Concerns / Expectations

Game of hearts Season 1 was the best AVN I've played, and it was the reason I created a patreon account in the first place. But I didn't get the same story vibe I got from Meredith in the Season 2 so far, but I hope I'm wrong about that. I really enjoyed the story you built around meredith. Idk if that is the reason for this stat, but hope this will be helpful to you in some way.

Just upgraded my membership here and will buy your game on Steam when it's available. Your work is far to good not to support.

Oh, now you realize a Discord or cross promote might help? Bit late for that, don't you think?

This is by far the best AVN there is it's not even close you really made a beautiful game can't wait for the next part

Yeah definitely do cross promotions what other said. Honestly its one of the best games i ever played PERIOD! It has one of if not the most well written characters have ever seen in any media and i will be so heartbroken if you do stop. Honestly will wish list and if you do cross promotions, i think it will be friggen huge! Definitely spend most of your time getting word of mouth and your product out there!

Added to the wishlist and soon I will support you with the Angel membership. You are too goated to be missed on!

Not sure how many people have ever made decent money out of a RenPy VN. That being said I have supported you here and wishlisted you on Steam, and hope you do well. The only potentially relevant comment I have is that what attracts me to a VN, and causes me to support it financially, is NOT principally the quality of the renders. You might be the greatest DAZ artist ever and have a farm of RTX5090 cards, but that isn't enough for me. It has to be the quality of the story-telling. One of the projects I support uses that horrible Japanese engine where all the characters look the same. I support it not because I love the graphics, but because I am engaged with the characters and want to know what is going to happen next. Your graphics are really excellent, and you can be rightly proud of your skills, but it is the STORY in Game of Hearts that got me in. If you felt you had to back off a bit on the graphics quality to improve throughput and profitability, you wouldn't lose me as a customer. Anyway, I hope you don't need to.

I'm rooting for you dev, I want you to create discord. compatible for conversation

Join discord buddy more people will able to connect you

So please don't loose your hope

Here every thing is banned ,patron , subscribstar and other platforms so it's difficult for me to support you are the best dev ever ❤️ I know this , quality of renders are amazing

Your game is the best bro, I also have some matters to attend to but rest assured that I will buy your game even if it is not in my language.

Just added it on Steam and will purchase it when it's released. Thank you for your great work.

As many have said already, you've got the quality product, the only thing holding everything back is the Marketing. All it takes is one Youtube video that gets a decent amount of views. People will love your game and they will spread the word, and everything will take off from there. Also if you want to stop people from pirating the game, you might want to do what the Dev of Shale Hill Secrets did. The first half of the game is free, but after that point you can NOT play the game without confirming you are subscribed to his Patreon, even if the game is pirated, there is a built in confirmation in the game before it unlocks those episodes

Maybe you should set up a bundle that will include Game of Hearts and vice versa? So that people who go to Steam to check out either title, will see the other one available and now that it's part of a series, but that they can get a discount if they buy both at once? That's usually how most people decide to buy things on Steam, when it's on sale. But if you do like a lot of devs do, and just pre-bundle all the games in the series, it can help draw traffic to both titles, no matter which way they were first made aware of your work.

I don't have a lot of money but you are one of the only creators I am supporting and want this game to continue without you stressing about the future. I bumped up my membership. It's definitely worth it and I hope it helps! Keep up the amazing work and I hope you feel more at ease soon.

Hmmmm, I don’t understand why you would have a problem with growth, the first game was absolutely amazing and I’m 100% positive that the second game will be ever better, I wish listed the game in hopes that it’ll help you, I know steam opens you up to new players but I’ve never been a big fan of steam, with that said I read a couple of other people mentioned exposure and marketing, I get devs all the time emailing me mentioning/marketing other devs games, do you have any other devs that could promote your game? My last opinion, what about Itch.io, is your game advertised on there? I just purchased a game from another dev a couple of weeks ago because I didn’t want another membership, I wish there was more that I could offer but I really don’t know how all this shit works, regardless, don’t worry too much, you have a fantastic game and it should sell itself, thanks for all your hard work

I just heard that you created steam page. Will buy day one. but you really need better marketing

Added. And will purchase. It's a top tier title and deserves support.

I added it to my Wishlist and will buy it once it came out, I really like the game and it is very different than others, I think it is stand out from the rest of wvn (the render, ambiance, the whole vibe and characters), you deserve support, I'll help promoting the game on my social media. Don't be discouraged, your supporters got your back.

Unfortunately, I cannot wishlist it on Steam due to the country I reside in. Such content is filtered out.

