I Pitched My Game To An Indie Publisher And It Went...

[@Aarimous]

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have advice for me. :) You can play the Hexagod demo now: store.steampowered.com/app/3059390/Hexagod/

[@whamcogames]

Legit question - not trolling, and I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this ( maybe i am, and I mean no offense) Are you related to August the Duck at all? uncanny resemblance.

[@AequitasZA]

I gave the demo a go, and really enjoyed it. Immediate wishlist 👍 I put a game out a few years ago that's also 'hexagon islands in the sky with villagers' called Volantia ... what an unexpected coincidence 😄

[@cherryskies9876]

Congratulations @Aarimous 🎉🎉🎉 I love this video because I'm so happy for you!

[@ProrokLebioda]

As someone that only does 'toy projects' on the side, after hours, I both envy and am happy for you! Good luck!

[@Aarimous]

Thank you! I have had plenty of my own pet projects over the years. If you stick with I bet you'll be in this position sooner than you think. Cheers!

[@PinguinoSod]

Please don't rush into a decision, I hope you can find advice from other devs. I couls imagine publishers may want to take advantage of new devs

[@cherryskies9876]

😂 Cat stretches in the background. Miss seeing your cats

[@Aarimous]

Meow :) Hope you are doing well with wherever your life is taking you :)

[@RyanCrossOfficial]

I think I good starting measure is not just whether they can offer something of value, but whether if what they are offering will benefit you *more* than the cut they want to take. You can think about it more like would you pay someone $X or X% to create these additional benefits/scale/reach/marketing/etc for your game? Good luck.

[@moonstar_connor]

Congrats, exciting progress!

[@CappicheGames]

Awesome progress, congrats!

[@jRsqILVOY]

The main benefit of a publisher is marketing - managing all your own Google and Meta campaigns etc. is time-consuming. Although you also have a successful KZbin channel, which is more than a lot of small publishers already 😂

[@appleturdpie]

7:59 A wild kitty appears!

[@riisezz0]

I think that the value here is time spent. As a full time indie you do have more time, but my personal opinion to really determine what your game would be worth as an offer is if you think time away from developing would be worth more than the the offer they send and if you think you could probably raise more doing it yourself. I just started my journey myself I hope to be full time one day and open and honest devs like yourself make this slow transition a lot easier. I look forward to seeing how this turns out, friend. Cheers!

[@Aarimous]

Hey, congrats on starting the game dev journey. If you stick with it long enough I guarantee you will learn enough and make plenty of games you're proud of. Cheers!

[@Stephano95]

So what you're saying... is that dropping out of the game jam early was a good call for you. 😄 That's awesome that they saw value in your game though. I hope they make an offer, and that it's a fair one too.

[@Aarimous]

They actually emailed me the same day the PirateSoftware jam started. A good reminder to always keep your eyes open for different opportunities. Cheers!

[@dmsys6516]

Are you planning on keeping it a playthrough of some hours to complete and make it into a rougelike/lite or make it something like rimworld where you play one world until you lose(or maybe not lose but play like stardew valley). I vote for the latter path but maybe you could do both gamemodes!! As you are already marketting the game as minimilist you could also use the the game modes to introduce a not really minimilist mode if you desire.

[@Seancstudiogames]

I have zero experience with publishers so zero advice to offer. However congrats on attracting a publisher. Seems these days everyone is saying publishers are not willing to work with newer unestablished developers due to the market downturn so you’ve done something impressive! Keep it up!

[@colddeath9797]

Do you already use LLMs in your process? What you think about it and the industry?

[@Aarimous]

I think it depends on how you use them, but right now I don't really use them for anything since they typically suggest crap code that I need to debug anyways. I also want my games to have a heart and I think AI can sometimes loose what makes an indie game special.

[@GES1985]

I'm planning on training a LLM to store game data to draw from as dynamic lore from my NPCs.

[@n1lknarf]

You should take the offer just to experience the complete publishing process and learn from it, rather than trying to squeeze value out of the game and your position of power. Good luck 👍

[@Aarimous]

That's fair advice, like I said in my video I hope I get an offer to learn more about the process which could also mean gaining EXP in negotiating an offer and or working with a lawyer to review it.