Yeah sure, I also want to do a blog post about it in the future, but I thought it would be nice to link to playable build for this submission directly.
It uses our own HTML5 engine. Rendering is based on a simple canvas tag and 2d context draw calls. The code is written in CoffeeScript. The server runs on node. I just used SublimeText as text editor. We ship the game on Steam via Electron and the greenworks Steam integration.
It has sold over 130,000 units so far. The regular price is around 15$ on Steam. Generally we're obviously very happy with the success considering that 95% of the content was created by two persons.
The project started as a hobby project in 2012, so there are some technical decisions which I would approach differently now:
- Using modern JS instead of Coffeescript
- Using WebGL instead of Canvas
For our next project we're considering switching to Unity since 90% of our distribution happens through Steam and 3d engines like Unity and Unreal are imho way more mature than HTML5 engines at the moment. The biggest obstacle for us in using HTML5 has been the player perception of web games being for free games that are built around grinding.
Congratulations! From the few minutes that I've played, this looks really polished, especially for a web game.
I'm curious to know what kind of promotion efforts you had to do to reach 130k units? Was it just word-of-mouth and good reviews that took you there, or did you spend money on advertising, PR, etc.?
By the way, I completely agree with using WebGL instead of canvas. We created our first HTML5 game back in 2012 (called BrowserQuest), and achieving good performance with canvas was a big challenge at the time. We would definitely choose WebGL over canvas today even for a 2D game.
Thanks! I think it helps that the game mechanics are somewhat unusual and quirky, which makes it easier to stand out. Instead of out-producing other games, we opted to make a game that feels like it is living in its own small niche.
I linked to it from another comment already, but we're also big believers in twitter and did a talk about it:
webgl comes with it's own set of drawbacks depending on what your targets are. I was targeting mobile with my game and phaser/canvas had much more consistent performances than phaser/webgl across devices.
Interesting! So far we're only targeting the desktop since putting the game on mobile would require a lot of UI rework. Might happen at a later point though.
long story short, webgl had memory issue on low end androids and was unplayable on chrome/iphone because it lacked acceleration. this was last year, thing might have changed now.
Curious to know if you've considered / looked into Godot at all?
In case you have not: It lets you build games for all the major platforms and gives you access to the latest features of C# (if you're interested in using C# that is). Also the whole thing with IDE and all is under 30MB unless you download it off Steam (which includes examples) then it's about 200MB. Engine and tooling are fully open source (MIT) unlike Unity.
Good to know your game has been so successful btw! I wish you and your team future success in your other games!
Thank you! I'm aware of Godot and have looked a little bit into it. I'm excited for another major 3d engine establishing itself as alternative to Unreal and Unity.
Having worked for some years now on a game that uses tech that relatively few people are using to create games like we do and knowing the pain of dealing with very specific issues that at times literally nobody else in the world is dealing with, I would probably prefer to stick with the huge developer/install base that Unity has to over at the moment though.
Two years ago we started a indie developer co-working space here in Berlin and about 95% of the people here are using Unity (http://saftladen.berlin). That's a huge advantage that Godot (or any other new engine) will have to overcome.
I advise you check out the Discord for Godot before you decide for your next game. Great community full of all types of rich (in creativity) game developers.
Hey thanks for the details, riadd! I wrote a HTML5 browser game in coffeescript several years ago and I share your analysis: I would skip CS and use modern JS for a greenfield project today.
Care to elaborate about the marketing side? How did you manage to get this amount of sales? Did you get any support from Steam on that front? Thanks!
We used to work in AAA and after some mediocre experiences with publishers decided to handle marketing and distribution by ourselves this time.
Steam helped us through their huge market share but the general concensus is that with the increased amount of games being released on Steam it is getting harder and harder to make a living there as an average game developer. When we pressed the big publish button on steam, we checked the new releases page immediately after and even in those 2-3 seconds there had passed enough time for our game only to be the second newest game.
The thing that helped us the most was being early and continously on social media. Here's an presentation that we did on the topic. I think it still holds up.
Firstly, what you've achieved is really impressive so props for that. But I'm curious about plans for your next project.
This might not have been possible with CoffeeScript, but for your next project have you considered targeting both the web platform as well as native using a language that supports both? [1]
As far as I can see the main benefit of targeting HTML5 is the accessibility, especially for this demo. It would however be nice to get a native version for Steam (and possibly mobile platforms if those are on the horizon too). I think using Unity will get rid of this benefit as it will require the Unity plugin to be installed to be playable.
1 - A good example of a game that does this is Reel Valley, a game built to be played primarily on Facebook's game platform in the browser, but also targeting Android and iOS. Its code base is shared across all platforms with only small platform-specific bits needed for each. Definitely worth checking out: https://yglukhov.github.io/Making-ReelValley-Overview/.
As far as I'm aware the Unity plugin is dead and hasn't been pretty much disfunctional for over a year now. The new approach for Unity is to export directly to HTML5, which already works somewhat nicely. Of course you have to pay with big package sizes since you're bundling the engine with your game. That's the biggest advantage of using a custom HTML5 engine which is custom tailored for one game.
We've been selling the web version before the steam version, but after putting it on steam our revenue exploded 50 times and we put the web build a bit on the back burner. We're coming back to it now and will experiment with some ideas benefiting of the immediacy of the web tech. Even thinking about doing a MMO-ish web-only spin off for it.
Will check out the ReelVally blog post. Very interesting.
That's interesting. The game looks like a straightforward single player game. Why did you need the server? Since it's a JavaScript game, couldn't you just simply provide an bunch of HTML and .js files?
Yes, for the Electron version we do that. But for the full web based version we need a user account management system to keep track of who bought the game and to store savegames in the cloud.
It uses our own HTML5 engine. Rendering is based on a simple canvas tag and 2d context draw calls. The code is written in CoffeeScript. The server runs on node. I just used SublimeText as text editor. We ship the game on Steam via Electron and the greenworks Steam integration.
It has sold over 130,000 units so far. The regular price is around 15$ on Steam. Generally we're obviously very happy with the success considering that 95% of the content was created by two persons.
The project started as a hobby project in 2012, so there are some technical decisions which I would approach differently now: - Using modern JS instead of Coffeescript - Using WebGL instead of Canvas
For our next project we're considering switching to Unity since 90% of our distribution happens through Steam and 3d engines like Unity and Unreal are imho way more mature than HTML5 engines at the moment. The biggest obstacle for us in using HTML5 has been the player perception of web games being for free games that are built around grinding.