How Much my Steam Game Made in 1 month (underperformed)

Hey! this is how much my game made in it's first month. A roller coaster!
Buy my game: store.steampowered.com/app/23...
Patreon: / penusbmic
Game Assets: penusbmic.itch.io/
Discord: / discord
music by me: / penusbmic

[@Stedward_]

Even if you under performed you still did something that tons of people dream of doing, but never will. Keep it up!

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you ❤️

[@MarkieMark-vy7hg]

I don’t believe he under preformed. As a single developer who does his own art, programming, trailers, marketing, and promotions. He did a fantastic job. It was a success in the eyes of indie devs. I make games using the same engine as him and man it’s not the easiest if you’re a single dev. Congrats pen. Ps, I’m also using some of your assets in my games somnium

[@Penusbmic]

@@MarkieMark-vy7hg thank you Mark! Means a lot and excited to see somnium 😊

[@pixelboy8032]

cope

[@flowfrog101]

I wouldn’t be frustrated. You made a lots of assets u can either sell or use for your next game. U also gathered much experience in creating and publishing your first game. So you are in a good position to go for a second run. I think u did a great job and I will follow you through the journey. You can be very proud!

[@Penusbmic]

Thanks so much for the kind words 😊 means a lot!

[@KC-ec5pv]

Pen, your art style is just really perfect. Your characters are unique and easily readable. Man, I really wanted to play a game in the world you created, but my eyes just get lost in bullet hell games. If you were to make a Zelda like game with this art style, I would definitely buy it. Admittedly, your game is on my steam wishlist because I wanted to follow its production. Again, your characters are so pretty and their animations so fluid. So I guess I just wanted to say thank you and congratulations and I really look forward to whatever you do next!

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you!! I definitely want to do something more combat focused, and not a bullet hell, I'm excited to start the next project 😊

[@BastianEntertainment0]

@@Penusbmic So happy you have plans to continue, Love your work.

[@CallMeCocoGrr]

This is very informative for people who would like to make their own game and release it too someday, loved the pictures that take us step by step on everything that happened even the mistakes and miscalculations, learned a ton from this thank you for sharinggg

[@Penusbmic]

Thanks for watching! ❤️

[@misfitmadman]

After playing Bullet Bunny (which was awesome) I'm quite excited to see if there will be any further updates to the game like new bosses and characters.

[@Penusbmic]

thanks for playing! and there's one coming soon :) Has a new hero, progression overhaul, new UI interface in the HUB and more! excited to share with everyone

[@rolitae]

Congrats on the release! I appreciate you sharing this behind the scenes post-launch. It can't be easy to do all this by yourself, I'm sure your results will get better and better though!

[@cripz1436]

I remember seeing your little pixel animations on Instagram and now randomly found your channel 😮 nice and subscribed

[@brianschulz7833]

Interesting rundown - it's cool to see this level of transparency! Fingers crossed for the big update🤞

[@Penusbmic]

thank you Brian!

[@azrhyga]

Great video explaining about how your game made You made into the most popular games during the first days, and that is an awesome milestone, so congrats!!

[@MostafaNassar]

Congrats on releasing the game and sorry to see that it didn't turn out like you expected. I have seen many games pick up sales after a few postlaunch devlogs, so don't give in yet! On another note thanks for sharing these numbers, it sheds a reality many people need to understand about gamedev.

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you for watching! and 100% agree!

[@mevu2068]

hey man, thanks for sharing this with a huge transparency and all. You are doing an amazing job so definitely keep it up. ( my suggestion, focus on your art more, maybe even a different genre. your art is amazing )

[@dudemanphat]

Congratulations on releasing! its a fun game and the art is amazing. You should feel proud of your work.

[@Penusbmic]

Thanks so much

[@arthurmc4279]

I haven't buy the game but the demo was incredible and your pixel art tutos helped me a lot

[@lilgamer140]

Congrats on the game and keep up the good work!! You have inspired many people like me to start their own journey in pixel art and game dev 🙌

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! this means a lot hearing that!

