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Crunching the numbers - Komadori Inn Devlog #9
🕑 Added 2024-04-17 17:44:09 +0000 UTCHello players!
let's start with a gentle reminder to download and try our demo, which is now available on itch.io (although if you're reading this, you've probably already played it).
In the last devlog, I expressed my joy at the fact that Komadori Inn is finally becoming a game instead of the scattered pieces of mechanics and graphics that we have been working on for the last year, and this demo, mentioned at the beginning, is the culmination of the work of recent months. So let's take a look at what has been done.
First touches
In order for the demo to be released, we still had to touch a lot of new areas in addition to gluing together what we already had. It will be difficult to write extensively about them, because the demo itself is not very long, but we finally got to know our MC and a few additional characters a little better with the first cutscenes! And although there will be time for the backstory and finding out "what it's all about", it was nice to finally write the first longer dialogues. And let's not forget that in the intro we finally saw the first animated and sounded scene! This is actually the first thing of this type that we have ever done (animation and implementation) and judging by the lack of negative comments - I think it turned out quite well.
Fuyuko's little "onsen moment" is the first animation in Spine2D we've made and implemented in our game.
The animation itself was created much earlier, so I won't go into details, but I will only mention that preparing it in Spine2D took me about 40 hours - not counting preparation for export and implementation documentation for Mugenji. But as I mentioned, it was the first one I did, had to learn a lot on the go and the next ones went more smoothly (e.g. about 30 hours for handjob animation for 3 characters).
By the way, I'm thinking about streaming this somewhere when I work on the next animations. Let me know in the comment if you would be interested in such content!
Fixes, improvements...
Mugenji and I spent a lot of time testing and finding everything that wasn't working the way we wanted it to. We try to give each released element its final shape and refinement at the very beginning, which may be why we release new versions a little slower, but we know that you get a better quality game from the start, and at the end of development we do not have to endure the long months of tedious, burning-out polishing (as happened with "Long and Hard... Summer!").
At some point I stopped counting, but between versions 0.0.3 and 0.0.4 (the demo made available to Patrons) there were well over 70 fixes alone, and that's only counting the ones that Mugenji and I passed between us.
After version 0.0.4 was released, we also received some messages regarding improvements that we could make, so we did. And once we were happy with how "Komadori Inn" looked, we released version 0.1.0, known to everyone as our first beta demo.
Portraits for NPCs was one of the improvements suggested by our Patron. They make dialogue flow much better. Thank you again, Esteban! <3
So, how did we do?
TL:DR; good, I guess?
Looking at all the numbers, we have a bit of mixed feelings. On the one hand, we are happy: the demo was warmly received, we see a lot of positive comments, and the negative ones are related to the fact that the demo is too short, so that's very, very good. On the other hand, we were counting on a much better first week than "LaHS!" had, in terms of the number of page views and downloads, but the truth is: we did a bit worse.
Long and Hard... Summer!
Dec 11 - Dec 17 2021
Total views: 24 326
Downloads: 4 433
Download ratio: 18,22%
Komadori Inn
Apr 6 - Apr 12 2024
Total views: 21 983
Downloads: 2 617
Download ratio: 11,90%
The download-to-visit ratio is worse almost twice. Ouch.
Please don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. "Komadori Inn" numbers are still pretty good. We managed to get to the "New and Popular" section, and then to the main "Popular" page as well. We still got plenty of good feedback, and some good souls even gave us a tip through itch <3. But it got us worried a bit and thinking: why did we do worse than with LaHS, given that now we have a base of followers and fans that we didn't 3 years ago?
Of course, we can only guess. I have several theories and maybe one, all or none of them are true.
First: With "Komadori Inn" we informed much more clearly that we were offering a DEMO for download. I remember that when the LaHS demo was released, many people were confused as to why the game was ending so quickly and how to unlock the rest of the content that we were advertising for the game. This time (probably) no one had any doubts about the nature of the release and maybe that's why many people decided to hold off (because they don't play demos)?
Second: There are many more porn games being released today than there were three years ago, the market is saturated and something more than just animation and voice acting is needed to stand out and encourage people to play.
Three: We did a lousy job and the Komadori Inn just looks worse.
Of course, these three theories may complement each other, or maybe all three are worthless. It would be great if you let me know what you think. Especially if you think we could do something better.
Moving on to the next numbers we can attack nicer ones. Probably more pleasant because we can't compare them with LaHS. 😅
More numbers
The first of them are new additions to the Wishlists on Steam and during the first week of the demo on itch, exactly 1,000 of players added us to their WLs! This is a great result, improved by the fact that for a while Steam itself started promoting us in the "Trending Wishlists" section, which we didn't even know existed. Compared to 175 wishlists from the previous week, that's great!
(btw, if you still haven't added us to your Steam wishlist, please do now 🙏)
We can't really compare it with LaHS because Komadori Inn has one advantage - traffic from the LaHS steam page. But just for the sake of trivia, LaHS was placed on 306 wishlists during its first week with the demo on Itch.
Lastly, one more number for which we would like to thank you very much. Since releasing the demo, many new people have started supporting us and our number of Patrons has almost tripled!
It means so much to us. Not only do you show that you like what we do, but you also give us your trust and help finance more illustrations for "Komadori Inn". We don't want to disappoint you and we hope you enjoy the next updates.
Speaking of updates...
Regardless of the numbers, we keep working! There's still some time until the next version of "Komadori Inn". In addition to the fixes, we are introducing another complex and very important system to the game, but I wrote more about it in the article "What to expect in the 0.1.1 version (and a few after)". In the meantime, stay safe, stay hydrated and stay awesome!
Bye bye~
Macamagucha
Comments
Macamagucha
Thank you for that! :)
zTribalX
So what i think so far.. Personally i enjoy the Game and don't mind the tasks we have to do. I think the numbers aren't bad considering the Game does't have a real H-Scene with the MC and it's not a Fap and forget game. I mean alot of people just download a demo do "Skip unseen text" and just rush trough for the H-Scenes wich is simply not possible in Komadori Inn. Now just an idea, im no expert or anything those are just my 2 cents: -First When the next ver. with a H-Scene including the MC releases i wouldn't mind if you also give it as a Demo including "a Part" of the Scene aswell like a mean little cliffhanger this might give some new supporters / Buyers wich want to see how the Scene ends. ( I know cliffhangers are mean but they also keep an audiece ) -Second Maybe do an "Easy Mode" for tasks, personally i find the task quite enjoyable because i actually have to do something. I was a bit supprised about the jump from Tuturial to first day tho. For example, i think it was Correct 2 words in tutorial to 10 words afterwards wich might turn away some people. Instead of making it 10 words make it 5 to correct or something like that.
