The Spanish Privateer is now released on Steam and Itch.io for a 15% off launch sale! We’re also hosting a giveaway on Twitter ♥
Escape the confines of high-society and find freedom, romance, and danger on the high seas as a privateer in this pirate otome. A historical fiction visual novel set in the early 17th century, travel from Spain across the Caribbean while surviving life at sea.
Featuring:
3 LIs
228K words (12-20 hours)
3 Good Endings, 7 Bad Endings, 7 Alternate Endings
The first ever otome game-themed Steam festival, Otome Games Celebration, is now live on Steam!
What are otome games? They're romance-driven games where the player can play as a woman and pursue romantic relationships, with a focus on men as love interests. Our festival showcases the wide world of otome, with some of the games featuring customizable main characters, love interests with a variety of genders, and more.
Over 100+ otome games agreed to take part in the event from 80+ developers, with titles from BUSTAFELLOWS to A Date with Death to Royal Alchemist and more. The event will go for a full week, May 19-26. We have otome on sale, free otome, upcoming otome demos, and more!
One of the pain points of finding visual novels & otome on Steam is the lackluster categorization that doesn't allow for finding the specific story genres you want to find. To try to counter that, I've created lots of widgets separated by story genres, such as a fantasy category, cute & comfy, and more. We even have categories for games with customizable MCs, all male love interests, and more!
Howdy, fateful friends! Are you an artist or illustrator with an interest in visual novels?
If so: Moirai Myths, creators of the visual novel The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe), are in need of guest artists! More specifically, we're looking for up to two artists to help us with the content graphics ("CGs") for Maeve and Shae's upcoming routes. All of the details will be listed on our application form (linked below), but here is the gist:
This is paid work with 20-30 business day deadlines per piece!
Complicated revisions in the post-sketch phase are compensated!
You will be prioritized for future guest artist opportunities!
You will be featured/credited on Moirai Myths' website and in the game itself!
Sound interesting? If so, apply here:
Moirai Myths is a Canadian visual novel company seeking CG guest artists for our upcoming game, The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe). To learn
Click under the cut for some F&Q 👇
Who are you? (I'm new here!)
Hi! We're Moirai Myths: a small, newish visual novel company based out of Canada. We're making a game inspired by mostly Irish mythology, which was funded on Kickstarter in 2023! Our game's got fairy politics, a diverse cast, a Gaeilge-to-English translation tool, and routes that can be played either romantically or platonically! Also horses. An ungodly amount of horses, really.
If that odd pitch sounded intriguing, perhaps you'd like to play our demo! It's free on Steam & Itch.io.
Why are you looking for guest artists?
When we originally launched our Kickstarter, the plan was to have our three in-house artists collaborate on the CGs in the same way our header image was. However, we quickly realized that adding CGs, even if they're done collaboratively, onto the existing duties of our artists was a tall order. Add to that the departure of our original sprite artist (who has since been replaced by our graphic designer), and we determined that having our in-house team work on CGs was simply not possible if we still wanted our first release to happen in 2024. So, rather than omitting CGs or adding them in at a later time, we came up with the idea of hiring guest artists. Overall this means our CGs will be a bit more varied in terms of art style, but we like to think of this as a positive! NDM's development will take a number of years to complete in full, so we hope our CGs will allow us to feature a lot of artists either within the VN/indie dev community already, or artists who aspire to work in gaming and are looking for entry positions.
How long will applications remain open for?
This application will be open until Sunday, March 24 at midnight (EST)! If we intend to extend past that deadline, we'll make an announcement about it.
I can't apply right now. Will you look for more CG guest artists in the future?
Definitely! As mentioned, NDM will take a while to develop in full, so this is by no means your only opportunity to apply. That being said, we suspect we're going to end up shortlisting a number of artists over the course of this application period, and we intend to keep a list of all the runners-up. So, even if you won't be able to participate this time, it might be a good idea to apply anyway just to remain in our contacts! Either way, this will not be the last time we have apps.
Will you be looking for guest artists outside of CGs?
