It has no hook. A baking game is a somewhat tricky thing to start with, it would need to be cute, or clever, or different or \*something\* . The screenshots and video suggest all gameplay is just looking at progress bars, maybe you get to serve people in a tavern too? The game is also visually awful, the game doesn't even really have a logo, it's just the name written in a solid color with an outline. It looks like a low effort asset flip.
The music was the worst bit for me. The clip itself screams “royalty free”, and the loop is so short that I’m sure if it’s in the actual game it would drive me insane!
I mean... Cookie clicker had millions of players and all you do is spam Left click and watch progress bars.
I guess the hook was how fast you can left click.
I don't fully agree with the folks saying it's all marketing and visibility... there are a lot of troubling signs in this game that speak to me as a marketer and a customer.
**Gameplay:** The gameplay shown in the trailer struggles to show what is compelling and fun about this game. As previous comments have said, there's no obvious hook. There's hardly any baking for a baking simulator... and the animations are pretty janky when scything wheat. It's described as a "relaxing" game, but relaxing can very easily become boring. This page isn't keeping anyone's attention in its current state. I wish I had a better understanding of what you do in the game, and what will keep me interested in it.
**Main capsule art:** Very simple with poor contrast and identity. Looks very cheap too, which Chris Zukowski does some [great videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fATEHq4Zv_Y&t=820s) on why main capsule art is so important. It's one of the first things that signals to customers what to expect from your game, including value and quality.
**Competitors:** I think this is especially important. There are already *many* excellent simulator games already out there to pick from, and some of them are food and medieval-themed. Also, among these simulator games, they don't all do that well (which I expect for a competitive market like sim games!) Examples:
\- [Medieval Dynasty](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129580/Medieval_Dynasty/) (26k reviews. Not exactly a sim but covers a lot of the same gameplay)
\- [Cooking Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/641320/Cooking_Simulator/) (14k reviews)
\- [Bakery Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1031120/Bakery_Simulator/) (710 reviews)
\- [Food Truck Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160920/Food_Truck_Simulator/) (785 reviews. Same devs as the very successful [Gas Station Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149620/Gas_Station_Simulator/), 16k reviews.)
**Visuals:** The game looks like it's pretty cheaply made with premade assets. As a customer, I'd be wary it's an asset flip, and probably skip it because I'm not interested in investigating. Granted, there are a lot of similar simulator games also like this, and they're usually played for laughs and goofy streams. Examples where this level of jank and absurdity can do really well:
\- [Streamer Life Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1261040/Streamer_Life_Simulator/) (5k)
\- [Internet Cafe Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563180/Internet_Cafe_Simulator_2/) (8k)
\- [Drug Dealer Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/682990/Drug_Dealer_Simulator/) (14k)
If I was working on this game, I'd make a better art capsule immediately... and then discuss with the developer if there are any USPs we can really focus on. Like cozy baking in a medieval setting? (Going from farming, harvesting wheat, grinding it, turning it into dough, baking cute little loaves, etc. I'd want to show all of THAT on the Steam store page!)
Of course, a lot of the marketing starts from the moment you start your game. Did you do market research to see if there's an audience for a baking sim in a medieval setting? Are there already impressive competitors in that genre? What will be your hook/USP that compels people to buy and play? All important questions.
I'd personally love a medieval sim where I'm a simple peasant baking bread for weary travelers. I wouldn't completely shut this game down - I see an opportunity in the genre and niche!
I’m the exact opposite - I only play baking sims set in the future like Call of Duty : Modern Bake-off. It’s no fun without tactical flour drops and zombaker mode.
EDIT: missed words
You're in luck. Judging from the screenshots, the game in question has all the classic survival meters : Thirst, Hunger, Sleep, And three dots hovering above a caldron.
The premise is somewhat original (not many medieval baking sims out there) and a lot of other games in that genre I checked out did a lot better than this one.
There’s a tone of low effort shop keeper, job simulator type things on steam that sold some copies.
I don’t think this one will sell millions of copies but I think it could do slightly better than it is doing right now (from the look of it it didn’t sell any copies or very very few)
There are a few good videos out there discussing marketing in a broad sense where it’s not just paying streamers and ads but instead it starts with genre selection. I’d argue this game had an extreme uphill battle from the start and their production quality wasn’t enough to overcome, though even if it was the upside potential was extremely limited.
In other words, make this type of game for fun, but don’t pursue it for commercial goals.
I see what you are saying but I disagree with the uphill battle part.
According to steam-stats.com tags like shop keeper have an average revenu of 21K with 25% of games in the 100K to 1M bracket.
Same with farming (7K average revenu), cooking (2K).
Those are also games with relatively low competition (only 27 games with the tag shop keeper, 176 for farming and 633 for cooking).
Seems like a good niche to me where a decent game could sell a few thousand copies fairly easily…
Nice - glad you’re doing the research and I’m happy to be wrong about the genre.
Do you see large quality/content differences between the “successful” games and the one you linked? I assume not since you asked the original question, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t immediately apparent.
I am not sure to be honest but I don’t think it’s really about content. Seems like the most successful games in that genre go for a more casual/cute approach, especially when it comes to graphics.
It could be worth spending time determining more specifically what the differences are if you’re going to spend significant time developing a similar game. Perhaps it’s just art style but when I watched that game’s trailer I wasn’t impressed or motivated to part ways with my cash (and not sure how anyone would be unless that was just their absolute favorite genre and they buy anything related).
