Everything I Learned Releasing my First Game on Steam and Consoles

[@kylebanks]

Thank you so much to Skillshare for sponsoring this video, the first 500 people to use my link skl.sh/kylebanks11241 will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare premium!

[@isto_inc]

For a first release you absolutely crushed it SHEEEEEEEESH

[@isto_inc]

And don't forget how much of an advantage you get by finishing your game - a resuable codebase (huuuge advantage) and a deeper understanding of how to build a game

[@kylebanks]

thanks man! and absolutely, there's so much tooling and knowledge coming to my next game that's making it much more efficient

[@AIAdev]

Thanks for this advice Kyle. Hearing you talk about spending 2 years "finding the game" was really relatable.

[@kylebanks]

It's tough man, but if you ever want to chat or pick someone's brain I'm always happy to help :)

[@eyupylmaz9813]

Very, very relatable

[@theartsyduck9762]

wanted to say you did an amazing job on the game! The whole reason why I found you was because your videos. Watching you go through the struggles and learning how to do your game is entertaining and educational. can’t wait to see what you do in the future!

[@kylebanks]

Oh thank you very much, I really appreciate that

[@CodeMonkeyUnity]

Wohoo congrats on the successful release!

[@kylebanks]

Thanks man!

[@valentinl415]

Great video Kyle, really cool to have more business oriented video concerning game development! People often forget that it is also a product that need to be sold and promoted even if it's so much fun to make

[@kylebanks]

Thanks Valentin, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

[@zy-blade]

Yup, tail physics was worth it =) Feels more natural. You won't recognize or mention it if it feels natural, but it can look stiff without it. Congrats for releasing your game!

[@LostRelicGames]

Some of the best advice going around. You're a beast, all the best on the next proj!

[@VyvyanTheGreat]

My biggest advice for indie devs: avoid making games/genres that rely on "single-use content". OH you have some super cool puzzle that took you a month to make? Well guess what, the player just breezed through it in 2 minutes.

[@Husmanmusic]

Invaluable information once again!

[@kylebanks]

Glad it was helpful!

[@OliM3gALP]

Cool video, thank you! I love to hear feedback from indie game devs on their release as it demystifies the whole indie game dev world. You talked about the planning of your game and the hardships it came with and I was wondering if you plan to make a video centered more specifically about planning of games, involving GDDs and whatnot.

[@s4bishii]

Thanks for all the detailed insights Kyle, learned a lot!

[@adamcolon]

I'm working on my first game, AI:Emergence (running title). I've cut costs down to a budget of around $50 a month. I work on it at night and on weekends and I've got an order of magnitude further than what I expected based on videos i've seen on solo indie game development. By keeping my costs down to almost nothing, I have infinite runtime... but by keeping focused on what matters I've managed to squeeze out efficiency even with my short hours on it each week. Thank you for sharing this video!

[@raphaeld9270]

I'm pretty interested in that. I suppose that you do get a few hous a day at night while getting enough good sleep? What do you mean by a budget of 50$ a month. What do you include in that, and what do you exclude? I suppose that salary is out of the question, but what else have you moved to later, or plain excluded. Thanks in advance for your response, and have a great day.

[@Drillbox_1989]

P.S the grand father lore was unironically mind numbing. I just thought it was just a credit thing (like "in memory of my ... so and so") but it actually had story elements related to it is just brilliant, almost like the guy who always finds puns in quick conversations.. kind of weird comparison but its how I feel about it

[@dapperdogdigital6902]

This was very relateable. We released our first game this year after a 4 year development cycle. 55k Wishlists on release and we still have 55k wishlists. Sadly we are not doing well. Not sure how to move forward or how to fix our marketing issue.

[@raphaeld9270]

Just learned of your game and I'll try the demo, but I do find that last trailer on steam (the "you are my dog last hope, BEK") get the blood pumping in a good way. And the game looks to me like a Hollow Knight inspired twin-stick Metroidvania. What was you conversion rate wishlist-to-buy on launch? As a stable~ish wishlist count mostly tell a similar amount of sales and new wishlists, not the actual sale amount.

