Anyone have any advice for making a game more known?

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#1

Let’s dive in.

On October 10th, @iiau and I released a new game called “Forest Tails”. It’s currently in an open beta state (meaning that the game is not finished). Though the game isn’t finished, we’ve never before had problems with getting players to join our games, such as Sundown Island. When Sundown Island released, we spent approximately 40k on both advertisements and sponsorships and earned over 1k players, despite it being a small wolf roleplay game with little to no features.

When Forest Tails released (a game that already has much more to do than Sundown Island), we only obtained a maximum of 400 players within the past 2 days. Yeah, Roblox went down, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that Sundown Island has not been updated for 6 months, and still sustained an average player count of 500.

Forest Tails - Roblox - Forest Tails
[🌈Update!!] 🐶 Sundown Island - Roblox - Sundown Island

I’ve been reading up on the Devforums that the best way to get people to play your game is through sponsorships. However, I have been going through the Roblox website for about 40 minutes… And I’m still yet to see one sponsorship? I remember sponsorships in the past, such as when Sundown Island came out, to be much more widespread (I remember seeing a sponsorship every 6th game or so). This helped the game to become much more successful. Now, I’m just kind of stuck on making Forest Tails more known. I know the game doesn’t have nearly as many features as it will in the future, but when compared to other games such as @Phini 's Claws, Sundown Island, or @Maliceowo 's Furana, I really don’t think this game should’ve done as bad as it did.

I’d like to know some input on how much money should be spent on advertisements and sponsorship (I only spent around 4k robux on ads, as I had no issue relying on sponsorships in the past), where sponsored games are found, and perhaps some tips as to what can be done to make this game more known.

Some things I’ve tried are changing the game’s icon, spending 30k+ on sponsorships (didn’t work, and upon further investigation I couldn’t even find any sponsored games on the Roblox game page), reading up on stats (I found that 50% of the playerbase are mobile players, so the game is optimized), and spending around 4k robux on advertisements.

Thanks.

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#2

I’d like to emphasize that 400 players may seem like a good thing to a lot of people, but I’m comparing this game’s initial release to how previous games I’ve released went (such as Sundown Island). It almost feels like it’s become a lot harder to make your game more known.

#3

Sponsors point:

Sponsors are much less common than in 2017 in my experience, and they really only work for younger players. (Some younger players can’t even see the “Sponsored Game” banner but I never click sponsored games.)

I’d invest more on ads and social media.

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#4

Everyday is different, exposure of your ads and sponsors are determined by the competition in the pool of advertisements. You also have to consider other games updating like Adopt Me.

So how do you make your game more known? Well, it really just comes down to the quality of your game and how enjoyable it is.

I’m not too sure in the genre you’re competing in but if you see other pre-existing games similar to yours ensure that your game is 100% better, quality, performance and make sure to reach out to every single platform.

If your game is fun, word will spread quick. I’ve spent nothing on advertisements or sponsorship and was able to reach 15,000 concurrent players overnight on YouTube advertisements and spread of word.

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