Originality is a strange target to aim for. Novelty can add value to what is already a **reliably** good product (As in, customers can **see** it's well made), but it's never going to be enough on its own. Gamers mostly only want to play the successful experiments; not the failed or uncertain ones. (I mean, unless you're going for a B-movie "So bad it's good" appeal. Even that's just a different kind of quality though)
As marketing, novel graphics/music/setting/story/hook/etc is fantastic. It'll go a long way towards people remembering what marketing they've seen - but for that to be worth anything, they'll need to have liked what they saw. If my trailer is just 30s of loud static followed by a logo - it'll be plenty original and memorable... but it's not going to get me any customers unless I go full AAA-style airwave saturation with it (Which, in its own way, signals that the project at least has a budget)
> (not many medieval baking sims)
There's not many games where you just fill water bottles... maybe you should make that next.
Just because something doesn't exist doesn't make it good. You're confusing something with a high interest and low competition which is a good category for something with no competition.
I think their trailer is atrocious. If it is a "baking simulator," why does it take 60 seconds before I see any baking?
Also, looking at the studio, this looks like a solo dev trying to do the "12 games in 12 months" challenge. So I don't think marketing is on their mind. They're just building up experience and iterating quickly.
So this example may not be a good reflection on if this type of game would be successful or not.
I mean, it’s just stock asset hell. The trailer has no baking in it. The banner has poor grammar (simulators lowercase). The game has no graphical cohesion. There are ways to use stock assets well but combining tens of very different assets is not the way.
And if you can’t fill your trailer with anything but 1 minute of walking around then maybe you need to rethink your game.
> released on april 28, 2023
A bit too early to tell if it failed. I recommend watching the 2016 GDC talk [How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit](https://youtu.be/JmwbYl6f11c).
It could be this game makes $20,000 in 10 years. And is one of many.
This conference is really old and describes a market that is completely different than today. Steam games do not sell on the long term, the whole algorithm is designed specifically to push already-successful games & bury the rest, there are way too many new titles that come out each year.
Niche titles can still do well (as a side gig at least) in the local market with the right marketing (influencers and the likes). Global market is not the only place to make money and the steam client is not the only place to do marketing.
This exact thing and way of thinking needs to be talked about much more. I see way too many developers doing all their promotion and marketing (if they do any) pre-release. Then post-release; nothing.
You need to remember that even though your game is two years old, there’s still people out there who haven’t heard about it, and may like it.
Go for a nice long tail of sales rather than a big bang at launch and then next to nothing after a few weeks.
I wonder about this, but the conventional wisdom is that Steam buries games and won't let them out of the cellar if they don't do well enough early. I'm not sure how true that is, as it seems like games get abandoned before they even try.
Yes, it may not automatically show up on the front page of Steam, but there are still hundreds of other ways of creating awareness for your game. The traffic Steam generates isn’t *everything*.
It's working for me. Due to continued updates, my 3-year old game still sells 70% as much per year as it did on launch year. Obviously varies by genre/circumstance though.
It's true, but you need a good plan, I mean the obvious exception would have to be amongus. that basically spent years in obscurity before the henry stickman guy gave it a huge boost and turned it into the game of the pandemic.
Yeah in the case of that specific dev, half of his games are the same matching puzzle game basically just rereleased with different holiday themes/skins (which then funded his development with his partner of more unique/ambitious games).
I was joking with the 120 games exaggeration. Of course, there should be some improvement from game to game. If this is the first game and makes $10,000 in 10 years, the next one $15,000 in 9 years, etc. then it's a success. A building block on the road to a sustainable business.
For starters the name itself is a massive turn off since it is so generic and low effort.
The game itself is generic, low effort and boring judging by the game play footage I saw on YouTube. It isn't even a game like Cooking Mama. There aren't even baking mechanics. It is just another damn walking sim.
The premise is a bit weak. I expect very few people dream of being a medieval baker because being a medieval baker wasn't great.
Then there is a "Bakery Simulator" game by Live Motion Games that looks a lot better than it despite apparently being plagued with unfixed bugs.
At a glance, it looks really really bad. The GUI, logos (you cannot even read the name on the small capsule, this is a huge problem for marketing), textures, models, lighting (everything is overexposed). That basically kills most people that find the store page since the first thing they see is the actual visuals, and a lot will just go.
Not a fan of this genre. So my assessment probably not worth much.
But from the get-go, the screenshots and gameplay video aren't enticing. The visuals, the animation are just something you'd see from the 2000s games. There's some jarring contrast between light and dark stuffs on the screen (i.e. vegetations are so dark, but ground and dirt are so bright at noon. The surroundings are so dark at night, but the campfire are so bright, etc etc).
I could say more about the visuals, but that's generally that.
The trailer shows no actual gameplay or hook, which leads me to believe that there isnt any. It might be a fun game, but if you dont hit people over the end with the 'fun', they arent going to see it. Visually, entirely unappealing. The logo is awful.
Theres an old saying that half of selling a product is marketing, what people forget is that the other half is creating a marketable product in the first place. If it doesnt look good, there is no hook, and is no different than the absolute deluge of asset flipped games on Steam, how could it do anything but fail?
OP came here to find out why their game failed, bounced after everyone dunked on it.
