Hello,
I am a solo developer and i’ve worked on my game for 4 years and now after publishing it and doing a sponsor it made me absolute 0 robux and it doesn’t seem to attract players.
i would appreciate any opinions as it really hurts to waste 4 years of your life for nothing.
Game Link : 🔥UNCATCHABLE🔥 Car Racing🏎️ [ALPHA] - Roblox
4 Likes
I’m in a similar boat for one of my projects, but advertising is the biggest step when publishing. I only see around 500 visits to your game despite your icon and thumbnail looking really well polished. I would probably say that you might have not used enough credits when sponsoring your game. There are several other options but I think sponsoring is the most efficient way
On the other hand, I’ve heard about different amounts and several days of sponsoring so you might need to do more research. If you’ve already done all of that and have seen the statistics, then you might need to contact someone in customer service to investigate why your game isn’t performing well. But if its related to the costs then I’m not sure what you can do because advertising can become expensive t get your game off the ground from what I’ve researched
3 Likes
Did you enjoy developing it and learning new skills:
If so, no
If not, yes
12 Likes
I will say though that I tried your game and although the user experience isn’t something I would gravitate to for other factors, I think the mechanics and concept of your game are on par with an early Jailbreak so I think the problem is not your game concept or player retention. This might be an advertisement issue
1 Like
This game is targetting a very specific demographic, which means success needs a large amount of advertising to even get close to a playerbase. This is also a very saturated genre, try and think of something in your game that stands out from the others and make that your selling point.
What I would do is call this a learning experience and move on, either cling onto this game for a year or use that year for a new idea, you’d be surprised how much you can do in a year.
3 Likes
The game is good, reminds me of Vsim. Although you just sponsored it, you didn’t post anything on YouTube? Or even TikTok? There’s tons of free ways that actually work better than sponsorships. So no I don’t think you wasted 4 years of your life, you just had unrealistic expectations.
2 Likes
To begin, the game page:
Well, I’ll say this; the usage of AI certainly isn’t helping you get players, and I don’t think companies will enjoy the official BMW and Porsche branding in your one singular thumbnail and icon that doesn’t display what the game has to offer at all or even resemble the games visuals.
To me, the game page seems good except for the use of AI, and since the AI is being used and really I have no idea what the game has to offer, I’d personally avoid it (not playing it and thus not earning you any money)
What you should do is get some actual gameplay screenshots, then use photo editing programs/websites (such as Photopea) to make the thumbnails more pretty, or just creating renders in software such as Blender and then again, using photo editing to make it look better.
For the game page alone, just actually display what the game has to offer instead of creating misleading, unappealing AI generated icons and thumbnails.
In terms of gameplay:
Honestly, it seemed really good until I reached this part in the tutorial:
What you should do is go through each menu 1 at a time to avoid overwhelming the player, plus the player would be more familiar with the menu if you went one by one.
As for playtime rewards, which I had no idea existed until I saw the notification, the icons are a little confusing. For 2 minutes I got 500 cash but it displays a time icon.
Then, when I pressed shift to drift (since its a standard keybind for roblox games, but props to making it spacebar, I like that) I got something I really disliked.
Why. Just why. NOS should be a car upgrade, not a gamepass.
Then, I went to drive to the garage, and out of no where my game got stuck on loading content.
This alone would make many people just leave because it is a bug and literally makes the game completely unplayable.
Upon rejoining, I got another 30k and the tutorial restarted even though I already had a car and was supposed to go to the garage. And I can confirm, this is an infinite money glitch.
I also dislike that your music volume settings do not save.
As for the time trials, its insanely difficult to know where to go (there’s just a single line that goes to the goal), maybe try adding “ghost” cars to show you where to go, or just obvious checkpoints.
Once you’re out of the city, the map just gets really empty.
Another thing I dislike is how close to the ground the camera is, makes it hard to drive.
And another thing you REALLY shouldn’t do is tell the player “they need a boost” at random points in the game with an unclosable UI and then push them into the currency purchasing shop. I quit at that point.