Maybe! We already have two guest artists (Nefukurou and Madi Funk) working on sprites and CGs respectively, so it's always possible that we'll have other artistic needs later down the line. Likewise, we may also reach out to past guest artists for future work with us, whether it's on this game or something else!
You say we need to sign an NDA. What does that entail?
The non-disclosure agreement essentially means you will be legally unable to publicly disclose any confidential information you become privy to as a result of working with us. This would include personal information about the developers, as well as spoilers from the game itself. In addition do this, you will be expected to sign over the IP and copyright of any artworks you produce for us.
Can I still use my artworks in portfolios, even if I don't own the copyright?
Yes! We'd only ask, if your portfolio is a website, that you wait to do so until after your art has been made public by us, either on our social media or via the publication of the game. Our first release is anticipated to happen later this year, most likely mid-autumn.
How do you guys feel about AI? Do you intend to use it, or would you ever train an AI off of the artworks whose copyright you own?
No.
Making a game is expensive and time-consuming, but AI is no replacement for human artistry. We fundamentally believe that any advancements in AI should be used for the purpose of giving people more time to make art, not take away opportunities for it. Moirai Myths will never, ever use AI or train an AI off your work.
***
If you've got any more questions for us that we didn't think to include here, feel free to send us an ask!
Otome Jam 2024 jam page is finally up and along with it, we are continuing last year's Josei Jam!
Join now to be notified when it starts and go ahead and prepare yourself for the start OtoMay (and June)!
As always please be sure to read the rules as we have made some updates again and this time provided more international support by adding translations (currently French, with German coming up) for Otome Jam! Even if your game is not in English, you can submit it to both jams, but as a disclaimer, the two hosts mainly speak English.
If you would to submit a translation for either jam, feel free to contact us on Discord!
Likewise, we are still updating and getting some things ready, for any more questions our Discord server is available!
I decided that I'd like to start sharing informal, occasional devlogs about various WIPs I'm working on, so feel free to filter out #SSDevlog if you're not interested in seeing them!
Project List
The Spanish Privateer: Done, I do want to send out a short story compilation to backers and maybe write a few more to distribute. Also would like to tweak the keyboard help page so it auto-configures for controllers at some point.
Blueprint to a Villain's Heart: This was a 2023 otome game jam project that unfortunately never got finished due to collaborators getting busy (why must life!!!!).
You're the lead architect for evil lairs (rich conglomerate luxury mansions, eerie castles, underwater shark tanks, floating spiral hideouts, etc.). You sometimes have to make repeat appointments with clients, and they so rarely have normal conversations that they can occasionally get a little clingy…
Mephistopheles' and Baron Samdi's routes are done, about 13K each with a good ending, two bad endings, a best ending (romanced) and a best ending (friendship). The true villain's route and the art need to be done, but I want to share the beautiful concept art...
Mephistopheles' Concept Art
Baron Samdi's Concept Art
Glycon (True Villain)'s Concept Art
Surprise Cthulhu route?
Architect (Protagonist) (Selectable Pronouns) Concept Art
(View some more concept art on Jazzy's page!)
Would love to make this little game a reality, but it's hard to guarantee anything! It would be a free game, so I'm not sure how well crowdfunding would work. And even with money, you can't force people's time or interest.
Nazla: Beds of Thorn: My personal pet project. It's inspired by both classic (Zork) and modern (Shepherds of Haven) styles of Interactive Fiction, implementing classic-style exploration and questing with modern-style dialogue and writing.
You take a rest in an inn, and wake up to an uninvited guest nestled in the soft burrow between your body and your soul. You're left with three options: exorcise the spirit, reopen the veil, or… become a bed and breakfast innkeeper?Play as a human, elf, dwarf, orc, or some combination of the above in Nazla: Beds of Thorn. Featuring fully-customizable names and appearances, seven half-hour long origin stories, eight romanceable characters, and a simple three-class combat system, your journey can be soaked in blood or one-hundred percent fighting free.
