Our team is developing a game called WillyEdison’s Microgames, a collection of 1-minute games we call “microgames”. At this time, we have 12 different microgames, from hide and seek, escaping a randomly-generated maze to evading bananas launched from a cannon operated by a monkey. After each round, players return to the lobby, where they have a short intermission before voting for the next game.
We have been developing this game for quite some time, but we are struggling to market our game to a wider audience, and when people do play (usually through sponsorships we’ve used before), they don’t tend to return. We can’t get the player counts to appear on the Free Private Servers sort, and our game does not appear on Search even when typing the exact name of the game.
As game developers, what would you suggest we do for our game, in order to make it easier for players to find, or retain players who do find it?
Thank you for any advice you can provide!
Here’s the link for our game, WillyEdison’s Microgames:
I suggest you take a look at Youtube Kids, look for the common theme among all the thumbnails, and then take that into consideration when designing your front page.
I have a couple tips for you though, so I won’t leave you without a defined direction:
Make your game’s name more memorable. Something like “WillyEdison’s Microgames” doesn’t seem that memorable to me, and if your username changed, players who try to come back won’t be able to find it (if you did change the game’s name alongside that). You can simply ask ChatGPT to generate one for you if you aren’t creative. (I’ve come up with “Lunar Microgames” on the spot if you want to use that as a base)
Coming back to the Youtube Kids advice, make your thumbnails more “flashier” than a “dull” purple background and orange text. For example, look at today’s popular simulators/tycoons. You’ll see that they feature very enticing colour schemes, and look like “candy”.
I took a look at your game’s icon, and I have to unfortunately say that’ll not attract anyone. The text is almost unreadable and the art is not attractive at all. I suggest you look at a quick tutorial for Blender, open up a new project, add in a sphere for a planet, text for the game’s title, and a flat ring for the planet’s ring. Set the camera’s resolution to a square aspect ratio, make the planet glow orange a little, make the text large and bold, and make it span along the top and the bottom of the camera’s viewport. Then bend and rotate the text a little and solidify it to give it a more solid feeling (that doesn’t sound as good in text, but in my head, it looks pretty good). You can then render it and see if that looks good for your icon.
I may have gotten a few things wrong here, but I guess no one else is going to help you out, which is a terrible feeling from experience. I wish you well with your game!
If you need any ideas I suggest you play Minecraft in the server Cubecraft and try the micro games, they’re great and might get some great ideas, good luck!
This is a pretty good idea for developing new games. If we do try coming up with new game ideas, playing other minigame-collection games might help.
I agree very much, the text for our game’s icon doesn’t have great contrast. Probably a good idea to change it.
I was curious about this - while I do think this makes sense, how do games like “Survive the Night” successfully market to players?
If I may ask, what makes a game name memorable? Anything in particular?
Is there anything I can do to make our game easier for players to find? Even with revisions to game and thumbnail quality, if people don’t see the game, they can’t play it. Our game seems to have issues with not being very visible, even failing to appear on Roblox and Google searches that literally search for “WillyEdison’s Microgames”.
In terms of Survive The Night, it uses a commonly looked up phrase (“Survive the ___”). If your question is about their thumbnail, it’s that the lighting and colours are used right, it has an obviously realistic design and it fits the theme of the intended experience.
For that last question, you could potentially (just like Survive The Night) use a commonly looked up phrase in your name. I have also heard in a couple places that TikTok is a good platform to advertise on, however I cannot confirm this.
You should probably stick with a catchy name (along with something like a fitting logo or mascot) and refrain from being similar to others, I have mixed up Star Wars and Star Trek far back in the past.
Mad City was a little too basic so I could barely remember that name, but something like Epic Minigames worked well because the face they used could be connotated with the word “epic”.
