Developer Notes #1: Release Week, Thanks, and Shoutout to Slovakia
Hey Everyone.
First I'd like to give a huge thank you to everyone who has taken "That Flipping Mountain" (TFM) for a spin. It is SO appreciated.
To be honest, I didn't really have a marketing plan for TFM. I'm one person without a ton of spare cash laying around for Marketing. Given that TFM was heavily inspired by "Getting Over It" and "Jump King" I thought it'd make a good game for streaming.
With that in mind, I decided to use a steam key service (Keymailer) to send Steam keys to just about every streamer I could find who had also streamed "Getting Over It", "Jump King", "Pogostuck", or a handful of other difficult games.
I'm very happy with how this worked. For a small, relatively unknown game developer I had quite a few streamers give the game a go.
Something amazing happened with Slovakia. Both the #1 (resttpowered) and #2 (2sekundovymato) Twitch streamers played TFM for multiple hours over multiple sessions. They both beat the game. At one point I even noticed the #1 streamer was watching/reacting to the #2 streamer as he played.
Here is one of my favorite clips of the game from 2sekundovymato:
https://www.twitch.tv/2sekundovymato/clip/TrappedTiredRadishM4xHeh-28OswgfF3zjZwDRj
Below you can see how these two streamers drove Slovakia to be #1 in sales for TFM over the 1st week. As a one-man-team, with very little marketing budget, this was SO appreciated.
Thanks as well to all the smaller Slovakian streamers who also took the time to play the game on their channel.
The game-play controls for TFM evolved quite a bit over the 4 or so years of spare-time development. I watched a lot of TFM Twitch streams and was happy to see that most players, with practice, were able to learn and sometimes master the controls. I really wanted the controls to be easy to understand, but also be something you had to learn and gain skill in and I think I succeeded in that.
In short, what's next is more "That Flipping Mountain". :-)
I don't currently have any plans for a new game. I still have a lot of ideas for TFM and plan to role out some content updates, feature updates, quality of life updates, and of course bug-fixes over the next year or so. Remember I'm a one-man team doing this in my spare time so the new update won't be out tomorrow. :-)
What should be out fairly soon is TFM Steam Achievements. I already started working on these and it has been going smoothly so far.
If you have enjoyed playing and/or streaming "That Flipping Mountain" please spread the word to your friends and other streamers. Word of mouth marketing is the best kind and anything you can do to help with that would be awesome!
Take Care,
-Jeff
First I'd like to give a huge thank you to everyone who has taken "That Flipping Mountain" (TFM) for a spin. It is SO appreciated.
The Marketing Plan
To be honest, I didn't really have a marketing plan for TFM. I'm one person without a ton of spare cash laying around for Marketing. Given that TFM was heavily inspired by "Getting Over It" and "Jump King" I thought it'd make a good game for streaming.
With that in mind, I decided to use a steam key service (Keymailer) to send Steam keys to just about every streamer I could find who had also streamed "Getting Over It", "Jump King", "Pogostuck", or a handful of other difficult games.
The Marketing Results
I'm very happy with how this worked. For a small, relatively unknown game developer I had quite a few streamers give the game a go.
Special Shout-out to Slovakia
Something amazing happened with Slovakia. Both the #1 (resttpowered) and #2 (2sekundovymato) Twitch streamers played TFM for multiple hours over multiple sessions. They both beat the game. At one point I even noticed the #1 streamer was watching/reacting to the #2 streamer as he played.
Here is one of my favorite clips of the game from 2sekundovymato:
https://www.twitch.tv/2sekundovymato/clip/TrappedTiredRadishM4xHeh-28OswgfF3zjZwDRj
Below you can see how these two streamers drove Slovakia to be #1 in sales for TFM over the 1st week. As a one-man-team, with very little marketing budget, this was SO appreciated.
Thanks as well to all the smaller Slovakian streamers who also took the time to play the game on their channel.
Learning and Mastering the Controls
The game-play controls for TFM evolved quite a bit over the 4 or so years of spare-time development. I watched a lot of TFM Twitch streams and was happy to see that most players, with practice, were able to learn and sometimes master the controls. I really wanted the controls to be easy to understand, but also be something you had to learn and gain skill in and I think I succeeded in that.
What's Next?
In short, what's next is more "That Flipping Mountain". :-)
I don't currently have any plans for a new game. I still have a lot of ideas for TFM and plan to role out some content updates, feature updates, quality of life updates, and of course bug-fixes over the next year or so. Remember I'm a one-man team doing this in my spare time so the new update won't be out tomorrow. :-)
What should be out fairly soon is TFM Steam Achievements. I already started working on these and it has been going smoothly so far.
Finally, a Request for Assistance.
If you have enjoyed playing and/or streaming "That Flipping Mountain" please spread the word to your friends and other streamers. Word of mouth marketing is the best kind and anything you can do to help with that would be awesome!
Take Care,
-Jeff