It's been really fun to work on a project without worrying about needing to acquire assets. Plus, I plan on it being free, so I'm not concerned whether anyone ever reads it. I won't be doing any out-of-pocket projects for a few years i want to afford house
And I have two other projects stashed away, one of which I'm hoping Nazla helped me learn enough skills to pull off. But in the meantime, I'll be slowly plodding away at Nazla, sharing bits and pieces as I go. ♥
also i played cxm and let's just say... morioka can get it 🥵
The Spanish Privateer is now available for 40% off as part of the Pirates vs Ninjas Steam Fest! Romance the captain, first mate, or bard aboard a seafaring adventure, ripe with swordfighting and hidden treasure!
You can purchase The Spanish Privateer for 40% from Steam or Itch.io!
hi! im not sure if this account is active but i just finished the game (before the return to school lol rip) aaand to ask the question i ask all vn devs after i finish their games: do the boys still have feelings for the girl on other routes? i def got some vibes with lark on flint's route ¬‿¬
Hi! This account is still active, I just don't have the time (or desire, to be honest) for marketing these days. But the inbox is always open for asks and I will try to get to them quickly :)
To answer your question, Lark and Flint have crushes on Carlota on each other's respective routes assuming you befriend them, since both like the diplomatic & witty versions of Carlota (although Flint has a preference for diplomacy while Lark prefers wit). Rico doesn't have a crush on her in other routes, although he admires her & thinks she's beautiful. On Rico's route, Lark loves Carlota as a true friend and Flint develops a crush on a different person ;)
Catch The Spanish Privateer's biggest discount yet as part of the Visual Novel Fest! This is a great time to romance some pirates while loading up on the great selection of visual novels ♥ Consider leaving a review while you're at it!
The Spanish Privateer is excited to be taking part of The Storyteller's Festival on Steam! If you're a lover of visual novels and other narrative games, this is a great opportunity to check out exclusive demos and streams, snag discounts, and support indie devs while you're at it!
You can get The Spanish Privateer for 25% off during the festival!
Keep reading for some words from Flint, Lark, and Rico ♥
"Another ball full of couples dancing the minuet... Do you not have a partner? I guess I can join you... Is it normal to feel dizzy before you start dancing?"
"What an aft! Care for some swabbing? ...please don't make me literally swab the deck, I'm shirtless for a reason."
"Your name must be 'hardtack', because I'd love to put you in my mouth, break my molars on your biscuit, dunk you in some tea, and suck you dry. Wait, can I try that again—"
Postmortem: Launching a Kickstarter (or two) as a first-time dev
Also available to read on Itch.io
Hi everyone,
This is going to be a very informal postmortem from me (Natty, writer/programmer/game director) about the development of The Spanish Privateer from conception to the release. This read is really for anyone who wants to run a campaign or be a first-time dev and hear from someone who has met their goals but not had any outstanding success. I’m also always happy to chat one-on-one with someone who might have specific questions about the process, especially for Canadians wondering about the technicalities of running a small business & shipping.
Conception
The Spanish Privateer was a collection of five pirate characters that sat on a Google Doc until 2018, when the otome game jam rolled around and I, working a 9:30-4 (dream hours!) co-op position in Vancouver, decided to join up and turn those five characters (now four) into the main characters for my very own visual novel. As a lead, I struggled with trying to delegate and felt that I hadn’t completed enough of the script to know what artwork needed to be done. I think we managed to pull it off well, though, and I was happy to hear people’s feedback to the prologue.
Ultimately, the project fell under the radar as I continued to work on it on my own time, not wanting to ask those who had worked on the game jam for additional commitment, and not knowing whether the finished project would be commercial or not.
In the future, I’m still interested in working on game jams, but only for game jams that are meant to be short, complete games. We’ll see if it happens!