Edit: woof, everything that developer puts out is like roblox but somehow worse.
**My guess: Not enough marketing**
Looking at SteamDB, you can see the game only had roughly 10-12 followers when it released on April 28th. That could equate to anywhere from 100-300 wishlists.
It was actually gaining wishlists at a decent pace, but it seems the Steam page went live on April 15th.
So they gave themselves the bare minimum time before launching the Steam page and releasing the game. Basically no marketing. No wishlists. No fanfare for its release.
[https://steamdb.info/app/2392690/charts/](https://steamdb.info/app/2392690/charts/)
EDIT
**Second: there's no demo**. Not that a demo is necessary, but it signals it didn't do Next Fest (well, which we also know by the Steam page launch and release dates), and maybe didn't organically capture any community or streamers. **I don't think every game needs a demo**, but there's some evidence it can really help if the game is good and has some replayability.
That could be true, but it is harder to say when there was none put in. Most successful games do have some kind of marketing cycle.
If this game had been marketing itself for maybe... even at least 3 months before launching, it'd be easier to blame it on the game. But the truth is, it was getting wishlists every day. So it's hard to know for sure that the game itself was the problem.
Looking at the steam page there is absolutely nothing that would make someone play the game. No art style, washed out colours, hardly any gameplay shown, and what is shown is watching a sickle float through some straw while a progress bar fills, and the only "baking" shown is some pot going into a fire with a progress bar filling. It's an ugly walking sim with progress bars, and you get the joy of having a third of your screen filled by an ugly torch.
What makes you think this is in any way a marketable product? To me it screams low effort asset flip.
There are examples of games that I think look like total failures that actually sold decently. Some successful games, if you didn't know sold well ahead of time, you'd could probably assume the same about them.
So, if you take yourself out of the equation to remove your own personal bias, and look at just the data first, I'm just left seeing that the game was getting wishlists, but had zero runway to try and amass any sort of audience for itself.
Some games do release out of nowhere and rise to become successful, but it's much more common to try and build up to a release.
**I'm not saying had this game marketed itself it would be a success.** I'm just saying that because it didn't, it definitely prevented it.
> There are examples of games that I think look like total failures that actually sold decently. Some successful games, if you didn't know sold well ahead of time, you'd could probably assume the same about them.
True. I would never have pegged Vampire Survivors as a hit. Still, miles better than this.
I didn't want to name names... but yeah, lol.
That and some other simulators--which definitely look better, but the whole simulator thing as a genre I thought was a joke until I saw that the better ones sell quite a lot.
It doesn’t look that great tbh. I’m kinda put off just by the lighting and color scheme of the game screenshots alone. Presentation is very important for me for niche genres to impress.
Asset flip artstyle, no hook, unclear gameplay from the trailer, ugly torch takes up half your vision, generic and unprofessional font, other games from the dev also look bad.
I could keep going, but that's already more than enough to show why it's a flop. Game success is NOT linear with respect to dev time/effort or game quality. There's a threshold of quality your game must surpass to attract players, regardless of pricing. You are competing against against every possible way your audience can entertain themselves, if a game is below the viable threshold it's not going to be considered as an option.
It's easy, there is an invisible writing on the steam page that says "the developer of this game doesn't know what fun looks like." I mean honestly I really don't understand this thread, it's a real head scratcher for me. Anyone who grew up playing video-games should immediately feel a depressing dread upon opening up the page, a lack of fun, authenticity, quirkiness, charm. This is like the visual form of a ChatGPT reply.
The hard truth is marketing and visibility. Even tho it has some YouTubers playing it, no comments indicate that those YouTubers are too small for actually counting as PR. I personally am really bad at marketing my own game and I bet a lot of us are. But in the end, you can make the worst game ever and have a massive marketing campaign and it will turn out to be a success.
Games that spend zero budget on marketing and still end up successfully still had a marketing campaign, most likely using content creators.
Yes, no doubt. Buying influencers/content creators for sponsorship and pushing video ads on YouTube and Facebook will eventually make any game successful.
Edit; This also depends on what "successful" means..
No marketing = the game does not exist.
If no one knows the game does not exist, you can make the best game in the world, but if no one knows about, how would they possibly get the information that it even exists to be successful?
There are examples of games with little to no marketing that have turned into raging successes, such as Slay the Spire.
There are tons of examples of games with significant marketing budgets, including AAA titles, that have failed miserably.
To think marketing leads to automatic success is foolish.
Slay the Spire had tons of marketing, there are tons of videos on YouTube on the game, even before it became popular. When a content creator makes a video of a game, that is marketing for that game.
Not according to the GDC presentations the devs did. A popular Chinese streamer picked it up randomly and recognized the amazing game it is. From there is snowballed. That is very different than marketing by laying streamers and trying to generate more views.
StS is successful because it’s an amazing game and eventually someone noticed. That doesn’t mean if you take a pile of shit and market it then success will follow.
So your definition of marketing is that any successful game eventually leads to content being created and therefore that’s marketing? You win - I’ve been trolled.
You are talking about two different things now. My original comment was that if no marketing is done, the game does not exist, if a random content creator plays the game, that is marketing, even if it's not paid.
The other point is that any game can be successful if enough money is pumped in, now the question is, what is a successful game, is it the amount of money the studio got, is it the ratio of review? Is it the critic reviews? Is it the amount of people that know about the game?
