3,000 Views and 1,000 Plays + Downloads!

Hey, what's up?

Just wanted to share that Tales from the Road recently hit 3,000 views and 1,000 plays + downloads! I know that's not a ton, but man, it's still cool to me. 3,000 people have gone out of their way to look at this silly game some idiot works on in his spare time.  3,000 people from all around the world. And 1,000 of those people have gone even further out of their way and actually played the game. That's just amazing. I love the internet, man. Stuff like this would be impossible without it. Huge thanks to  everyone for getting Tales from the Road to 3,000 views.

And since we hit 3,000 views I'm going to throw some statistics at 'ya, it's real exciting stuff.

The stats:

There's been around 802 in-browser plays + downloads of the Twine version of Tales from the Road since late January. Which feels like it was a decade ago by now. This is accompanied by 1,446 views of the Twine version within the same time frame.

That means around 55% of the people that view the (Twine) Tales from the Road page either play or download the game. It could also be measured as 1.8 views per play. I don't know if that's good or not because I have no other frame of reference. I feel like that that's a decent rate, but again, no frame of reference.

There was a significant uptick in weekly views and plays after moving from Python to the current Twine version. Tales from the Road went from 30 views and 5 downloads weekly with the Python version, up all the way to around 60-80 views and 30-50 plays and downloads weekly with the Twine version. Imagine how many views I'd get if I had (a) proper logo/cover art for the game. Maybe that should be my next investment... Hmm...

98% of traffic comes direct from itch.io. Currently, the only real referrer would be my FurAffinity post, which brings in around 20 views a month. I have flirted with posting the game on some subreddits as well... but eh, I don't know about that. Not sure if the game is really good enough for me to be posting it on /r/furry and the like. No one wants to be spammed with trash, eh?

Lifetime stats for Tales from the Road (Python + (current) Twine version):

3,010 views total. With 317 downloads and 689 plays in-browser for 1,006 total plays + downloads. This is... acceptable.

Money wise, I have spent a grand total of... $30 on this game. That's how much it was to get Holly and Sasha commissioned by kass. And that's the only money I've spent on this game. Ever. Everything else was either free, like the royalty-free music, or done by me. I've spent no money on marketing, no money on anything else.

It's kind of funny, whenever I see or play games similar to this one I've always gotta remind myself "Oh, right. They probably have an actual dev team. With a budget. And marketing. And a hired artist. And I'm me, with my budget of 'whatever money I have leftover from my other hobbies'. And that's it".

That or they were really damn smart with using free resources, such as with Aviary Attorney. Fantastic game, by the way.

But hey, I'm not trying to make a living here. This is just a fun little passion project for me. I told myself coming into this that if just one person played this game and genuinely enjoyed it, I'd be happy. And with the few bits of feedback I've gotten, I feel like I've accomplished that. So, I'm satisfied.

Anyway, that is all for stats. Thanks again for getting Tales from the Road to 3,000 views and 1,000 plays + downloads, I really appreciate it.

Hope you have a good day, morning, night, evening. Whichever applies to you right now.