Script Writing
The bulk of the script writing for The Spanish Privateer happened while I was living in Japan on co-op, from the summer of 2019 to the late winter of 2020. I had created a detailed outline for Flint’s route, a less detailed one for Lark, and a very sketchy one for Rico. I tend not to face writer’s block, and writing dialogue especially feels like it comes easily to me, so it was more about scheduling time each day to write. I decided to participate in the NaNoWriMo of 2019 to monitor my progress, ending with 51 547 words written! My goal at this point was to just complete the scripts, and focus on everything else once I knew what CGs I would need to flesh out scenes.
The First Kickstarter
It became clear to me that I would need to fund, at the very least, the CGs in the game. But The Spanish Privateer was ‘the otome I always wanted to play’, and I wanted the game to reflect that. Oftentimes, indie VN devs will buy their background images from stock creators (such as Minikle), paying a one-time fee for licensed use of the images. In fact, a few of the backgrounds in The Spanish Privateer are from these packs. But a pirate ship is a niche category, and I knew I would need to commission original backgrounds for the game.
I was willing to put down around $1000 of my own money towards the game. Keep in mind, I was a university student, and I figured I wouldn’t make any returns on the project. I commissioned three CGs, but all the other assets were from the original game jam.
The Kickstarter of October 2020 failed, but with 128 backers, suddenly this project that no one had heard about had come to life. Something that I didn’t know about Kickstarter is that… most Kickstarter backers are Kickstarter backers. That’s to say, 82% of my backers have backed over 20 projects, and 40% have backed over 100 projects! Only 11% of my backers have backed 10 or fewer projects, and I personally knew half of those people. Here’s a little histogram showing the data specific to my Kickstarter (the second one).
Figure 1: Number of backers sorted by the number of projects they have backed on Kickstarter. Data taken from The Spanish Privateer 2021 Kickstarter on January 11th, 2023
The people who pledged the higher tiers ($60+) varied between those who backed few projects and those who backed many.
My takeaway from this revelation was that Kickstarter itself has an audience that is worth tapping into. That’s part of the reason we see visual novel developers who have had financial success off their games and who have been making games for a while, such as Hanako Games and Winterwolves, start using Kickstarter in the recent years (and likely because the market has grown considerably).
The Bane of Kickstarter: Cancelled Projects
I spent a lot of time looking at visual novels (particularly otoges) that had done well on Kickstarter. Some of them succeeded because they had people pledge those platinum $1000 tiers, some succeeded because they had >500 backers, some succeeded because they had low goals. But amongst these, an unfortunately large number of successful projects got cancelled later on. For that reason, developers who follow through with their projects, communicate with their player base, and meet or exceed expectations, such as GB Patch Games, do well with repeated projects on Kickstarter. They have a dedicated fanbase who are happy to support their work, largely because they know the developers will make good use of it. As a first-time dev, I didn’t have that background. I also had a small number of romanceable love interests (but I still think three is the perfect number for a first-time dev and would recommend that to other first-time devs), the art wasn’t the jaw-dropping highly detailed anime style we see with companies like Great Gretuski Studios or Nifty Visuals, and aside from ‘PIRATES’, it didn’t have much of a grab.
The Next Steps
I released a survey that got quite a few responses, thankfully. Then, I knew I needed to use the last of my cash reserves to commission a few more CGs, and most importantly, commission new sprites. That was the big risk for me. It was a huge art style change, and the CGs clashed with the sprites much more strongly. But it needed to be done since I hadn’t heard from the sprite artist who had collaborated with me during the otome game jam, and in addition to needing more sprites completed, I didn’t want to use the work of someone in a commercial product without their permission or without being able to repay them.
I really love the new sprites and the art style of my sprite artist. It was also a good decision for me to request separate eyebrow, eye, and mouth expressions rather than set expressions. It allowed me to have much more variety with character expressions. I learned a lot during this process, and because of that, I think the final few characters I commissioned (Catalina and Vasco) ended up being the strongest because of that (in addition to the sprite artist’s personal improvements, of course!).
But the game changer for the next Kickstarter was the new key art and logo. The key art is what draws people in, and it was truly stunning.