Things I personally liked:
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The car controls and physics. (although the cars are way too fast)
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The actually detailed areas of the map are somewhat pleasant to drive through, given if I could drive slowly.
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The game actually runs well
Things that could actually impact player experience, retention and money earned:
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The lack of a full-screen map, or if there is one, the difficulty in finding it. Finding anything to engage yourself in the game is difficult.
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The popup that brings you into the shop at random. Remove it. Imagine it opening mid race an you lose because it takes up your whole screen. Telling players that they need to spend money will do the complete opposite of what you want it to do and more.
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Some monetization strategies such as selling NOS as a gamepass.
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The lack of guidance and telling the player where to actually go in time trials and maybe races (I didn’t get to try races so I don’t know if they could be different)
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The tutorial and how lacking it is in telling you important things in a way you’ll actually remember them if it tells you them at all.
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Earning money is way too easy, I got from 30k to 140k in about 20 minutes of only driving or less, no reason to buy money if it can be earned this easily and no point playing the game for long if I can get every car in an hour or two.
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The use of generative AI for the icons, and maybe the description too now that I re-read it. The icon and thumbnail at minimum need to be replaced if you want to try pulling in more players, the description is good enough for now, but may be better with altered formatting.
My personal issues:
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The UI. Its too big and intrusive.
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The sounds for every car, they don’t sound beefy at all and if I’m not mistaken you’ve just used 1 sound globally for all cars.
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The lack of a manual gear shifting toggle.
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The speed of the cars. Too fast.
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The inclusion of the worst vehicle known to man made by the worst person on this planet, the Cybertruck.
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The bland lighting and bland map
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There’s not exactly many cars to choose from and I’m not sure if you can upgrade them or not because the tutorial didn’t tell me anything about upgrades.
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The games visuals are kind-of all over the place with the free-model realistic trees and bushes you’ve used alongside a map that’s no where near as detailed.
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The UI is just plain ugly. It looks very dated, primarily the speedometer, its an entirely different style to the rest of the UI, and same with the money text at the top of the screen while driving.
14 Likes
hey just saying small bug in the game if your in the car and your typing and you press e it exits the car. the fix i think would be is when they press e the second argument (if your using inputs) is GameProccessEvent which basically means is press because of its a shortcut or someonings chatting so at the top of the script just add
if GameProccessEvent then return end
also another bug:
when driving the 6th car if our drift it would randomly start hopping/bouncing and if you stop moving it begins back fliping and front fliping
video -
sorry about the lag i had BING, ROBLOX, OBS, ROBLOX studio open at the same time and it lags out.
my rating would be 7/10 fun car driving i love the drift i can do 360 with it. But theirs a few bugs that get anouying.
1 Like
its unrated man. that just might be why nobody is playing it.
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This might seem obvious but maybe you should have let people play test your game first because as I’ve seen from these other comments(very helpful and insightful comments), it seems like you released the full game with tons of bugs and issues
3 Likes
Random Thoughts:
–What Chark_Proto had said, pretty much summed up my experience as well and would be a great starting point with where to proceed next.
–Also, it reminds me of this game, but with your more modern car:
Street Culture: World
–To your point though, I would say It wasn’t a waste, but a good experience that you can apply on future projects.
2 Likes
Thank you for your reply, but let’s be honest there are some details that doesn’t affect earning capability. Just by looking around popular games in roblox, i can critize a million thing yet they succeded.
The big mistake i’ve done is taking a big project all by myself.
Thank you Chark and everyone who commented and i hope the best for all.
You can fix every problem I listed with minimal effort, and if the game got fixed it’d be a pretty good car game on roblox.
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Recycle minimap code into a fullscreen map (just zoom it out to the max) and add a button to open it on the minimap.
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Delete the “you need a boost” popup code
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Remove the gamepass check for NOS and make it an expensive upgrade instead
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I’d imagine you’re using checkpoints in races, so just make your next checkpoint visible and boom, you’ve fixed the guidance.
