Help! Why did my game not manage any concurrent players?

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

DoomSpire Gunbattle💥[MODDED]💥 - Roblox
I created a doomspire spin-off game, as I have had a lot of failures with games, I saw this as a much easier approach. This genre is rather large despite having few games, so this was attempt at getting in on it.

Here are examples of the players other doomspire games hold.

Design of the game:

In my version of doomspire, every player has a pistol, The pistol itself is from the roblox endorsed weapons kit, a modified version.

On the left side of the screen, an emerald GUI shows how many emeralds you have. Every time you KO a player, you gain an emerald.

This concept is explained to the player when they join

With emeralds, you can buy potions and guns from shops on the map.
Every tower has 4 shops,

Each shop offers 3 products, Potions or guns
Potions:

Guns:

Mobile users have a shift lock GUI button, and all users have a RUN GUI button, though you can sprint with shift on the keyboard.
There is a prompt to invite friends at the top of the screen, something other doomspire games use

There are only 2 Gamepasses, Both have a GUI on the right side of the screen that can prompt purchase.

The game plays like normal doomspire, knock out every spawn to win the game.

Advertising:

I have a small budget, My only goal was to get the game running enough that I could actually build off it. I would’ve been sastified with 10 concurrent players if it meant having a playerbase.
For 1000 and 800 robux, I barely got 300 clicks total

My main advertising was buying a sponsor slot for the game,
For 2,200 robux, I got terrible results from sponsoring

The games thumbnail:

This was my average visit length:

I used these badges to promote the game off profiles

I mention again the invite friends button, people could find the game through invites

After all this advertising and the day coming to an end, I have 0 active players.

And so the most players I had at once appears to be 12 or so.

I thought my game had an interesting concept and was unique, most other doomspire mod games have one or two new additions and sell out on gamepasses. One of them has literal ads playing in the skybox, I didn’t want to sell out that much.

While I was playing, most people I chatted with ingame seemed to really enjoy it, I was typing this I had the game open, I switched tabs upon hearing a noise and saw a player from earlier had rejoined. So I do know for a fact people DID enjoy this game and were not bored,

So now the main question, WHERE ARE THE PLAYERS? I advertised the game, Players enjoyed it, People rejoined multiple times, I didn’t sell out or shove ads in the players faces, the game has a concept other doomspires don’t have. What happened? How do I do better?

The players that joined seemed to very much enjoy it! Were my ads not catchy enough and thus didn’t bring in enough players?

Any help at all is super appreciated

Edit: Thanks everybody for the insight

[Megalodox_Official (Jevangelise)]

It’s certainly not a bad try for your first games, but you seriously need to understand that, with a meme icon and screenshot ads that leads to a recreation of a 2008 game with blocky generic UIs you’re not going to gain a lot of fans.
Even if you get the most attractive GFXes for the icon and ads you still won’t get many players as the game itself isn’t the best. I’m sorry.
Try not to invest too much money into the marketing until the gameplay itself is up to quality!

[headhooligan (hooligan)]

Hey man, I think this is a good starter game, but like PDF said, it definitely is lacking quite a bit, and spin off games generally dont do great unless they’re super polished and or unique. Also to really gain concurrent players that amount of ad money isnt really enough imo.

[Triler500]

both posts above are really good, you also need to note that making a spinoff agame, you are competing with the people that play the others, if your game doesent have something unique to offer that will make people come back, they wont. About promotion tho, you should look to promote your game on youtube or tiktok, it usualy works better than roblox adds.

[sussy_bacoo]

i mean, the ui is pretty low quaility, its always about first impressions. i personally won’t play a game when i see free models or poorly made icons, i won’t be interested in the gameplay but how the game looks, now heres some ideas for changing your GUI:

lose the emerald and get a better png, most of the emeralds in images are stretched out, and make them consistent in everything.

the default while make a bad backgorund, try grey, easier on the eyes, same goes for the buy button (make the buy text bold or stand out)

make the guis round, nothing can go wrong with round stuff.

lose the clash royale king image and make the button have an thicker outline, and try make your fonts match or the same color at least.