I have mixed feelings regarding the physical items. The survey showed some people were interested while others weren’t, so I wanted very cheap physical items (compared to charms, for example). I’m not sure if I would do physical items again (I really dislike the process of packaging and shipping), but on the other hand, I’m delighted to have stickers and an art book of characters I made!!! From a game I made!! Isn’t that cool!! (psst you can still buy the artbook and get stickers btw)
The People Who Made The Difference
I did reach out to some people to review the demo, and Blerdy Otome and Sonic Nancy Fan both came through! Additionally, when you’re running a Kickstarter, you tend to check obsessively… and check out the other visual novels that are running at the same time. Off the top of my head, Henchman Story, Silver Blue, Somnium Eleven, Perfect Gold, and Heroine for Hire were running the same time, and some of us gave shout outs to each other, which was nice (especially considering I had a following of about 40 people on Twitter). Chouette, Akua, Naja, Ayael, and Neeka, in particular liked and shared many of my posts, which makes a difference not only for reaching a new otome audience, but for me to slowly get to know other devs and the indie otoge community! I’m thankful to them for that, and for the devs I interact with now as well.
Additionally, VN Game Dev, Sweet & Spicy, and the Otome Lovers curator group all reviewed my game at various stages, which I appreciated as well. In addition, I reached out to a few other groups, some which responded agreeing to review (but with long backlogs) and others who I did not receive a reply from. The otome community is small, so if a visual novel doesn’t have some stand out quality that appeals to the non-visual novel community, such as innovative gameplay or a connection to a larger franchise, it might not be worth reaching out to people who don’t typically cover visual novels. Personally, I actively sought out those who reviewed visual novels, particularly otome games.
The Second Kickstarter
The general rule of a Kickstarter campaign is that if a project can make one third of their goal after 48 hours, they’re likely to reach their goal (with the second third happening throughout the campaign and the final third during the last three days). Because of the previous Kickstarter, I already had a number of backers who were ready to back again, which helped a lot with that big first day boost. I wouldn’t say the campaign was a raging success—the total amount transferred from Kickstarter was 5206.49 CAD (this was transferred at the end of May, 2021) across 169 backers (6 backers dropped), which is less than 4000 USD today. This is a really, really small amount of money to make a game, but it was what I needed to make the game, which is all I cared about.
Here's how it all came together:
Writing & Programming: The writing was done, although I continued to edit and revise. Ren’Py is very easy to work with and the programming is minimal. My labour is all at zero cost, and I frankly don’t expect I’ll ever make a penny from my games (but wouldn’t that be nice?)
BGs: I worked with two different artists for the backgrounds, and supplemented them with stock backgrounds I paid a flat fee for, such as the shore, church, fancy bedroom, bedroom with two beds, lagoon, and tavern with the bear skin on the wall. Sometimes I realized retroactively that I needed a night version of a background and did this myself. The result wasn’t… great, but thankfully the scenes that needed these changes were minimal, and the ones with long scenes were properly done by the artist. I also did the ocean background because I realized belatedly I needed one and couldn’t find one I liked online. All part of learning more about the planning process…
CGs: I continued working with my main artist, Tsunya (Tsuume) on the CGs. Commissioning CGs was the most challenging part of the process. I learned a lot about how to better communicate certain things I wanted in a scene, as well as which ideas I had didn’t translate as well to a CG. For example, for Flint’s kissing CGs, I struggled with the best way to get two vertical people embracing to look good on a horizontal screen. The final CG ended up being them laying horizontally across the screen. As a result, the overall image is really intimate and pleasing to the eye. I carried this on with Lark’s route, which features Carlota’s hair blowing in one kiss scene to compensate for the space, and her dress blowing in another. I also learned that a close-up of a love interest can be simple but beautiful. In the future, I would probably like to incorporate more close-ups of the love interests rather than focussing on having so many couple CGs. With Rico’s route, I wanted some more action shots, such as the horse and Rico as a kid. I particularly liked the angle of Rico’s CG as a child, and I would use more of those sharp angles in the future.