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Change some values in your code to slightly lower how much money you earn from driving
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Just play the game and take some screenshots in nice places, if needed just place some fake cars around the map to make it look more populated for the screenshots.
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Honestly if you just changed out the speedometer and the transparency of the money earned text, the UI would be decent enough
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Car sounds would be a little more difficult to tackle as I dont know where to find sounds, its not impossible though!
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Again, modify some values somewhere to slow down the cars top speed and acceleration
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You can either keep or remove the cybertruck, either one wont change anything, not like anyone was actually gonna buy it
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Look up some lighting tutorials, add a day/night cycle if there isn’t one and use the atmosphere instance
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Variance in races was the problem with the lack of cars, simply just add more cars in content updates.
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Just find some slightly lower detail trees and shrubs and replace the existing ones. Brushtool is a good plugin to place foliage if you’re stressed about manually placing everything.
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Again, just update the speedometer and the money earned text.
Quite literally almost every single fix there is just altering something small. You haven’t wasted 4 years, you have a potentially good game with just a handful of smaller issues that are really easy to fix.
You will have wasted 4 years if you aren’t bothered fixing them, but if you are, congrats on the good car game.
1 Like
What are your play times looking like once you get people in to the game? I always leave a barebones almost playable version as an Alpha open to people to discover and for the algorithm to pickup. Over the course of a few months it gets worked on further until a slow release with vids. Some fail, some succeed (but never massively so).
Remember that first impressions count. I think you are missing some fundamental prettiness that everyone expects now.
- The beam to the car shop is solid, perhaps a nice texture
- The part to open the Dealership UI is a plain Neon part. Perhaps some Transparency and particle effects could make it look nicer.
- Perhaps make up some names for the cars to differentiate them
- In a Tutorial, I try to introduce new elements to the player slowly over a period of time. Slowly building their knowledge of how the game works and its features.
- Again the destination beam is solid and seems uninspired. Texture or at least a bit of Transparency please.
- If find consistency in UI Exit/Back buttons positions/colouring/style makes me happy.
- It would be good to be able to open a full Map to see points of interest
- I found it impossible to reset or right the car once I had flipped. When I tried to respawn it, it respawned upside down. Once I managed to get a vehicle not spawning upside down, I couldnt drive/ Took a few attempts to get it to do so.
- The cash UI when driving is right where my view point is and the UI for it looks fairly basic
- Time trial/race points of interest need to be more visible from a distance. It took me a little while to find exactly where the TT was when I could see it near me on the map
- We need frequent waypoints to show us where to go. You know the route, cos you made it. The rest of the world however has no idea where that beam ends.
The above and every other piece of feedback from others is just feedback. What you have achieved as a solo dev is amazing. You just need to polish it a little and then keep players interested.
Don’t get disheartened but come back stronger with a little more polish. Good luck.
2 Likes
Oh, I might also just add to this part, the only reason they succeed isn’t because they’re good and they don’t fail because they’re bad, they only “succeed” because they’re designed to be addicting and to be as appealing to younger players as possible.
Of course, vehicle games don’t have the same effect, so any small issue on a vehicle game can and will impact player retention much more than the same issue would on say Pet Simulator.
You really should keep working on your game, dude. It 100% has potential, as I said its just a few very small issues that are insanely easy to fix holding it back from its potential.
1 Like
Considering that you only got 900 visits from the sponsor, it was likely too small to begin with. You need a relatively large sponsor to get enough (good enough) stats to get recommended by the algorithm.
Except for that, you also learnt skills that you could absolutely use elsewhere
Looking at this data, I can garantee you 6 credits aint enough for anything. Furthermore, that CTR and play rate isn’t exactly ideal either, you should consider getting a more attractive thumbnail.
They succeed not because they’re “good” or “flawless”, its because they know exactly how they should market and what features does/doesn’t need to be perfected. There really is a lot of "secret formula"s that affect a game in ways that you wouldn’t expect (this is also the reason why some slop games succeed while others dont although they may look almost identical)
3 Likes