I played Game of Hearts to the end. I thought the render quality was great from the beginning. What makes your AVN one of my favorites is the story. Maybe we don't see the pores on everyone's skin; but the environments were great, the lighting and shading were great. You also have to realize that when I'm clicking through screens, I'm not scrutinizing every detail of a render. You have to strike balances in life. We can all think of AVNs that go through constant rework and never get completed because the Dev just cant leave well enough alone.

As a player who has played a lot of games, I just wanted to say that the story is much more important than the visuals, especially since your images and animations in the first chapter of Game of Hearts are already top-notch. Since you’re so worried about your limited time, I genuinely suggest you focus more on the story rather than the images. The renders and animations are already among the top three in adult games. I wish you all the best.

If it will help, at least little bit, don't worry to much (not saying don't worry at all) about wishlist, pretty sure iam not only one who don't wishlist it (i have my reasons) , but will buy game anyway

I have been a member since May 2023. I do find your work to be of a higher quality than many other projects. While I personally would prefer not to have sandbox, meters and mini game etc in my visial novels. A auto button to click. I have made the exception for you because your story makes it worth while. I will not be wish listing and buying on Steam so appologiese in advance for that. I will continue to support you on patreon. I think you just might need to market the story and get it out there? oppaiman? cross promotions on patreon? I wish you all the best with steam and I look forward HoH.

Went on steam and wish listed it :) Don't despair and keep up the good works. Your doing a quality game !!! It will show.

I'm not currently a patron, but I have supported you before. I didn't actually realize Game of Hearts was now on Steam, and will obviously buy upon release. Wishlisted, etc etc. is it worth you doing a bit of a self promotion campaign?

Wishlisted. It's kind of a bummer to me that your game, which is unique (to me), isn't as popular as the gerneric adult storylines we see in other games. I don't think you're paranoid and can see your concerns. That said, I'm here for as long as I'm breathing so keep up the stellar work and take care of yourself!

I cannot add your games to my wishlist or buy them on steam, because they aren't available in my country.

Thank you for the suggestions and advice. There is a good chance that I am just being paranoid; I really, really want this to work out. I recognize that I have neglected a lot of things that support a truly successful project, and I've made plans to help with it in the future. My limited time hampers what I can do besides all the necessary stuff not named production, which is the cog in the wheel that I'm currently missing. I'm barely catching up with season 2 work as-is. I think this post and the previous one are a wake-up call to me personally. I have to change how I approach this project and general, and treat it closer to a business than a mere passion project.

Thank you for reminding me, I need to go wishlist GoH on Steam.

Hello. I can clearly see your passion and attention to detail and I loved the first season. So I hope you can continue on. However I would tell you that, not being a paid member at the moment I didn’t even now that you had a steam page until this post because your previous one about this was not public and I didn’t see it at the time. Also, I think it would help if you would post about this on multiple plateforms multiple times to have more chances for people to see it. I know it is easier said that done ;). Wishing you success.

I think as far as analytics go, if you compare yourself to devs that started around the same time you did (early 2023), you're one of the few that actually managed to break through the 2k monthly barrier. In addition, your patreon witnessed consistent growth while you were releasing content (i.e. more people subscribed to your patreon with each new update you put out, so no stagnation or decline there). I do understand the quality of work you put out deserves higher remuneration, so the frustration is understandable.

I follow from up close the development of several AVNs, many of those released on Steam. One thing they all have in common are the atrocious wishlist numbers. I don't know exactly why the numbers are always so low. Probably because there's no way to obscure the games in your wishlist while you can make the games you bought private, but that's just baseless speculation on my side. Right now the game doesn't even have a set release date, just a generic "2025". That means Steam is not promoting it, since it's not approaching release. Wishlist numbers increase dramatically in the weeks before the actual release, so make sure there's at least 1 month between when you set the release date and the actual release. That gives Steam the time to spread the word and people are much more inclined to wishlist something they know when they'll get it. You also have the advantage of releasing a completed game, while the majority of games in this genre are releasing in early access. This has several advantages: people generally prefer to buy completed games; Steam advertise completed games much more; early access games are excluded from several ranked lists; completed games are much easier to find and stumble upon than early release games Finally keep in mind that the vast majority of sales will come from impulse buys. Not many people actually plans to play this sort of games months ahead of time. Hopefully I've made you a bit less anxious. I've seen my fair share of Steam release and no games with this quality level had less than a spectacular release.

Does saves carry over

I added your game to my wishlist a long time ago 🙂 But I still want to say this: even if you don’t consider yourself a marketing expert, you should try reaching out to other developers and promote each other’s games. Cross-promotion can really help more people discover your game—this is based on what I’ve seen from other developers' experiences. This is just my suggestion, but I think it’s worth considering. Wishing your game success on Steam!