Sprites: When you have a limited budget and you’re commissioning artists, rather than paying artists a monthly salary like regular studios do, you have to be very respectful of their time. My sprite artist was in school, so of course it was difficult for her to predict when she would be available or for how long (which I could relate to as a student as well). I probably would have commissioned a few more sprites from her, such as the grandee and the governor, but we ended up being limited on time and I figured that I would probably keep on adding more and more sprites if I didn’t end somewhere. I was just incredibly in love with her designs and work. She really brought the characters of The Spanish Privateer to life. Personally, I love non-anime style art such as Made Marion, Andromeda Six, Imperial Grace, ValiDate, Cinders, The Radiants, Angela He, Arcade Spirits, and Under Pretense of Death. But anime art’s biggest advantage is how incredibly emotive it looks. When art is less realistic, expressions can be exaggerated without looking disturbing to the viewer. Going forward, I’m still not sure which style I would prefer. It will probably depend on the game I produce—for example, if I make a game where the protagonist is customizable, then the art style will likely be anime.
Chibi CGs: I had worked with an artist to do some quick chibi designs of the characters, and I decided to work with her again for the chibi CGs. By this point, I had already commissioned many CGs from my CG artist, so communication was much better for these CGs. It was a great way to show off many characters in a scene (such as in Lark’s route) or characters who don’t have sprites (such as a certain man that we see in Rico’s route).
GUI: Graphic design and user interface design is really its own thing. I trusted the GUI to someone who had lots of experience doing visual novel GUIs and told her my vague ideas of what I was looking for, and she managed to turn it into something gorgeous! The important takeaway is that the less you know about something, the more important it is that you’re hiring someone with experience in that department. Since the visual novel realm is so niche, this can be challenging at times.
Logo: Pretty much the same as above! The logo is beautiful and tells a story all on its own, which I love. The artist also provided the base file, so I was able to add and remove different elements from the design, which was incredibly helpful for me as I simplified it for smaller images or darkened areas for better contrast. I would recommend anyone getting a logo done to request the illustrator or equivalent working file.
Music: The only music I paid for was a commercial license of a few songs. The other songs are all in the creative commons. Even if I had been able to commission an original soundtrack for The Spanish Privateer, frankly, I love the songs in the game so much that I wouldn’t change them for the world. I chose peaceful piano pieces for Flint, harpsichord and whimsical tracks for Lark, and grand, adventurous orchestral music for Rico. Some people pooh-pooh the importance of music in a visual novel, but I think the tracks make a huge difference in creating the tone of a scene. My favourite part was selecting tracks for the good endings and other endings.
Kickstarter Rewards: I worked with the same artist who did the two key arts for the wallpapers, and ended up with stunning results. Carlota’s in particular is breathtaking. I commissioned high-quality chibis for the stickers, and my big takeaway is to NOT have limbs jutting out the way Flint’s arm is. The spacing is awkward and makes the pricing of the stickers more expensive than they need to be. Additionally, it won’t work well for charms if that’s something you plan on doing. But other than the rogue limb I failed to account for, the process was smooth. The big challenge is not knowing how different the colours will look once printed. Even test prints aren’t foolproof because each printing company may have different methods of printing. I used StickerApp for the stickers, but Luna Chai has some great and relevant blog posts (current blog and archived post). I used Mixam in Canada to print the art books and they get shipped as oversized lettermail. Since I don’t get anywhere CLOSE to the small business cutoffs, I don’t have to worry about collecting GST. I ordered my mailers and labels from Amazon (like the common by-product of our capitalistic world that I am), and the nice ladies at the post office just let me plunk the addressed mailers down, pay the total, and be off on my way. If you’re Canadian and sending something that doesn’t qualify as lettermail, then don’t. I mean, try really really hard not to, because it gets very expensive quickly. But I won’t get in the way of your dakimakura dreams, either (I wouldn’t say no to a Harry or Luciel Choi body pillow. Or maybe I would. How could I even begin to explain that to my family.)