[@colemcleod1788]

Congratulations!! Definitely recommend the steam sale of 20% or more when you feel it is appropriate. Can lead to a lot of conversion. Also, humble bundle is a good option for driving some extra traffic. There are so many variables in stuff like this, but keep on it. You make amazing work. :)

[@samuraikina5908]

Great job man , nice to see you made it

[@pipetteinc]

I released a game I worked almost 8 years on in August, it sold 300 copies. I suppose there is a boatload of things I could have handled better, but when you have to handle every aspects of dev, art, biz and marketing, it easy to get swamped. You had way better numbers, and its a shame about new and trending, but steam is a blackbox and the market is also so competitive and crowded that it's hard to stand out. I love your style, so I hope you'll be able to dust yourself up and do another one :)

[@Penusbmic]

Thanks you! And definitely doing everything can be draining. Still have a burning passion and learnt a lot along the way ❤️ what's your game called??

[@pipetteinc]

@@Penusbmic It's called The Man Came Around. I'm also working on a new one, with a pixel art style, which is not announced yet. By the way, I saw Random Access Mayhem at GDC, pretty cool work you did on that!

[@Ithelastmastr]

Saw your game, it's really good enough ,feel sorry for you

[@Penusbmic]

​@@pipetteinc This looks amazing! Love the style, definitely gonna pick it up soon 😊

[@gameclips5734]

As a new indie dev this video was really insightful. Appreciate your humility in creating a breakdown even though it didn't do as well as you'd hoped. I agree with some of the criticisms of the game, regarding light/colour contrast or the UI being a bit cluttered and I think Steam reviews are a tricky metric to go by since you can only say Yay/Nay. Congrats anyway on releasing, I think you've done the hardest part and hopefully you can build on the game or pave the way for your next project!

[@AbdullahTech]

Congratulations on the release period. I want to make a game some day, but am still learning aseprite right now.

[@toochmcgooch4678]

Amazing job! Would love to see an action platformer from you next ❤

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you!

[@lenardEkko]

Congrats on the project, honestly tho I think it might also be the game genre. but honestly you've done a great job so chin up!!!

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you!

[@Townend1984]

Hey dude! Very interesting video, and it sums up my experience exactly. It fell of a cliff by the end of week 1. A couple of spikes with sales, but nothing that lasted. I hope it hasnt put you off. It forced me into a break and i didnt think id touch game dev again, but im back in the mood lately.

[@JuanDavid-cb1ei]

Congrats on the game!! I am also making a game, and I understand how difficult it is. Most people don't even finish the game, and if they finish it, they got worse numbers. Take what you have learnt and apply it on your next game. I am sure it will do better, you are clearly talented. Best wishes mate!

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you so much! ❤️

[@foxtorche]

Congrats on the game! I've seen somewhere on the web, that if you make a discount on steam thats above X percent (I forgot the actual number, but you can research this), then steam will send a notification email to ALL the users who wishlisted your game. It is important to make the discount meet this number, or else no notification will be done. Of course this cuts the selling price, but could be a good conversion technique if you have 13K WL. I'm no expert though, this is just something to consider.:)

[@zneeke]

yup, it's 20% and all people that have game on wishlist get a notification. valid and good point.

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you and will definitely do this!

[@StruggleBusGames-uz3yd]

I definitely know those feels my brudda, for what it's worth I do watch your tutorials quite a bit, my "best" selling game on steam only sold around 150 copies so you're doing pretty well vs that lol

[@chrisrose708]

Thank you for sharing and being so transparent! This is really cool to see even if it is not the outcome you were hoping for. Congratulations on your first game release, it is a truly impressive feat. I was wondering how long you spent working on the game before release, and did you do all the programming yourself? Also, what was the percentage of design, programming, and art work? Cheers 🍾

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! And yup I did pretty much everything over the last couple years, took months ago. Most of my time went into programming as I was semi learning at the time!

