I'd like to get some stuff from outside of my usual perspective.
I'll also try to rechost this with more suggestions/games from the comments.
the general mindset around game pricing has become so unreasonably bad, I don't even know what to say anymore.
i know it's not a vast majority of people but the fact that there well and truly is a subsect of players who won't even spend a measly DOLLAR on a game should just remind you that if the culture does not value you, then you should value yourself. the people who truly want to support your work will do so in kind.
think about how many copies you need to sell of a $1 game, just to be able to say you made a profit. you lose so much money between payment processors, distributor cuts, tax between countries, etc. that you would need to sell like 30 copies of a game to make maybe $10.
you sell one copy at $20 and you make more money, and to be honest, much more genuine support and positive treatment for even bothering to make the game in the first place.
a person who is spending $1 on your game, more often than not barely values the purchase that they have made, and the kind of entitlement that i see from people complaining about the games they spent ONE DOLLAR on would honestly... well... actually, it probably wouldn't shock most of you if you've ever released a game publicly at all.
so, please, charge what you're worth. if you think your game is worth $5, charge $5. maybe even charge $7. charge $30 if you want! a bunch of games have done that and sold just fine. just please don't feed this ridiculous devaluing of creative work.
Just do it, how many people do you think will pay $5 but not $6? $7?
If Yves Guillemot can get away with charging $70 for Skull and Bones, you can do this.
I was at SGF this weekend For Work (If you know where I work, no you don't (please be cool, I'm begging you)) and here are some demos I saw/played/thought were cool/interesting. These are not in any kind of order. I also linked trailers and store pages if you want to be a Judgmental Judy yourself.
While Waiting:
A microgame collection that is basically the opposite of Warioware. Instead of bite sized games that take 4 seconds, these are small vignettes about waiting that can be "beaten" by not touching anything. These are things like waiting for traffic, waiting for a bathroom to open up, waiting for your stamina to recharge in a mobile game. Each game has optional other ways to complete it that are both sillier and much more traditionally "gamey."
The devs were my booth neighbors and were all very nice to me.
Building Relationships:
My group chat called this "Real Estate Katamari." Secretly the horniest game at the show by a wide margin, I was laughing basically nonstop through my short demo. The dev is has comedy CHOPS. We were booth neighbors and Tanat had me rolling. The tagline "A Short Hike but stupid" is 100% accurate and if the trailer even vaguely seems like your vibe you're going to love it.
UFO50:
It's the Spelunky guys making a collection of 50 games over the past 8 years. If you know about any indies at the show you probably heard about this one. It's going to be great but I wanted to call out The Boys for being crazy nice. They saw I was demoing alone and brought me food unasked. Vibe GOATs for sure. I didn't play the game but everything I saw and heard was unmoderated positivity.
Flock
God I wanna fly around as that goofy little idiot bird So Fuckin' Bad.
No I'm not going to say more about it.
It's Stalker 2, Baby
Ok so now we're into the AAA zone. I was stationed across from this booth and ended up watching a ton of this between appointments. I have no idea how it's going to turn out but if you're into HIGH FIDELITY TRIPLE AY SHOOTING this has a lot of it. I mostly like the old STALKERs and this didn't show off a ton of open world stuff but I kept watching people shoot those glowy zombie guys with AK47s so that's something.
Phantom Blade 0
Once you've worked in The Industry long enough (again if you know where I work, no you don't) you begin to learn The Language and can see when a game is almost certainly going to be bad. This is one of Those but fuck me if I don't want this to be good. Occasionally I'd look over and they'd be doing Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace-but-Dark Souls and my brain would light up before I talked myself down. They also call it Kungfupunk which is kind of sick. It's also kind of cringe, but still.
I just.... there's no way this is going to be good, but god I want to be wrong so badly.
Afterlove EP
I ethically cannot really talk about this one, but if I'm being indulgent (and you promise to be cool) I'm going to anyway. It's Fahmi's (lead on Coffee Talk) last game, and really special to me. It's about a guy losing his partner who then begins to haunt(?) him Anohana-style and made no less than 4 people cry at the booth over the weekend. It's not as big of a bummer as that description makes it sound, but it's some of the best human-level writing I've read in games in quite a while. Sure it's a game about grieving and moving on (and was even before Fahmi's tragic passing) but it's written with a genuine love for humanity that celebrates the beautiful and brief stretches of time when peoples' lives touch.
Ok I'm tearing up a little writing this, but we're pressing on.
As trite as it is, it's a labor of love and one I'm super proud to ALLEGEDLY have a hand in. If you're curious you can download a demo that has like an hour of game in it and you can see for yourself.
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I am probably forgetting other cool games I saw/played so maybe I'll add more later but don't hold your breath.
ok bye
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