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Wolf21~4Y
I've been absent for a quite a while (though I suppose recent years I've definitely been more absent than not) and I'm not sure I have a specific reason as to why. I think everyone grows and evolves and sometimes that means they become distant to things they once were really connected to.

That aside, I did do some marketing work in recent years and can maybe offer some insights into what you're seeing here. I may be completely off the mark but from what I've seen, Alora Fane the website is a fairly closed system. The only major link from outside that I can see is from Twitter, and click-throughs from Twitter are likely quite rare because you're offering an abbreviated version of your updates there. Which is fine! In face you can see that overall your Twitter has been slowly gaining more and more interest (albeit slowly, but that's how things go), and while that's sure to swing downwards sometimes the overall trend over time will be upwards.

While there's definitely a relationship between having a fanbase or a significant presence online it's not the crux of whether or not a game does well or badly. There's some marketing, a bit of hard work, and a lot of luck.

When you were launching games on platforms like Kongregate you had an easy way for word of mouth to spread, and an easy way for people to find your games- which rose well above the muck on those sorts of sites, and you had an established fanbase on your forums who would all give you the 'views' or 'plays' and ratings to give you a lot of movement. As you're aware now, it's a completely different game with Steam and launching a game today.

There are ways of doing free marketing campaigns, but they're a lot of effort with no real guaranteed return. Heck, even costly marketing campaigns are no guarantee of gaining a lot of interest in a product. You have a good website and some SEO nonsense might help a bit but even that won't be amazing because there aren't a whole lot of people searching for indie games on google when there are other stores and platforms to find games through. As you know from the Twitter indie dev scene, it's really hard to market an indie game without an established presence, capital, or a gimmick that makes live-streamers want to play it.

Discord is a good option, but you're right about needing moderators and people that you trust. I feel like you have that here these days though, people like Mania who you have a rapport with and are attentive and level headed (I'm sure there are others, he just leaps out to me- though I have no idea whether he'd want to do that). The informality of a discord might attract some more people, or it might stay like this - a small knit community of people who genuinely are interested in your work.

What you should put stock in is your work. There's always going to be a possibility that you'll fail to meet your goals, to not do as well as you hope or plan for, but you can't let that dissuade you.

I think the timing of a demo- if you were to do one- would be critical. I think you should finish the game first, maybe even get some people to playtest and give feedback so you can polish it as much as you can, then do a demo a month or so before release. Having as good, and as polished, a game as possible is the best way forward, and making multiple smaller games going forward would start to bring back that fanbase you had and increase the chances of gaining more widespread attention (I think Sindrel Song was probably a bit 'off the beaten path' for widespread success). Having a good plan for release, or for the period of time leading up to release is key to 'finishing strong' and releasing with as much momentum as you can.

I genuinely wish you the best of luck. I really like what I've seen of Atonal Dreams so far, and I think it has a lot of appeal while being really unique. I might not visit here as much as I should but I will definitely be buying Atonal Dreams wherever and whenever it is released.
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Tobias 1099~4Y
It seemed as if essentially all of the audience were people who were once Fig Hunter members, or at least people who played MARDEK when they were young, for whom being a part of that community or playing that game was a big part of their formative years. I know websites like this aren't exactly going to be drawing in huge new audiences due to how the internet works these days, but this gets to me because I released the MARDEK port to Steam hoping the existing audience might become more excited about the spiritual successor that I was working on, but the dip in views here soon after that suggests most people don't care about anything other than that specific experience that they grew up with. So releasing the port had the opposite effect I'd hoped for, and it feels like the advantage I had over unknown indie devs is lost, so now I have to face the same challenges of getting noticed that everyone else who's just starting out does. Maybe.

Marketing is going to be a huge ordeal, and I'm really going to need to properly research it this time. I've already learned quite a bit from passive observations this year, but I'll need to devote myself to it for a while, and I'll need all the help I can get from whoever's willing to offer their wisdom for free since I have a budget of nothing so I can't exactly pay for a marketing campaign. It's all incredibly daunting. I'm not aiming for millions of sales or anything, but if I could get 1000 or so, that'd be amazing.

Mania said he doesn't want to be a moderator! I should probably choose moderators sooner rather than later though. Maybe I'll ask again on the weekend if anyone wants to join from here, then maybe I could grow the invite-only community a bit, choose moderators from it, and finally open the public doors.

Are you basing the suggestion about demo timing on data you're familiar with? I've read and seen a lot of conflicting information about that. I had the idea to release a short demo - which would only really contain some battles to fight - early so then I could tweak the mechanics according to use feedback before progressing further, to make sure I'm actually making something fun before wasting more months on it. Plus it seemed like if there was a demo available for most of the development, then I could push people to it for months. The aim would be to get them to wishlist the game, so when it was released they'd be informed and would hopefully buy it. This seems to be what a lot of indie devs do, from what I've seen, though I'll need to research what's actually effective rather than what seems common at a glance.
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Wolf21~4Y
I was never here for Mardek- I always loved the community, and looked up to you, I felt it had so much to offer and in the early days I thought nearly everyone was wonderful. But then, I was quite young and I was probably the one who irritated others (yourself probably included). I think I coincidentally stopped visiting nearly as often once Mardek was released but it wasn't related to that in any way- though I suppose I don't really have a specific reason- though I did move cities and get a new job around that time. In any case, from my intimate knowledge of a single one of your viewers here, I know for a fact that Mardek didn't have an effect, so you should definitely chalk it up to coincidence, or something... Yes.

I based my comment about demo timing on a few things, a game I kickstarted, a few early access alpha / beta games that released as demos before moving to a paid release, as well as some less related software demos that were mistimed and then rendered far less effective. So it's definitely just my opinion and not anything really concrete. Oh, also the Beast Signer alpha build you did back in the day, I noticed a massive spike in membership on the forums when that was made public, but the attention it drew over the following months diminished significantly (when I think you were still actively working on the game... though I'm not sure as I think I beta tested that one so my timeline might be off) - but that one is more of a 'what I remember noticing on the forums while having a poor memory'.

That's a good idea regarding the demo encouraging people to wishlist the game. I just fear that some will lose interest over time if development takes longer than expected- but again my experience of that is subjective and probably related to when I experienced tangentially related issues when working in marketing.

If you still have the email addresses of people's Fighunter accounts, depending on how you feel about it, you might be able to send a pensive, 'I know you're probably not interested these days, but I've got a demo of my game' email. Then, with fingers crossed, you might have a small portion of those former members coming to look at the demo.
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