Slay the Spire: Success through Marketability

[@Discipol]

Pretty good talk, lots of data, lots of juicy knowledge. He was nervous in the beginning but relaxed towards the end. Q&A was fruitful. 10/10

[@romedark7405]

'nuff said.

[@floydjenkins2790]

5/5

[@MuriloMielke]

As a indie developer myself, I love to see young people like him (I mean, at least he looks young) succeed. I know that for each one that achieves something big there's a lot of people that doesn't, but that still gives me hope and keeps me going! We'll get there!

[@Evoleo]

@Colton Clark stfu

[@shangoat2008]

Worth mentioning that the Chinese streamer (谜之声) mentioned in the talk also worked on the first draft of STS's Chinese translation.

[@BattleFeed]

Nope that was another person "怕上火暴王老菊" whose video reached 1.4M views, SOM(谜之声) did a mega job at translating the game but he's not that well-known as 王老菊.

[@diskgunn4237]

what streaming platform chinese gamers are usually on?

[@OrangeJake]

@@diskgunn4237 Bilibili

[@Fyans-yg8jh]

@@diskgunn4237 BliBli🙂

[@tobiasrieper7328]

After watching dozens of GDC talks, this is the most informative, pleasant and complete one about indie game developement. So thanks for that and remember when he says it's a lot of work - and he says that very often - it's actually more work that an average person can handle. Anyway I will try it myself also.

[@Brawph]

Casey Yano is great 5/5

[@YondaMoegi]

First time I played it, I was surprised how intuitively understandable it was. Good game, good talk

[@JonathanGalimore]

Thank you for this talk! I really appreciate the speaker’s straightforwardness and honesty. Valuable info/experience

[@lordecircojeca2039]

Casey is a really cool dude

[@MatHEWStorm]

So are you

[@svdwellen]

What a hilarious guy, awesome talk, thank you!

[@RCTricking]

I super appreciate their hardware marketing. I can play Slay on my really old laptop just fine!

[@meditationsanddimensions542]

I think everyone has his own destiny. Someone get there quickly, someone slowly, someone never get there. Anyway i am very happy for you and i hope i will get there too, sooner or later. Maybe.

[@muzboz]

Great talk, thanks. Interesting to see for how long it WASN'T really coming together, or getting traction. Seems like this game really took off from people just playing it, word of mouth (kicked off by giving lots of codes to lots of streamers, I guess!)

[@vita_pulchra_est]

This talk is more of just a dev story and collection of anecdotes. Its endearing to hear because its an underdog success story. He went a long way just to say 'I shotgun-sent keys to streamers and that worked out eventually' which says more about the prevalence of influencer marketing in games currently, and less about what he did correctly with that approach, which is targeting related niches. His biggest problem was that his game didnt have a 'clear selling proposition' which until even on the last Q&A item he didnt realize. Selling propositions doesnt need to be very outstanding, it just needs to get accross people who vibes with the themes and elements the game has on offer.

[@RglMrn]

Thank you so much for being true pioneers. Slay the Spire is just a brilliant game.

[@wigglebot765]

This is very helpful and gives a lot of insight into the development routes of an indie game that has differing popularity over time

[@EestiVabariik-h4r]

Nice story! Keep up the good work

[@corrozu]

love this game

[@StefanLopuszanski]

Awesome stuff! =)

[@yumingl8547]

王老菊功不可没

[@张小新-v4d]

赞美太阳

[@lynnhuang7175]

王老菊和谜之声确实功不可没。

[@muzboz]

I'm fascinated to know more about the "language parsing" to sort through useful feedback! Like, are they looking for spam, or just "bad spelling" and things! Haha. I'd filter out everyone who writes in where I find instances of "i" not capitalised, and other poor grammar. Chortle.

[@mohandasjung]

My guess is that in the begining you just read all of them and you will soon notice the trolls patterns!

[@ShrikeGFX]

Success by taking someone elses well received game (Dream Quest) one by one and making some improvements + far superior visuals, and act like it was all the own idea

[@bflgriff]

First person shooters were called doom clones for years

[@ShrikeGFX]

@@bflgriff Sure, but they didn't act like they made up a very specific design themselves while giving zero credit when asked every time

[@3ddevine]

I was surprised when he didn't mention Dominion as an inspiration. In general though, Slay IS a different game, while Dream Quest could have been an inspiration, I could also see a hodge podge of table top games being the main inspiration. He was also put on the spot, I have been put on the spot when asked questions like this and I always end up forgetting something I wish I had mentioned.

[@ShrikeGFX]

@@3ddevine its so shockingly similar I don't really think that counts as inspiration anymore. Dreamquest is such a specific design, and there are no other similar games, and STS somehow has the exact same core gameplay, format start to end, encounter style, events and card design, even down to the way you remove cards and buy more with gold in a selection of 3? Its basically dream quest 2 with some added extras.

[@SourceOfBeing]

@@ShrikeGFX There's similarities but I wouldn't say it's a ripoff. Dream Quest on Steam only had 139 purchases so it's entirely possible they never saw it. There's another GDC video with them that talks about the actual development of the game in detail called "Slay the Spire: Metrics Driven Design and Balance". That video talks through development from conception to launch, while this video is about selling the game and making it popular.