Sound: Shoutout to my brother for telling me about the massive royalty-free audio bundle Sonniss offers each year for free. Their work is awesome and greatly appreciated for small devs. The rest of the sounds were sourced from various online resources. Again, related to music, sound effects are greatly underappreciated. A great visual novel should use both of your available senses, not just sight (and they can use other senses if they’re extra creative).
And All of the Other Little Things That Add Up:
Registering as a business which included going down to the bank and saying yes, this is my company called ‘SinSisters Studios’, yes, I make games about romancing men (and hopefully others), please give me a business account and card to use (I did phrase it better because I’m an adult but that is surely what we were both thinking). The business account is an online-only no-fee one which is great, and I use the debit card for all business-related expenses. You know, in case I ever get audited in the future. I also had to pay a small fee to register my business name with the government, which has to be renewed every five years, and I might buy a website domain soon for the site. SinSisters Studios is a sole proprietorship business, which is what most small Etsy businesses might be, for instance. That means I get fewer benefits and legal issues would be under my name, but it’s easy to file taxes and the fee is small. Most indie VN developers don’t have any need to incorporate. If you’re a Canadian, incorporating is really something you do for liability insurance and would be recommended if you run a Kickstarter for $100K, for example.
On the game dev side, I had to do art touch-ups such as colour correction, making sure Carlota’s mole wasn’t all over the place, and some backgrounds for CGs and chibi CGs. I wouldn’t have been able to do this all with Gimp, so I got CSP. But I can’t recommend them as strongly now that they’re changing their payment program.
Things that I found tedious and that I was not good at and would have preferred to hire someone: creating the art book and guide, doing the graphics for the Kickstarter, doing the graphics, formatting, and ten million blurbs for the websites and social media pages and presskit (actually, the presskit was kind of fun because it looks professional).
Creating and uploading the game on Itch.io using Butler is very simple. Steam was a whole ‘nother ballpark. On top of having fifty billion different asset resizing requirements, they have their own method of uploading builds that I had trouble wrapping my head around (but now, I actually prefer Steam’s build updating method to Itch.io’s. Sorry! It’s just better at merging builds and making sure you’re using the right build).
Setting up accounts, such as PayPal, a mailing newsletter, Discord, and Stripe are all in the unknowns. Just finding people to work with is a skill in its own (if you find an artist you like online, save them somewhere. I’ve found artists from Lemmasoft, Twitter, from finding images on Pinterest and then following the credit or signature ((dear artists, PLEASE make your signature something that allows us to find you!!!)), DeviantArt, even from searching foreign websites. The one thing I haven’t used is Fiverr, although I have no doubt that you can find lots of talent there as well.
But by far, the worst thing about being a game dev is…
SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
AAAAAAAAHHHHHH
The bane of most devs' existence. How I wish I could just hire someone for this role. I don’t like TikTok. I haven’t uploaded a video on there in forever, but I have this constant nagging that I need to. The only social media I like is Twitter, and that’s because that’s where all the game devs hang out. To be fair, I do think my largest audience is on Twitter as well. The company’s following has grown to over 680, which is crazy. Although a certain individual caused a mass exodus and generally Worse Time on Twitter, so who knows what the future holds. I like interacting with others on social media, but I never feel inspired to post or even comment on others’ posts. I did want to do an art book giveaway with fanart as entries, but I frankly don’t feel like I have the audience for that. Would I even get an entry? I don’t know. I would rather see people creating fanart for the game because they feel inspired to. Personally, if I could Art, I would draw several modern AUs. Maybe I will and just look at it in private, who knows. The point is, I am Bad at The Social Media and that is simply because I Do Not Try Hard Enough. It is very time consuming and mentally draining. If you’re looking for marketing tips, read Arimia’s blog, and support her games while you’re at it. She has so much awesome advice. All I have for you are tears.
I entered The Spanish Privateer in the June 2022 SteamNextFest, recorded me playing the prologue, used OBS Studio to loop it (of course, everything you do involves learning to use something new) and streamed that over SteamNextFest. The result? Not too shabby. Our wishlist balance had a spike even bigger than the release spike, so I would recommend doing it! I had no interest in talking or filming myself, so it was a low effort high reward event!