about it for now, ask me if you have any questions

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

I was less stressed about the UI as long as the game played good, I’m certain the UI wasn’t the problem because the other doomspire-modded games UI is freshly pasted from the toolbox, yet those games manage thousands of players in a day.

im terrible at UI design,

I realize the emeralds are stretched, I have a really long monitor and they looked good for me, but I understand it probably looks stretched to hell on smaller screens. I don’t really know how to fix this myself

The two gamepass buttons (emeralds,emotes) Were the same color, and had no icons, I changed the colors and put the king image to make the buttons flashier, in a last ditch attempt to make 1% of my robux back. I’ll probably change them back

While I don’t believe the UI is a problem, I’ll take advice where it fits and ill definitely change it up to be easier to look at

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

if your game doesent have something unique to offer that will make people come back, they wont.

Well the whole point was that it was a shooter, none of the other doomspire-modded games do this.

I do realize I need to use tiktok, I generally gave up on that because of past expierences with using it, I would spend hours making like 10 ads a day and barely scrape 100 views. It’s all up to luck with tiktok. Maybe I should pay a youtuber to play? Anyways thanks

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

but you seriously need to understand that, with a meme icon and screenshot ads that leads to a recreation of a 2008 game with blocky generic UIs you’re not going to gain a lot of fans.

I was trying to catch this games hype bus, in particular

They run no sponsors or ads and can manage 2000 a day, The game itself is the same mod-base as mine except with like 1 extra function and maxed out gamepasses. That is why I figured this would be a no brainer game to make

But I’ll take responsibility where it’s due, I realize now my game is actually pretty terrible gameplay wise, And I could put in effort to improve it. But as far as doomspire standards go I was thinking I would atleast pull like 50 players max. Anyways Thanks

[NotFrindow (Frindow)]

The first impression of your game is the most important, it determines if the player will play your game again, the reason your sponsored ad isn’t getting clicked on is because the icon looks low quality and makes it seem like the game isn’t worth playing.

When I first joined the game the first thing I noticed was the horrendous interface and the free model gun. The entire game is literally doomspire brickbattle but you have a gun instead of a slingshot. Why play this game when you can play super doomspire or the original doomspire brickbattle?

You need to make the interface look more modern, get better thumbnails and icons for the game and you might see a difference in players.

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

The entire game is literally doomspire brickbattle but you have a gun instead of a slingshot.

Not cool dude!! I spent like 5 days making the potions alone! lol jks I realize its pretty devoid of uniqueness on first impressions. Well your the second person to point out horrendous UI, I swore it looked good for my screen, I didn’t have any offset on anything so I thought it would fit on every other screen. Do you have any advice yourself for the UI? I’m probably going to shade everything one color

[goblinc0re (Quandavius)]

free model gun

I don’t think the average player even knows what a free model is so I thought that would slide. I see a lot of front page games right now are using free models and even the same free model gun kit.

Well I could definitely rewrite a gun system but It feels pointless because the average player is young/on mobile and doesn’t care where the gun came from as long as its in the game lol

[NotFrindow (Frindow)]

For the shop instead of having the price inside of the button you should have it listed below it and have all of the shop entires in a scrolling frame with the image, title, and price all in one frame. Instead of using the default roblox border for gui elements you should consider using UICorner or UIStroke, this makes it look a little more modern and professional.

Here’s an example of what I mean with the shop gui:

The price is at the bottom of the entry, you could put the title at the top and the image in the middle.

Here’s a great tutorial on designing good gui from scratch.

[PANDASonNOOB (BurgerNFries)]

late reply moment but

temporary currency doesn’t seem like that enticing for a doomspire-like game which has really short rounds (especially since you would have to actually THINK about what is best to buy, not something your 10 yr old would wanna do when playing a funi roblox game, atleast not if i was the 10 yr old)

might be just me but personally I wouldn’t play that game simply due to the emerald system

also im gonna assume like half your players wouldn’t even find the shops lol

also just saying, of the examples you pointed out, atleast 3 of them have revamped most of the entire game, and all of them are before 2021 (pretty sure the big part of the trend died out and its only the older games that already have players thats still going strong)