[@punkrachmaninoff]

Finally!!! The spiritual sequel to Sheep on GBA!!!! Congratulations on your launch!!!

[@Felik18]

Thank you so much for this video, it was very interesting and informative. Looking forward to you talking more about making art for the game and about how you handled patreon.

[@TheEnjenirGame]

Great video and really insightful, as always!

[@kylebanks]

Much appreciated!

[@TheShelfman]

Fantastic video. Thanks for sharing all this, Kyle!

[@kylebanks]

Thanks man, glad you enjoyed!

[@Paraderis]

Thanks for this video. There are very interesting thoughts, especially about play testing and scope.

[@DeputyChiefWhip]

Excellent down to earth and valuable video for a new gamedev/business owner.

[@Cesar_M_Romero]

Hey Kyle! How do you playtest? Do you use any playtesting service, Steam, you have your own way of doing it I don’t know anything about?

[@kylebanks]

I use Steam's Playtest feature to distribute builds, and private discord channels to manage the playtests with forums for bug reports and suggestions

[@Guywiththetypewriter]

A piece of knowledge I'd appreciate as an faq or follow up in the comments is that steam deck verification is (most , if not all the time) more or less Linux porting, as the Deck is just an immutable Linux Distro with extra steps :D

[@majoramarix]

I'm a Linux user 🙋‍♂ Cool game dude!

[@kylebanks]

Thanks! 🐧

[@jzeltman]

Really great advice and lessons learned. Thanks for sharing

[@kylebanks]

My pleasure!

[@cvhamilton5]

Great video!

[@kylebanks]

Thanks!

[@thepolyglotprogrammer]

You talk about having to create new mechanics and etc because of genre of the game, but what is your take of using third party assets in your game as a solo game developer, what is your take on that? Those being art assets or tools and programming assets that could save you time instead of having to create a brand new system from scratch?

[@GhulamMuhammad-nw8zu]

What do you think what are the best cources on skill share for game design and development

[@TheBagContainsWHAT]

Amazing video! Where did you find the list of game events and festivals? Would help a lot, thanks :)

[@kylebanks]

The list I showed is past events from my steam analytics, but for upcoming events there's a spreadsheet in the How to Market a Game discord

[@TheBagContainsWHAT]

@@kylebanks Thanks, found the spreadsheet. Didn't realize there were so many events I didn't know about!

[@bigfin20]

straight facts for 18 minutes

[@QuioGoyo]

Thanks a lot for sharing this.

[@codelupo]

Thank you for the amazing video! Motivational 😸

[@omritahar9048]

I have been following you for quite a while man and I truly admire your work. I think that with your insane programming skills, you can easily find a ridiculous (salary wise) corporate part time job and work on your games care free (As much as possible 😅) OR get a full time job again, give it a few "investing in your future games funding" years and go full indie once again. My point is - I personally know programmers with 10% of you firepower that makes amazing money and I would love to hear your opinion on this

[@kylebanks]

That's definitely an option! Thankfully I was a software engineer/tech lead for 12+ years and have a lot of contacts to fall back on, which acts as a nice safety net in case things get rough, but for now I can comfortably manage full time on games

[@rmt3589]

Can we get a part 2?

[@JP11155]

Amazing video, I really enjoyed watching it! How did you initially come up with the idea for your game Farewell North? I've been wanting to dive into making a game of my own. However, I've struggled to come up with something that I want my game to be about as so far I've only been able to think of a generalized genre I'm going for.

[@kylebanks]

Thanks! Hmm good question, but honestly I wouldn't consider my path with Farewell North to be a great blueprint to follow. It took a long time and a lot of wrong paths to nail down the idea. It started as a completely different game and went through many many iterations before it resembled anything like it ended up. Taking a bit more time before jumping into development to not only do market research as I mentioned in the video, but also planning the mechanics, the game loop, the setting and themes from the outset would have been a much better path and what I'm doing going forward

[@fille.imgnry]

Nice video!