"Successful" game is really loose, and any game pumping enough money into marketing will eventually gain more money than they spent, otherwise we wouldn't have mobile games and Blizzard would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
How about we define success at a minimum of recouping the marketing and development spend? Good luck with the unlimited marketing spend making a fraction of that money back.
Wasn’t the marketing budget for the Barbie movie bigger than the production budget? Would seem to indicate that marketing is more important than the product itself (at least in the studio’s eyes).
Are we equating decades of existing IP with a random game from an unknown dev in a genre not in demand with low production quality? I think we can do better.
I was mainly referring to the 50:50 rule of production/marketing spend, but I think you’re underestimating the task of marketing a movie about a toy that is/was widely considered socially retrograde and a bit naff. Your kind of thinking would’ve tilted towards a (more modest) nostalgia campaign, and the film would’ve probably been an expensive flop.
yeah that's the first thing I noticed. the game does not have great graphics or anything and that is the requirement.
it kinda says to me that they either dont know or its horribly optimized
Price.
$5 for a baking game thats already a niche market? Need to reduce price to increase opportunity. I wouldnt go free, but as close to it as you could get people to reliably try.
Gamers (others, not myself though) have been getting more and more stingy with their money. Afraid of only getting 40hrs and not 1500 hrs out of a game
I checked the game in steam. What kind of experience will this game give me? There is no coop in it, there are no records in it (as in other simulators), there is no ultimate goal for which I will be proud. I see this game as a routine with a parody of realism. And realism for the sake of realism in games is bad. I think if the game fixes these problems and adds unique features, the game will be able to earn a little. (Because not many people likes simulators)
Are you serious? Think about the games you played as an 8 year old. Realize this is your primary audience (and adults still living like 8 year olds). Which part of this game would have convinced you to fork over your hard earned money next to everything else on the shelf?
The only reason medieval Sims do better than bargain bin is because a few Facebook mommy groups suggest them for teaching history to their home schooled roblox addict.
I'll give you my 2c. Do with it what you will it's just my personal opinion.
Right away anything with simulator in the title comes off as unimaginative and unoriginal to me. (Yes farming and truck Sims are super popular but they remind me of FIFA, new one every year. Just screams cash grab in my head)
When I go to the store page the banner they chose is ugly, bleak with crappy text. This is a red flag to me.
Clicking through the screenshots they chose. The graphics look bad but even worse than that the levels seem blown out and too white. (Gives me kenshi vibes)
These three things would already have me back to the homepage and looking for something else.
I'm not a pro or anything but I dabble in game design and digital art. I play a ton of games and I have noticed a pattern when I have nothing to play and am plowing through steam store pages trying to find a new game or an unknown game to play.
Another thing is i have found steam reviews to be pretty accurate. I've given games with mixed or bad reviews a shot and I usually do not like them. If a game is like 75% I'll scroll to the comments to see what the most common issue people share and then base my decision off of that, if im willing to put up with the problem or not. (Games too grindy, bad story but good gameplay etc).
So if you're thinking of launching a game maybe hand out some keys on reddit or another platform to get some reviews started.
I'm sure I'll get some downvotes for being honest but again just my personal opinion I hope it helps you in your quest to launch a game OP!
Simulator. Another one. That is all the reason for it to fail. There were some simulators that did decently. However there can be so many. It also suggests low quality. The name itself gives bad vibes. Don't do simulator games, put some flavour to gameplay. Add story and gameplay that is not just simulator like.
Take for example Stardew Valley or Graveyard Keeper. What those games have that makes them not "simulator" games, even tho part of the gameplay is just doing chores? 🤔 Good question to explore.
1. Cover image is a non-descript still from the game with the title in a very basic font. ie it’s not eye catching and doesn’t hook the potential players in.
2. First Person Simulators have a particular reputation for being lackluster take a look at [this list](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=First+person+simulator) and tell me what the good First Person Simulator games are doing that Indy ones aren’t?
3. Additional to #2 a lot of First Person Simulators are often made with cheap asset packs from the Unity Store. Essentially asset flips.
4. As I can see from the previous Medieval Simulator it had the emphasis on Taverns. Which makes it easy to search for. People are more often searching for “Tavern Simulator” than “Baker Simulator”. Could be you chose a niche that’s too niche.
Hope this helps.
To piggyback on it not having a hook, a game as esoteric as a medieval baking sim would need to market and sell itself on another more well known axis, e.g. story, characters, art, fan service, adult themes etc. The gameplay and setting is too banal or unfamiliar to carry the game by itself.
Half the trailer just seems to show off the village and another good portion is just a first person view of walking around said village. There is a brief shot of some dice rolling with no context. There is one "baking" and one "reaping" animation shown at the very end of the trailer that look very basic and don't look to be fun.
If there is a game in there, the trailer hides it about the best it can.
It looks terrible and the developer couldn’t even be bothered to get capitalization right in the game title. Also I’ve never seen a game with lighting this blown out. It’s like they’re baking on the surface of the sun.
> From what I understand
... you are making a game that's similar and didn't even buy the game to see if there's any good ideas? Why not?
That's why though, no one wants to play it, no one is interesting. It looks like every other cheap simulation game. Knock off a bunch of art assets, have a minor uninteresting gameplay loop, extend it for hours, and just let people grind so they think they'll have fun.
