100k
After no-one really cared about Supraland during Early-Access, and the gaming media never mentioned it, I was afraid it would go totally unnoticed after release. To the contrary, it exceeded my expectations by far and recently sold its 100,000th unit. Thanks Suprafriends! This puts us in a great position to create more content for you guys!
Furthermore it is among the top games released out of early access on Steam this year and it made its way into the top 170 of most liked games on Steam overall. It started with an average user score of 95% and thanks to further updates it's now at 97% and trending upwards because recent reviews are at 99% most of the time.
Poll Results
The poll, that 1500 of you participated in, shows the insignificance of gaming media in Supraland's success. 62% found the game on Steam and 15% found it via Influencers on Youtube or Twitch, 6% via gaming press, 5% via friends. I can't thank Steam enough for making it possible for Supraland to get such an audience out of nothing.
Friends?
One thing in the poll that is confusing me is that nearly all of you told friends to play Supraland, but only 5% of people played it based on friend recommendations. You must all be terrible at making them actually want to play it! Whatever you're telling them, it doesn't work. :)
Reviews
The poll taught me that the overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam are the main driver for people buying the game. These numbers confirm my philosophy of "ignore marketing and put all effort into the quality of the game". People are becoming numb to marketing in general where everyone is trying to get a little bit of attention to make big promises about their products. It's awesome to not have to worry about all this PR nonsense where every indie thinks they need a booth on every expo etc. As an indie being featured on the front page of big gaming websites or even winning big awards doesn't mean anything. I'm frequently checking the player numbers of those games and it has like no effect at all. Do you care about what the gaming press says or who wins awards? Let us know in the comments!
"Great as it is"
The poll clearly has a sample bias, with all respondents reporting that they love the game as it is. It worries me a bit as it makes me a bit more hesitant to try new things. But I really want to try new things and I'm a little afraid of dissapointing people who want exactly the same thing again. It will not be completely different, but some things here and there might be. But I guess I'll just do what I think is fun and during the lengthy early access phases we'll sort out what can stay and what has to go. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are!
Coop
Originally I made the poll because I wanted to find out how many people are actually interested in a coop version. My suspicion is that we'd lose lots of players and make only like 25% of the income that singleplayer (SP) content makes.
Only about 50% of players are interested in coop and for many it's a problem to find a coop partner - and usually people don't want to buy a game twice to play coop, so you would only be selling one game for 2 players... which brings you down to 25% of the SP potential. You might find new players, but overally it's risky business. Because it would be more work than an SP campaign. I'd love to do it at some point, but this makes it complicated.
Simply adding a 2nd player in the singleplayer campaign will not happen because it will destroy everything beyond your imagination. It's all really tailor made for one person.
DLCs
The progress on both DLCs is doing good, but it's taking a little longer than planned. I guess we'll start going live with the test versions for our crowdfunding backers in February.
Both DLCs pretty much expect you to have finished the main game. I think they are on the harder side puzzle wise and don't start from scratch. But they introduce a lot of new stuff - more than I had in mind originally. But we'll only really know how hard they are once we start testing with you.
SUPRACE
After the DLCs and before Supraland 2 I want to squeeze in a little spin off project called suprace that should take us only a few months to make. The name is a mix of "supra" and "race" -> Suprace. I expands on little race tasks that I came up with for the first DLC. It's basically about doing short races in first-person where you have to find lots of shortcuts and stuff to win.
It will maybe not be for all Supraland fans and is probably most interesting for people who like platforming. But there is also exploration and some puzzling involved. This is a little race snippet from DLC 1 to give you a rough idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dJl6pmCEy0
Gaming suggestions
While the gaming year 2019 has been a big dissapointment to me personally, I just found a gem on called "Unheard" that i recommend you check out. It's a very unique detective game that lets you solve the cases all by yourself without helping you. And the ending was as unexpected as it was brilliant! The game costs nearly nothing on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/942970/Unheard/
New testing version
V 1.12 is the most significant update to Supraland so far. I'll let the changes list speak for itself. I'll release this officially once enough people played the test version and we're sure there are no new bugs introduced. If you want to play it go to your library and right-click Supraland. Select the Properties and in the Beta tab change the dropdown to "testing". That's all.
Please let me know about everything that you find odd or buggy!
Changes List:
Gameplay and Puzzles:
- Improved Force Beam causing crazy physics in certain situations
- Added 1 more puzzle in the first desert area that makes it harder getting an existing chest
- Small changes to endboss puzzle to disguise 2 mechanism that were way too obvious, like the electricity part; also made the coloring hint more impactful
- Changed progression in Volcano 1 region to make an optional puzzle mandatory because it's to good to waste it
- Added new puzzle step near the suprastar house to tutorialise battery shooting that many people don't understand at this point
- Added small new underground part in carrot town that teaches the use of the pickaxe because many misunderstand it
- Improved hint for optional jumppad puzzle in Volcano 1 region
- Added NPC in players home showing you the new map after the end credits because many people seem to miss it
- Fixed archers shooting the wrong way (and you being protected by looking at them lol)
- Added reassuring NPC to Volcano 4 area telling you that you have everything that you need to solve the puzzle, because many people thought they didn't
- Made puzzle near giant carrots simpler, where you leave carrot town with a jumppad
- Small improvements, additions and simplifications in lots of places
- Improved "pull-up-door" physics to not go crazy sometimes
- Changed how you open one shortcut pipe near the suprastar house
- Fixed that you could spawn the translocator through super tiny holes
- Changed color of big red lever at yellow pipe to blue, to give a better hint as to how to use it, and made sure it always works
- Completely changed the way the puzzle works that gets you on top of the locker building, using a previously unused mechanism
- Fixed hint guy under red crystal not appearing, in a certain case, to tell you where to find the stomp ability
- Added new mini puzzle near the end of the purple crystal pit
- In Blue Ville it's now easier to get the first 5 coins, many didn't see it
- Added edible pumpkins in several places to hint towards the end boss
Cosmetics:
- First person walking animation improved (includes all walking directions now instead of just a forward walking animation; look down while walking to appreciate it)
- Changed visuals of card board pieces
- Prettier lamps here and there
- Sponge design improved
- New jumppad design
- Improved design of keycard reader (less confusing lights and it will close forever after it was used)
- Fixed ugly shadow seams on pipes
- Improved a certain NPC walk animation
- Improved palm tree leaves; animated instead of static
- Fixed ugly shadows on some glass surfaces
- Made chest on other side of giant pond more visible because many missed it existed
- Lots of small improvements
Other:
- Can now skip "Warum warum" when it was started from the menu by clicking ESC and Resume.
- Optimised lightmap density (should lower required space on disk and in vram)
- Fixed electricity effect being invisible with low framerate (under 20)
- Maybe fixed very rare problem with gold-scammed guy not talking and blocking the game progression
- Invisible wall will now congratulate upon touching it if you try to enter Blue Ville way too early.
- Fixed being able to use certain ingame functions while being in the menu
Tiny Poll
Do you have 30 seconds to fill out these 3 questions?
https://forms.gle/6MBAqSxjy3reRALg9
-David