[@Doudou_chienF7]

Yesterday I was schearching for 2D games on steam and IM SURE I SAW BULLET BUNNY

[@phantomchuckles]

Congrats on releasing. Really enjoying the game was wondering how long it took for you to make it.

[@xecreth7211]

Hey, thanks for the video, interesting topic that lotta people dont go into

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! 😊

[@RealJesus]

I published a game on steam too that i'd been working on for like 9 months, in may. 0 wishlists i think probably 0 sales, my friends played it for like an hour. But in the end after the release i learned to not care about the stats and that's what it's all about. Make something good that you enjoy playing.👍

[@OneLastMidnight]

I jumped around in the video a little bit, but did you cover how much time was invested into development, art design, marketing, etc.? It would be great to get an understanding of the ROI (return on investment) for the game. Many thanks!

[@yoaty270]

Yea I've seen gifs of that samurai art but never knew it was for a game

[@ProcGenGod]

I recently watched, a similiar video by AuroDev who made Mortal Glory 2. There i realized how important localization is, his game supports 9 languages and sold almost as many copies in China as in United States. On top of that i'm from Poland and when i open the steam page of his game it's in polish and it's not part of the 9 supported languages. I suspect he translated his steam page into many languages that the game doesn't even support just to boost wishlist acquisition.

[@qatoqat]

Thanks for sharing the stats, it's informative. Loving your pixel style, hope to see more content of yours. I still haven't played it but I'd like to get my hands on it soon. Do you advertise the game at places other than x/twitter?

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! And most social medias I did advertise on, Reddit, instagram, Tok Tok, and more

[@Sephaos]

I think a major selling point in any game that has a break out moment is that it has something that sets it apart from other games or has a unique system that is implemented extremely well within its niche. I would recommend something less like a bullet hell type game, which is heavily saturated, and move into a genre that has less representation on the market.

[@AFDKLJKH]

You should try making a metroidvania or a rouguelike/lite your sprites are really well made

[@soirema]

Was it a stream?? Crap i missed the premiere D:

[@AshnellGames]

Hey, thanks for sharing! Dont give up like you said you build a community and im 100% sure your next game will performe better and dont give up on this game yet, try to p[ush it with streamers or adding new languages.

[@horizonb1744]

Just bought bullet bunny. I was kept going back to the demo so I figured I’d purchase it. Got my friend to buy it also lol

[@AidinZolghadr]

Is there a minimum amount of sales that will notify wishlisted people? (12:10)

[@AidinZolghadr]

Is it possible to see how much other games have WL? (4:53)

[@RodrigoMVarela]

Well, in general nowadays there are a lot of games made, so it's difficult to keep people's attention for a long time. The first few days are when the games are most popular and sell the most copies. It's not about the quality of the game, more about the reach you achieved on your own by promoting it and more importantly, the luck you had with the algorithms(? It's like posting things on Twitter/Instagram or any social network. There are people who have very high-level content but find it difficult to reach more people, and there are other people with normal or poor content who have a huge number of followers/audience. Unless you have an audience that promises a certain amount of sales, etc., there is a lot of luck involved. So it's a matter of continuing to create, reaching people, and the numbers will increase in every way.

[@AidinZolghadr]

What do you think the average WL to get on the Popular Upcoming?

[@MysterytheMaker]

How long did it take to make your first? I want to start but im scared i wont have enough time time to learn an engine and then develop with college at the same time

[@jbaidley]

I think Wishlist conversion numbers are off for Indies who push people wishlisting their games on KZbin and other social media, because this gets a lot of wishlists that are from people showing support for a game because they enjoy the videos or the posts rather than because they've seen a game they want to play they convert at a lower rate. That's my hunch; I don't have data to support it.