[@Kenbomp]

Seems like some form of grey boxing game play works

[@lucas_pscheidt]

60k wishlists with only 270 sounds crazy! Why do you think you sold so little compared to your amazing wishlist number? And also, how did you manage to get so many wishlists, what strategy was most effective in your opinion?

[@subomiayo8938]

What discord can I join to know about games

[@NexusBaum]

that's some great advice!

[@robertrobert88887]

another video with mistakes and lessons please.

[@crystalgames7744]

5:40 I think this is higly subjective and can have very different opinions. Ever heard of Rain World? It is THE most unique game you can ever play. So 40% of ppl hate it and 50% love it. With a 10% that don't like it but respects it for what it is. What I'm trying to say is, don't be afraid to make a unique game as long as you know what you want it to be and you love making it! That passion will be visible for the others. I personally am sick of playing the same genres over and over again, and that made me put Rain World on the top 5 games for me. (as well as how fun and well made it is)

[@nemo9396]

I started developing my game in uh.... 2020

[@schaefsky]

Can you elaborate what your budget went to? I assume art mostly?

[@kylebanks]

In no particular order: marketing, music, animation, lawyers (for grants and publisher contracts), localisation and voice acting were the top expenses

[@NexusBaum]

where would I look for paid mock reviews btw?

[@kylebanks]

Oh good question, my publisher handled arranging that but since learning about it I've seen several journalists on twitter/bluesky mentioning they're available for mock reviews so I'd probably search there

[@NexusBaum]

@@kylebanks thx!

[@GingerCat_Studios]

nice tips

[@robertrobert88887]

thanks for nice video

[@Drillbox_1989]

Hey! I enjoyed very much. Also while cutting costs why don't you work with devs from India, like me. I am perusing deep learning and have done courses on full stack development. I know guys in the business who are experienced professionals who charge substantially low compared to the western counter parts. Please consider this

[@leotaku5216]

17:16 I'm never fully convinced by these kind of appeals... because obviously you did "tough it out"? So it is possible? You might not recommend it to anyone, but it worked out and lead to something great. Congratulations on the release btw!

[@DerSolinski]

Ah yes the "it won't sell until it's on sale" myth... There is a very easy solution to that, never do a sale period. But you need to convey that to your customers too, and clearly state it won't be on sale, aka it's not getting cheaper ever. This makes the best time to buy it "now" and not "ah maybe I get it on sale". Don't believe that works? Well ask Wube, they never regretted it.

[@LuckyRaphi]

Every successful dev on KZbin goes into burnout but all of them say don't do it. maybe that's the secret 😂

[@realKluki]

18:23 nah

[@kylebanks]

fair enough

[@pushingpandas6479]

I searched skillshare for kyle banks but there aint not courses from you?

[@kylebanks]

Oh I don't teach on Skillshare, I just use it as a learner :) They sponsored the video and are offering a 1 month free trial to anyone who follows the pinned link

[@pushingpandas6479]

@ ohhhhh i was hoping to see tutorial about farewell north

[@kylebanks]

ah sorry, you can check my previous video here on KZbin though which has a tutorial on the colour effect if that's what you're after

[@random_precision_software]

Do you need a pro license for Xbox?

[@luckyboy5nu]

"You know what you can't put a price on? Knowledge!" (0:10) This video is sponsored by Skillshare..

[@Snow_Crab]

Where did you get $100,000?

[@635574]

Ports situation changes heavily by the engine(including the physics engine). Some are PC only while console API are closed source so you would at best have to outsource it if you're using Godot. Because there are porting studios that have closed source branches for this.

[@nights312312]

Great video. Love how you ripped the stamina wheel 100% from BOTW lol