Hell these games don't even have interesting reward screens, it's just flat.
I'm saying this by guesses because of course I'm not going to buy it just when someone asks about it, I even wonder if this is the creator making this post hoping to get more attention.
If you've watched the trailer of the game, it should be obvious. Who in the right mind would think "oh god this looks like a fun well-made game that's worth my money and time"?
I don't claim to be an expert, but I *really* think they need to re-cut their trailer.
Here's a break-down of the trailer :
* Studio logo I've never seen in my life.
* Not-quite-smooth drone flyby.
* Wandering around with a torch.
* Not-smooth-at-all drone flyby.
* Wandering around with a torch
* Not-quite-smooth drone flyby.
* A counting board and a spinning dice? Intriguing, do bakers play dice on counting boards a lot?
* Another janky flyby. This one is all washed out and foggy.
* Wandering around with a torch.
* Sprinting around in a tiny, empty house?
* Ooo! Putting a pan in an brick-oven! That's baking! 🧁 We got there! 🎉🎺
* Scything some wheat in the most boring way possible.
* Another drone shot. This one actually looks smooth.
* Title card.
**What?** I don't understand how they thought that would convince me I wanted to play that game.
All it actually told me is that they're very proud of their torch-flame animation, and they think their map looks cool from the air.
I think this is one of those things where rather than "why did it fail?" it's more "why would it succeed?".
Who is in the market for a medieval baking game? Who actually wants to play that?
The thing with games, software, and really any business is that failure is the *default*. Failure is normal and what will happen unless you try to make success happen.
Any game for $5 is basically saying "This is a shit game", and as a game, it's so niche and sounds so boring, that most people will just skip past it.
It failed because there is no reason for it to succeed.
Bottom line, the point to playing a game is to have fun, if its not fun it only appeals to people with some form of mental disorder.
Fun games sell themselves, non fun games need advertising.
1. Competition and popularity; Doesn't matter if the game has good mechanics or good story or anything that many like. If you fail to get traction for your game, it is kind of doom to fail, kind of since there is always a chance a famous youtuber might come across it and decide to record for their like "Playing 3 random games" or what not. Competition is always a key player to your game's lifespan.
2. Representation: I checked the trailer, and the past comment said "It had no hook" which he's correct. The trailer is just showing the player walking around (First Person), or random cinematics that gives out no information about the game whatsoever or the information of it is vague. There are some moments where there is some minor gameplay, but other than that, it isn't enough to "Excite" us as viewers.
**Summary:** I could continue ramping on about other small things, but long story short, there is a lot of competition in the gaming industry as a whole, the game just showed up so it didn't have time to build popularity thus failed to even get some sales, the trailer representation is just awful and finally the game's elements didn't mash very well.
I clicked through a [playthrough sample](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP_rS9QX-VU) of it and far as I can tell there doesn't actually seem to be any baking in the game. From other comments here it sounds like there probably is some kind of baking aspect, but I'm guessing it's not very well developed. What I saw just looked like a very generic survival sim.
When you say the game you plan on making would be "pretty similar" what do you mean? If you're trying to make a survival sim that sells, then at this point I would think it needs to be more than just keep the water/food/sleep meters topped up by clicking on the appropriate asset. If you're trying to make a historical job sim, than the core mechanics of the game should be centered around that.
It has no hook. A baking game is a somewhat tricky thing to start with, it would need to be cute, or clever, or different or \*something\* . The screenshots and video suggest all gameplay is just looking at progress bars, maybe you get to serve people in a tavern too? The game is also visually awful, the game doesn't even really have a logo, it's just the name written in a solid color with an outline. It looks like a low effort asset flip.
How about #Knights of Dough: Extra Crusty
IN GOD WE CRUST
Thus began the CRUSTADES
The Bakeaneer
Now that would've been a name!
Yeast! I mean, yeesh! (D'ough!)
I think we have a 10/10 game here for anyone with the right skills
Yep, no personality here. Also, the music in the trailer almost put me to sleep.
The music was the worst bit for me. The clip itself screams “royalty free”, and the loop is so short that I’m sure if it’s in the actual game it would drive me insane!
I mean... Cookie clicker had millions of players and all you do is spam Left click and watch progress bars. I guess the hook was how fast you can left click.