[@stabbedbyapanda]

Sorry to hear about the underperforming. I have a couple questions/thoughts though. - I just watched your teaser and Trailer and it doesn't show any of those crisp animations you make tutorials for, or even that art style, just wondering what the decision was there? Most of the enemies seem to be like 4~ frame simple movement/idle animations (I could be wrong still getting an eye for analyzing 2d animations) I understand higher quality animations are more expensive and not free but i feel like ending the trailer with a bang of showing off one of the crisp animated enemies (If they exist haven't played the game) would have been worthwhile. - Then curious as to the Art style shift, looks like the floating squid brain thing is in the same scifi style thats in your tutorials, but everything else is in a more less detailed less scifi style. Because for me when I start learning pixel art im coming here because your tutorial videos are in the style i want to achieve and they are scifi. Like they are sick and awesome, so just weird to me you didn't make a game in that style and theme, and instead went mixing cutesy with scifi. Again this is just my outside view and curious to understand your decisions there. Like if you made a game based around the cool wheel robot tank or one of the cool badass scifi warriors in your other videos. That would appeal more to me. of course audience is different then but yeah, just curious.

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! And basically in short, it was my first time really making a full fleshed out game and wanted to focus more on the game mechanics/optimizing the game. I made it a point to not add complicated animations because it really complicates when implementing it in game and so on! I agree though and my next game will def lean more my style with complex animations 😃

[@stabbedbyapanda]

@@Penusbmic Gotcha, that makes sense, thank you for answering! I can tell you though, your style is definitely a large selling point!

[@connerholden]

Are there any good examples you could emulate of indie games that struggled on release but trended later? Also, have you considered marketing on TikTok at all? Not sure how successful that would be, but there could be a lot of unique users that you aren’t reaching with your current setup.

[@Penusbmic]

I did do some tik Tok, it had a little impact I think 🤔

[@pr4130]

imo rather than top down bullet hell shooter, your art are more of metroidvania side scrolling rougelike with some magic steampunk/cyberpunk element. i think if you make your game something like dead cells vibe it will perform way much more, keep up and good luck ^^

[@JelowGames]

Hey bro. Your artstyle is really great. But i wanted to let you know that wishlists dont mean jack on steam. Theyre just a very very slight indication of how well your game will do but ive seen in real examples games with barely a thousand wishlists sell like popcorn at movie theaters. Steam wont hide your game if its good. Im sorry to say but its all going to be about gameplay in the end

[@ouynix980]

thanks for the video :) just wondering if you'd considered sponsoring streamers/youtubers to play your game to get more reach? would love to know your thoughts on that or if you did what were the results etc

[@Penusbmic]

I did reach out to a lot of them! Not many responded 😕, depending on price I'd consider it!

[@ouynix980]

@@Penusbmic ohhh I see, didn't know reaching out to them was hard too.. hope you get some responses and more traction soon, never know maybe suddenly a big spike will come! either way i'm looking forward to the next update :)

[@Penusbmic]

@@ouynix980 fingers crossed! And excited to share the new update 😊

[@SLEEPERER]

Do you plan to have Unity (or the engine you use) tutorial beside pixel art?

[@Penusbmic]

No plans as of right now, but I'll never rule it out 🙂

[@deckardmanne]

How many review sites / bloggers / content creators did you have review the game?

[@flamingpenny]

Im curious how you feel the work you put in for bullet bunny is doing in comparison to your work on shogun showdown. Which are you happier with the results of? Is there a big difference in marketkng success? If there is a difference why would you say one was more popular than the other?

[@Penusbmic]

I myself put in way more hours to Bullet Bunny than Shogun Showdown but BB was all me and SS was a team + publisher. SS is something special though, there's a reason it's been so successful, just an amazing game, very happy to have done the art/animations for it.

[@flamingpenny]

@@Penusbmic making something by yourself is always truly special :) What do you think is the thing that makes Shogun showdown so special? Is it something you'll be able to replicate in personal projects going forward?