The Result (And The Numbers)
So, what was the fruition of all these efforts?
First, let’s look at Steam wishlists. If a game gets to around 8000-12000 wishlists on Steam, depending on the genre, it starts to get ‘noticed’ by Steam. That means it’ll likely appear on the upcoming list and in recommended sections. The Spanish Privateer didn’t get anywhere CLOSE to that. We were getting an average of 6 daily wishlist additions, with just under 1000 wishlists upon release. Today, we have 1553 wishlists and a conversion rate or 7.1% (meaning 7.1% of people who wishlisted it have bought the game). This is below average for games on Steam. I expected this, considering how things were going leading up to this. My goal has always been to break even. As of the day I’m writing this (Jan 11, 2023), we have sold 162 copies of The Spanish Privateer on Steam and 81 copies of the digital bundle, with 33 copies sold on Itch.io and 21 of the guide. The final amount that arrived in the bank at the end of 2022 is about 1800 CAD. It’s a low amount, but I’m not complaining, either. I’ve made back my $1000 investment!!!!!!!!!! YAY!
That’s not to say you can’t make a living making visual novels. Just that I can’t. Maybe I will one day. But my best decision throughout this process was not investing too much money, only having three love interests, not getting feature-happy, and being careful with how I spent the money. Frankly, when I play The Spanish Privateer, sometimes I think to myself, ‘This is a $6000 game??? That’s it???’ I made the game I always wanted to play growing up, and for that, I’m proud of myself.
On a Personal Note
If you’ve read up until now, you’ve read all the game dev stuff! Hopefully this gives you a little perspective from someone who successfully published a game but has not made any income from it. You’re good to go, class dismissed.
In general, in online spaces, I prefer to be fairly private, especially when managing a company account. But I feel like I have had a number of transitions as The Spanish Privateer developed worth mentioning.
I started The Spanish Privateer following my second year of university, during my first co-op term (2018). I attended the winter semester of my third year, then moved to Tokyo for my second co-op term from summer of 2019 to March 2020. I took the summer off, then did the fall semester of my third year online (first Kickstarter launched). I then worked my third co-op term from the beginning of 2021 (second Kickstarter launched) to the end of the summer. After that, I moved back to Vancouver to complete my final year of university. I graduated in the spring of 2022, launched the game in the fall, and have been job searching ever since (☹). Which brings us to…
What’s Next
I have two major projects I would like to do. One is a TTRPG style adventure featuring EA and SEA pirates (haha, SEA, get it?). I’m running it as a D&D campaign for my friends, which has helped flesh it out, but it’s going to be a massive project in the end. The other is a Canadian mystery visual novel heavily inspired by the Ace Attorney series, Disco Elysium, and puzzlers like Nancy Drew and Professor Layton. Players will get to choose between two protagonists and play three different mysteries, getting to swap between the protagonists with each episode if they want. This one is something I really love writing. It’s murdery, it’s queer, it’s full of Canadianisms and sarcasm and features a cast of mid-twenties and thirties.
But I’ve actually been writing a classic interactive fiction/visual novel in an attempt to create an RPG system that works with Ren’Py for my needs. It’s fun, it’s text-only, it’s fantasy, and hopefully I’ll get to release it as a short, free adventure in homage of the modern IF games that I love playing these days. And of course, all of the games feature romance. It’s just optional this time. I’m sure I’ll want to create a traditional otome or amare visual novel at some point (ojijam is looking mighty tempting), but for now, I want to challenge myself in other ways.
Anyway, hopefully you have some insight as to what was going through my mind these past years. I’m always happy to chat dev stuff and give insight as to any part of the process. I’m also happy to be transparent about numbers, if someone wants any particular details on that. Thanks for reading ☺
Our art books are now on sale (US & Canada)! We’re selling the surplus of our Kickstarter rewards, so the supply is very limited and this is the only printing we will ever do of them. As a bonus, you’ll also get stickers of Flint & Rico! First ten customers get Carlota & Lark as well :)
