for me. Which brings me on to the next topic of this long form discussion, motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. The initial intrinsic motivation to make this game was great, almost an obsession (as creativity in its purest form often is, at least for me) and lasted from the project's inception during SpooktoberFest 2021 to 7/14/2022, when I completed the game's first ending and was preparing for a commercial release almost exactly when my father fell ill with the cancer that would kill him a few months later (as I talked about a little bit here). Obviously, an immense personal tragedy followed by another one the following year wasn't great for my productivity, but the absolute deafening silence--the lack of a community, audience, fans, or testers cohering around the game in spite of my scattershot efforts to bellow its existence into the void wherever and whenever I could make myself do so--also ate through my motivation like acid.

The best thing to ever happen to this game was the coverage of a FULL playthrough of its alpha build by small Twitch variety streamer Marzeliax. This didn't generate attention or drive sales the way I wanted or needed to it, but it was still a GREAT experience, by far the most feedback and information I'd ever gotten from a tester, for one, but also an incredible source of extrinsic motivation seeing an individual I liked and respected enjoy the game and eventually get quite invested in the experience of its story. It was awesome, and I derived significant motivation from it to power through to the release of the much more complete (but still incomplete) version currently available here and on Steam. When I achieve some kind of flow state, this can all be very productive: coverage of the game motivates me to work on the game, and then that intrinsic motivation of having improved the game motivates me to promote it more. But my combo keeps breaking before it can really get started.

Since then, I have encountered only discouragement and silence. With no source of extrinsic motivation--discussion of the game, feedback on the game, that kind of thing--it's extremely difficult to get into the editor and do the hard but finite work of finishing the actual development. It seems depressingly pointless. No matter how good the endings are, or how much the new map system and sanity effects add to the experience, no matter how much improvement from earlier iterations I can feel every time I test play the game, more I can polish the rest of the game, it all feels like wasted effort if no matter what I do this just isn't a game any appreciable number of people want to play. I don't know how to break free of this doom spiral on my own, only that I must. 

TL;DR

It is for all of the reasons detailed above I am no longer planning on transitioning the game to a full 1.0 release on Halloween. I am not certain how long I am pushing back the full release. I'm not being even slightly melodramatic when I say I don't want to push the release back as far as say March of next year to take advantage of maybe being included in the February 2025 Steam Next Fest or any other festivals or events I can find before then because I am not at all confident I'm going to live that long. But I need to give myself a chance to get emails in inboxes of games reviewers, content creators, streamers, and Steam Curators (assuming my health and sanity permit, that is a mission for this very week) and those outlets the time to actually release some coverage on the game, and that means that the game release needs to be pushed back from Halloween. Maybe some time in November, I don't know yet when the new Full Release date will be yet, but when I do know, you'll be the next to know.

I will end with a call to action.

PLEASE PURCHASE THE GAME HERE or PLEASE PURCHASE THE GAME ON STEAM, or if you can't, PLEASE WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM (it is free, and I am well below the number of wishlists I need for Steam to actually serve the game to prospective customers), and also PLEASE DISCUSS THE GAME WHEREVER YOU DISCUSS GAMES AND HELP ME SPREAD THE WORD. It's hard to exaggerate either how much work I've put into this or how disappointed I am to see it continue to fail to find an audience despite my scattershot efforts. I am in desperate need of help, and every bit of attention no matter how small is something I would appreciate IMMENSELY. Every single wishlist helps.

As always, thank you to anyone who read any of this or has any interest in this game. I will attempt to continue to strive no matter how  futile it feels.