Hi everyone! Last month, after two years of intense work, I launched Duskpunk, my gritty dice-driven RPG.
If you’ve already played it, thank you! It would be amazing if you could leave a review on Steam; it’s the absolute best way to support the game right now.
If you haven’t heard: Duskpunk is a gritty dice-driven RPG in a steampunk city, where you survive, explore, find allies, try to remain sane, and spark a revolution!
It’s on Steam now. It’s also, probably, the best thing I’ve ever made.
How did it go, and what have I learned? Is the “Citizen Sleeper-like” a viable genre?
The short version
You want numbers? Here’s some numbers.
Twelve. Nine thousand. Pi. e
Okay, now here are some relevant numbers.
Duskpunk has sold about 1500 units since launch four weeks ago. It's got 17,000 wishlists and a 91% positive rating on Steam.
It cost about €100,000 to make, but I got a grant from the Vienna Business Agency for about €66,000. That means it needs to sell about 4500 units to break even.
I'd feel better if it had reached 2000 by now, but these are still solid numbers for a narrative title. I think it'll break even in about 2 years: not ideal, but it'll be a decent financial foundation for me as solo dev.
Origins
To understand whether the game was a success, I need to briefly take you back to August 2023. I was broke, with about 8 months of runway and a tiny art budget.
So: am I in a better position after finishing the game? Right now I have about 8 months of runway, but I have some freelance work lined up and the game will continue selling in the meantime. I'm definitely more secure. So by that measure, it's a win!
Response
Press have been very positive.
70percentcomplete: “The story in Duskpunk is phenomenal.”
Screen Hype: “Duskpunk tells a gripping tale of war, death and distrust”, 8/10
Jump Dash Roll: “Duskpunk’s writing is second-to-none, and has a handful of genuinely engaging side stories.”, 8/10
GamesRadar+: “there's so much to explore, and the writing is sharp enough to keep me going. I'll be back to cross that river yet. I smell a regime that needs toppling.”
I was hoping for a review in PC gamer or RPS, which might have got it more exposure. But I'm grateful for the coverage I did get from RPS, it was very nice of them!
Steam reviews have generally been very positive; it seems like people who connect with the game really, really get it. Obviously it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so a few negative reviews have snuck in. That’s fine, but again, please write a review if you haven’t yet!
What I did right
Most importantly: the game, as a package, hangs together. My world building intuition was bang on: a grimy steampunk world rent by war and inequality on the brink of revolution is a captivating idea. It's grungy and cool, but also resonates with the world today.
On that note, I think the writing was pretty strong and the characters came through well. There are a few scenes I'm not totally happy with and might rework slightly, but overall it lands. Which is a relief, because most of it was written in a hurry!
Telling this story via a dice-driven RPG also worked well. I was able to reimagine the mechanics of Citizen Sleeper in a way that works for this world. It takes what works, and makes changes that feel appropriate to this world.
I also did a good job boiling the basics of Marxism down to a few key scenes, and smuggling them in. I wanted to portray a revolutionary workers’ movement that made sense, felt like an actual mass movement, and wasn’t just a bunch of freedom fighters blowing stuff up.
I was also able to use prefabs and the unity interface to basically use Unity as my location editor. This was handy because I didn't need to build a whole separate editor like in Silicon Dreams! Saved a lot of time and effort.
The slums, as seen in the editor. Top left: all actions. The hierarchy dictates which are shown when. Right: details of the selected action (“Beg”).
I also think I was right to not localise (for now) and to focus on the English release. This was already a lot to handle on this timeline; dealing with localisation would have been very difficult without more funding.
Finally, going for the Vienna Business Agency grant was a lifesaver. Without that funding, the game would have been shorter and much less polished.
Mistakes were made
There were several things that could have gone smoother.
The codebase is messy. When I started this project, it was a desperate attempt to sell something to make rent. But that early sloppiness came back to haunt me in the months before release, and caused all sorts of unexpected technical problems. I should have just tried to keep the code clean and logical from the start.
This special scene has to contain every action in the entire game, because I made a choice in September 2023. A bad choice.
I also underestimated how much sheer writing this would take. The final game has 150,000 words of text: basically two novels. There was a solid 6 weeks where every day I just hit the keyboard and bashed out two full scenes. I wish I'd realised that weaving the main quest into the sidequests this closely would require a ton more writing to account for various player choices.
Most importantly, it would have been seriously helpful to test game balance 3 or 4 months before release. My issue was that, since this is a narrative game, I couldn't test balance until all story branches were implemented. (I could have, but it would have meant “using up” my most promising testers early.) Maybe I still could have blocked out placeholder versions and asked passionate testers to run through them. As it was, the game was incredibly unbalanced just 10 days before release. I was able to correct in time, but that was pretty risky.
Oh, and I should've realised sooner that the player gaining knowledge about item sources is a fundamental part of the game. I added icons to the map extremely late, because too many testers were bumbling around with no idea where to get finery and corpses.
Are Dice-driven RPGs a good business venture?
Yes and no.
On the one hand, this is a modest success for me. Duskpunk hasn't sold quite as well as I hoped, but if 10% of its wishlists convert each year, it'll be a pretty good foundation.
But, that's largely true because a lot of the budget was covered by a grant.
This project didn't have much marketing budget: I spent about €1500 in Reddit ads and tried to shout about it on social media. I also worked with Future Friends, who handled PR: emails to press, streamers etc. I was a bit surprised that the visual quality didn't carry the game further: I always assumed Silicon Dreams didn’t sell well because it had inconsistent art and a slightly complicated premise. But Duskpunk’s numbers are only slightly higher. Maybe both games are just in a niche that Steam doesn't know how to promote to its audience?
Clearly there is a market for these games: Citizen Sleeper reached an audience of hundreds of thousands. But it had a proven narrative publisher behind it: Fellow Traveller. They had the means to promote it properly.
So, this type of game is profitable, but you'll either need outside support (to provide funds or marketing), a short development cycle (to keep costs down) or a large audience on social media or your newsletter.
I still think press is a helpful way to spread the word about narrative games, but don’t kid yourself: the gaming press is a difficult place to be right now. Kotaku was recently gutted, and all press sites are under intense pressure. Don’t count on them to be your saviour.
Last thoughts
I’m going to take a well-deserved break for some of December and January, but I’m not finished with the game: I’d like to implement a few features, and, if someone will fund it via a revenue share, do some localisation. If you know a publisher who’d be interested, drop me a line!
I’m proud of Duskpunk: as a game, as a project, as a statement, and as a call to action in difficult times. It feels right, to release this game about revolutionary hope while billionaires and their crony politicians are trying to break us apart piece by piece for profit. To quote the game’s opening:
“I cannot know when dusk will set on this rotten empire. I only know that no matter how long the day, dusk will always come.”
If you’d like to know what I do next, the best way is to follow my newsletter. I don’t spam people: I just pop up every so often to announce or launch a new project.
Until next time: break their laws. Break the city. Break free.