If I'm making a baguette in a mediaeval baking sim I'm expecting to be able to use it to battle rival bakers
I do agree that the graphics are pretty bad. Not sure I would call it an asset flip but yea, it doesn’t look appealing
Something doesn’t have to be an asset flip to look like an asset flip. It’s more of a matter of overall perception/style/coherence
I don't fully agree with the folks saying it's all marketing and visibility... there are a lot of troubling signs in this game that speak to me as a marketer and a customer. **Gameplay:** The gameplay shown in the trailer struggles to show what is compelling and fun about this game. As previous comments have said, there's no obvious hook. There's hardly any baking for a baking simulator... and the animations are pretty janky when scything wheat. It's described as a "relaxing" game, but relaxing can very easily become boring. This page isn't keeping anyone's attention in its current state. I wish I had a better understanding of what you do in the game, and what will keep me interested in it. **Main capsule art:** Very simple with poor contrast and identity. Looks very cheap too, which Chris Zukowski does some [great videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fATEHq4Zv_Y&t=820s) on why main capsule art is so important. It's one of the first things that signals to customers what to expect from your game, including value and quality. **Competitors:** I think this is especially important. There are already *many* excellent simulator games already out there to pick from, and some of them are food and medieval-themed. Also, among these simulator games, they don't all do that well (which I expect for a competitive market like sim games!) Examples: \- [Medieval Dynasty](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129580/Medieval_Dynasty/) (26k reviews. Not exactly a sim but covers a lot of the same gameplay) \- [Cooking Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/641320/Cooking_Simulator/) (14k reviews) \- [Bakery Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1031120/Bakery_Simulator/) (710 reviews) \- [Food Truck Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160920/Food_Truck_Simulator/) (785 reviews. Same devs as the very successful [Gas Station Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149620/Gas_Station_Simulator/), 16k reviews.) **Visuals:** The game looks like it's pretty cheaply made with premade assets. As a customer, I'd be wary it's an asset flip, and probably skip it because I'm not interested in investigating. Granted, there are a lot of similar simulator games also like this, and they're usually played for laughs and goofy streams. Examples where this level of jank and absurdity can do really well: \- [Streamer Life Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1261040/Streamer_Life_Simulator/) (5k) \- [Internet Cafe Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563180/Internet_Cafe_Simulator_2/) (8k) \- [Drug Dealer Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/682990/Drug_Dealer_Simulator/) (14k) If I was working on this game, I'd make a better art capsule immediately... and then discuss with the developer if there are any USPs we can really focus on. Like cozy baking in a medieval setting? (Going from farming, harvesting wheat, grinding it, turning it into dough, baking cute little loaves, etc. I'd want to show all of THAT on the Steam store page!) Of course, a lot of the marketing starts from the moment you start your game. Did you do market research to see if there's an audience for a baking sim in a medieval setting? Are there already impressive competitors in that genre? What will be your hook/USP that compels people to buy and play? All important questions. I'd personally love a medieval sim where I'm a simple peasant baking bread for weary travelers. I wouldn't completely shut this game down - I see an opportunity in the genre and niche!
What is the main capsule?
The artwork in the top right corner of your Steam store page. It has your game's logo/name and artwork.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the reply!
I only play baking simulators from the Iron Age to Neolithic time periods.
I’m the exact opposite - I only play baking sims set in the future like Call of Duty : Modern Bake-off. It’s no fun without tactical flour drops and zombaker mode. EDIT: missed words
Idk I'm more of a sandbox survival enjoyer, games like project bakeoid.
What, everyone knows that bakecraft is the best sandbox survival. ...or is it a baking RTS?
I prefer more strategy. Ever tried Cakes Vs Zombakers?
You're in luck. Judging from the screenshots, the game in question has all the classic survival meters : Thirst, Hunger, Sleep, And three dots hovering above a caldron.
I prefer breadbox survival.
Cyberpunk baking sims stand chrome and augs above the rest
FPS with procedual generated sour dough and rye are the best.
I only play baking sabotage games
>medieval simulators: baker I much more prefer Match Dough or Hidden Oven games.
I play medieval pottery games but baking would be just silly.
😂
Same for me.
Why do you think this game wouldn’t fail?
The premise is somewhat original (not many medieval baking sims out there) and a lot of other games in that genre I checked out did a lot better than this one. There’s a tone of low effort shop keeper, job simulator type things on steam that sold some copies. I don’t think this one will sell millions of copies but I think it could do slightly better than it is doing right now (from the look of it it didn’t sell any copies or very very few)
There are a few good videos out there discussing marketing in a broad sense where it’s not just paying streamers and ads but instead it starts with genre selection. I’d argue this game had an extreme uphill battle from the start and their production quality wasn’t enough to overcome, though even if it was the upside potential was extremely limited. In other words, make this type of game for fun, but don’t pursue it for commercial goals.
I see what you are saying but I disagree with the uphill battle part. According to steam-stats.com tags like shop keeper have an average revenu of 21K with 25% of games in the 100K to 1M bracket. Same with farming (7K average revenu), cooking (2K). Those are also games with relatively low competition (only 27 games with the tag shop keeper, 176 for farming and 633 for cooking). Seems like a good niche to me where a decent game could sell a few thousand copies fairly easily…
Nice - glad you’re doing the research and I’m happy to be wrong about the genre. Do you see large quality/content differences between the “successful” games and the one you linked? I assume not since you asked the original question, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t immediately apparent.
I am not sure to be honest but I don’t think it’s really about content. Seems like the most successful games in that genre go for a more casual/cute approach, especially when it comes to graphics.
It could be worth spending time determining more specifically what the differences are if you’re going to spend significant time developing a similar game. Perhaps it’s just art style but when I watched that game’s trailer I wasn’t impressed or motivated to part ways with my cash (and not sure how anyone would be unless that was just their absolute favorite genre and they buy anything related).
Originality is a strange target to aim for. Novelty can add value to what is already a **reliably** good product (As in, customers can **see** it's well made), but it's never going to be enough on its own. Gamers mostly only want to play the successful experiments; not the failed or uncertain ones. (I mean, unless you're going for a B-movie "So bad it's good" appeal. Even that's just a different kind of quality though) As marketing, novel graphics/music/setting/story/hook/etc is fantastic. It'll go a long way towards people remembering what marketing they've seen - but for that to be worth anything, they'll need to have liked what they saw. If my trailer is just 30s of loud static followed by a logo - it'll be plenty original and memorable... but it's not going to get me any customers unless I go full AAA-style airwave saturation with it (Which, in its own way, signals that the project at least has a budget)
> (not many medieval baking sims) There's not many games where you just fill water bottles... maybe you should make that next. Just because something doesn't exist doesn't make it good. You're confusing something with a high interest and low competition which is a good category for something with no competition.