[@Penusbmic]

@@flamingpenny it brings a formula that isn't very saturated and it executes it so well, in this fast paced turn based system which stands out to me as most turned based games are a bit slower. A masterpiece! And I hope I bring something like this to the next project 😊

[@blacknwhite1313]

Cane here from insta nice art brother 💚

[@hellowngarfgar778]

I been playing it and like it

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you 😊

[@AidinZolghadr]

It's your first [Steam] game, don't get discouraged :) It's a marathon.

[@MissCupyCakes]

Will co-op be available in your game?

[@MarkieMark-vy7hg]

Hey pen, so I’m creating a shooter now with your assets. How could I show you my progress such far? I’ll like to get your input

[@Penusbmic]

Awesome! And join my discord, I love chatting there 😄

[@MarkieMark-vy7hg]

@@Penusbmic will do

[@JHG_1]

Well I plan on picking it up when I have more money if thats any consolation

[@Penusbmic]

Greatly appreciated ❤️❤️

[@black3dproductions]

Hello, i was trying buy patreon sub , its not working

[@Dr.-jm6qp]

I have some advice:if your games have Chinese,it may will sell more,because in China,have so many people who use steam to play games,so no matter what type of games it is,there will always be many players.But they tend not to buy games without simplified Chinese,even if they can read English.Finally,your game is great,and there are all kinds of materials that I love.Especially the Stranded series.I wish you success!

[@_nickthered]

Its weird because your price point is really really low. Though for the average playtime of an hour its still seen as high for the orice point. So hopefully your update builds good reviews and more momentum. Afaik sales are the only way to specifically reach your wishlisters. Unless steam has implemented reminders which i haven't seen. Congrats on getting this far better than ive been able to accomplish

[@helviett]

You've gone through the hardest path: no publisher (that can handle marketing which is hard and expensive), no early access. But in the end you've learned a LOT. I'm pretty sure that behind every successful game there were attempts that didn't even made into production. Hope you continue making games cause you have huge potential.

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! this motivates me :)

[@golanperry5885]

You are amazing, don't give up. You just need a little bit of help in marketing. I think also getting a coworker would be very helpful to you. Sorry for just spitting out that and that, just think you should do those things. 5000 dollars is still amazing

[@DingisXD]

What is the game called???

[@bubu88134]

As a person that wishlisted but didn’t buy it. The problem for me was that game didn’t have any depth to it. Reminded me more of a mobile game that I would play for 10-20 minutes and that’s it, because there is nothing that keeps me playing it. I think instead of adding new characters or guns like you said, you should try make the gameloop a bit more interesting.

[@suryamdg]

How much time did you spend developing the game?

[@Penusbmic]

About 2 years, took many months off, low hours at times. So hard to say but for sure a lot of hours

[@harmoen]

Under or over, you definitely performed. The 11% refunds was surprising to me, but with how easy Steam makes refunds, I suppose it makes sense.

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! and I thought the same, but I guess it's the average

[@strawberryblender]

Just waited until a youtuber play your game then it's will have a significant boost.

[@Penusbmic]

Fingers crossed!

[@strawberryblender]

@@Penusbmic Mark my word :3 hihi

[@lissylulu1208]

What game are these cute doggies in?

[@lewisbloom]

"Profile Features Limited" :( Your game looks too good to have this tag applied? Also get that steam deck verified if possible as for these type of game steamdeck and the like are ideal.

[@sorry987654321]

buuut reviews are great! deservedly so. which is a huge building block for all future projects. Congrats!

[@Penusbmic]

Thank you! excited for the updates !

[@user-lg8wt6ut3u]

Bro. Please give to solana nft space. You have talent to become millionaire

[@trags2]

Buying Bullet Bunny today gang 👇🔥

[@Penusbmic]

LETS GO! Thank you

[@trags2]

@@Penusbmic You deserve all the success!

[@user-ek2jc1xf3y]

just to say something different from everyone else, gotta step up game design and production. You already know how the art is, but graphics is just like, what, 10% of a game? I mean, the thomas was alone game got 1M copies sold and it's just polygons. besides looking good it has to feel good