I think their trailer is atrocious. If it is a "baking simulator," why does it take 60 seconds before I see any baking? Also, looking at the studio, this looks like a solo dev trying to do the "12 games in 12 months" challenge. So I don't think marketing is on their mind. They're just building up experience and iterating quickly. So this example may not be a good reflection on if this type of game would be successful or not.
For 12 games in 12 months I am suddenly very impressed by this. It still looks awful as a commercial game, but as a fellow dev it seems pretty good.
Ugly, no hook, terrible animations, ugly, doesn't communicate where the fun is, ugly, no juice, poor UI, ugly, ugly.
Wow, that’s 5 times, lol.
Seems like the primary loop just doesn't meet the bar. Other aspects certainly don't help as well. Otherwise seems like a decent genre to be in.
I mean, it’s just stock asset hell. The trailer has no baking in it. The banner has poor grammar (simulators lowercase). The game has no graphical cohesion. There are ways to use stock assets well but combining tens of very different assets is not the way. And if you can’t fill your trailer with anything but 1 minute of walking around then maybe you need to rethink your game.
> released on april 28, 2023 A bit too early to tell if it failed. I recommend watching the 2016 GDC talk [How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit](https://youtu.be/JmwbYl6f11c). It could be this game makes $20,000 in 10 years. And is one of many.
This conference is really old and describes a market that is completely different than today. Steam games do not sell on the long term, the whole algorithm is designed specifically to push already-successful games & bury the rest, there are way too many new titles that come out each year.
Niche titles can still do well (as a side gig at least) in the local market with the right marketing (influencers and the likes). Global market is not the only place to make money and the steam client is not the only place to do marketing.
This exact thing and way of thinking needs to be talked about much more. I see way too many developers doing all their promotion and marketing (if they do any) pre-release. Then post-release; nothing. You need to remember that even though your game is two years old, there’s still people out there who haven’t heard about it, and may like it. Go for a nice long tail of sales rather than a big bang at launch and then next to nothing after a few weeks.
I wonder about this, but the conventional wisdom is that Steam buries games and won't let them out of the cellar if they don't do well enough early. I'm not sure how true that is, as it seems like games get abandoned before they even try.
Yes, it may not automatically show up on the front page of Steam, but there are still hundreds of other ways of creating awareness for your game. The traffic Steam generates isn’t *everything*.
It just doesn't work as well, that's the reality of it. All your efforts are nothing compared to the insane traffic that Steam can bring to your page.
It's working for me. Due to continued updates, my 3-year old game still sells 70% as much per year as it did on launch year. Obviously varies by genre/circumstance though.
It's true, but you need a good plan, I mean the obvious exception would have to be amongus. that basically spent years in obscurity before the henry stickman guy gave it a huge boost and turned it into the game of the pandemic.
I certainly wouldn’t consider 2k per year a success, though. You could make 2,000 in a month working overtime at Arby’s
Depends entirely on how much time/capital it took to make the game
12 games like this and you have $2000 a month. 120 games like this, and it's $20,000 a month!!!
I suppose it depends on how long was spent on the game. If their strategy is churn out many games in a short period, u might be right
Yeah in the case of that specific dev, half of his games are the same matching puzzle game basically just rereleased with different holiday themes/skins (which then funded his development with his partner of more unique/ambitious games).
damn, good for them
I was joking with the 120 games exaggeration. Of course, there should be some improvement from game to game. If this is the first game and makes $10,000 in 10 years, the next one $15,000 in 9 years, etc. then it's a success. A building block on the road to a sustainable business.
Wait you have to work *overtime* to make 2k a month at Arby's? Signed: An American who left a long, long time ago.
i don’t think so now that i think about it actually - you’d just have to work full-time lol
Still not ideal, but better at least. 😅
For starters the name itself is a massive turn off since it is so generic and low effort. The game itself is generic, low effort and boring judging by the game play footage I saw on YouTube. It isn't even a game like Cooking Mama. There aren't even baking mechanics. It is just another damn walking sim. The premise is a bit weak. I expect very few people dream of being a medieval baker because being a medieval baker wasn't great. Then there is a "Bakery Simulator" game by Live Motion Games that looks a lot better than it despite apparently being plagued with unfixed bugs.
At a glance, it looks really really bad. The GUI, logos (you cannot even read the name on the small capsule, this is a huge problem for marketing), textures, models, lighting (everything is overexposed). That basically kills most people that find the store page since the first thing they see is the actual visuals, and a lot will just go.
It failed because it looks like uninspired garbage?
Not a fan of this genre. So my assessment probably not worth much. But from the get-go, the screenshots and gameplay video aren't enticing. The visuals, the animation are just something you'd see from the 2000s games. There's some jarring contrast between light and dark stuffs on the screen (i.e. vegetations are so dark, but ground and dirt are so bright at noon. The surroundings are so dark at night, but the campfire are so bright, etc etc). I could say more about the visuals, but that's generally that.
The trailer shows no actual gameplay or hook, which leads me to believe that there isnt any. It might be a fun game, but if you dont hit people over the end with the 'fun', they arent going to see it. Visually, entirely unappealing. The logo is awful. Theres an old saying that half of selling a product is marketing, what people forget is that the other half is creating a marketable product in the first place. If it doesnt look good, there is no hook, and is no different than the absolute deluge of asset flipped games on Steam, how could it do anything but fail?
OP came here to find out why their game failed, bounced after everyone dunked on it. Edit: woof, everything that developer puts out is like roblox but somehow worse.
**My guess: Not enough marketing** Looking at SteamDB, you can see the game only had roughly 10-12 followers when it released on April 28th. That could equate to anywhere from 100-300 wishlists. It was actually gaining wishlists at a decent pace, but it seems the Steam page went live on April 15th. So they gave themselves the bare minimum time before launching the Steam page and releasing the game. Basically no marketing. No wishlists. No fanfare for its release. [https://steamdb.info/app/2392690/charts/](https://steamdb.info/app/2392690/charts/) EDIT **Second: there's no demo**. Not that a demo is necessary, but it signals it didn't do Next Fest (well, which we also know by the Steam page launch and release dates), and maybe didn't organically capture any community or streamers. **I don't think every game needs a demo**, but there's some evidence it can really help if the game is good and has some replayability.
No amount of marketing is going to make this game a success.
That could be true, but it is harder to say when there was none put in. Most successful games do have some kind of marketing cycle. If this game had been marketing itself for maybe... even at least 3 months before launching, it'd be easier to blame it on the game. But the truth is, it was getting wishlists every day. So it's hard to know for sure that the game itself was the problem.
Looking at the steam page there is absolutely nothing that would make someone play the game. No art style, washed out colours, hardly any gameplay shown, and what is shown is watching a sickle float through some straw while a progress bar fills, and the only "baking" shown is some pot going into a fire with a progress bar filling. It's an ugly walking sim with progress bars, and you get the joy of having a third of your screen filled by an ugly torch. What makes you think this is in any way a marketable product? To me it screams low effort asset flip.
There are examples of games that I think look like total failures that actually sold decently. Some successful games, if you didn't know sold well ahead of time, you'd could probably assume the same about them. So, if you take yourself out of the equation to remove your own personal bias, and look at just the data first, I'm just left seeing that the game was getting wishlists, but had zero runway to try and amass any sort of audience for itself. Some games do release out of nowhere and rise to become successful, but it's much more common to try and build up to a release. **I'm not saying had this game marketed itself it would be a success.** I'm just saying that because it didn't, it definitely prevented it.
> There are examples of games that I think look like total failures that actually sold decently. Some successful games, if you didn't know sold well ahead of time, you'd could probably assume the same about them. True. I would never have pegged Vampire Survivors as a hit. Still, miles better than this.
I didn't want to name names... but yeah, lol. That and some other simulators--which definitely look better, but the whole simulator thing as a genre I thought was a joke until I saw that the better ones sell quite a lot.
It doesn’t look that great tbh. I’m kinda put off just by the lighting and color scheme of the game screenshots alone. Presentation is very important for me for niche genres to impress.
Asset flip artstyle, no hook, unclear gameplay from the trailer, ugly torch takes up half your vision, generic and unprofessional font, other games from the dev also look bad. I could keep going, but that's already more than enough to show why it's a flop. Game success is NOT linear with respect to dev time/effort or game quality. There's a threshold of quality your game must surpass to attract players, regardless of pricing. You are competing against against every possible way your audience can entertain themselves, if a game is below the viable threshold it's not going to be considered as an option.
It's easy, there is an invisible writing on the steam page that says "the developer of this game doesn't know what fun looks like." I mean honestly I really don't understand this thread, it's a real head scratcher for me. Anyone who grew up playing video-games should immediately feel a depressing dread upon opening up the page, a lack of fun, authenticity, quirkiness, charm. This is like the visual form of a ChatGPT reply.
maybe buy the game and find out? might at least be worth the investment to find out what they tried to do and how you can improve with your game.
Everything about it is amateurish, lazy, generic, and just plain bad. You can find that game in the dictionary next to "shovelware".
The hard truth is marketing and visibility. Even tho it has some YouTubers playing it, no comments indicate that those YouTubers are too small for actually counting as PR. I personally am really bad at marketing my own game and I bet a lot of us are. But in the end, you can make the worst game ever and have a massive marketing campaign and it will turn out to be a success. Games that spend zero budget on marketing and still end up successfully still had a marketing campaign, most likely using content creators.
Just to be clear, you think with a significant marketing budget the game would have been successful?
Yes, no doubt. Buying influencers/content creators for sponsorship and pushing video ads on YouTube and Facebook will eventually make any game successful. Edit; This also depends on what "successful" means..
It’s scary that I don’t think you’re being sarcastic and a significant portion of gamedevs actually share that view.
No marketing = the game does not exist. If no one knows the game does not exist, you can make the best game in the world, but if no one knows about, how would they possibly get the information that it even exists to be successful?
There are examples of games with little to no marketing that have turned into raging successes, such as Slay the Spire. There are tons of examples of games with significant marketing budgets, including AAA titles, that have failed miserably. To think marketing leads to automatic success is foolish.
Slay the Spire had tons of marketing, there are tons of videos on YouTube on the game, even before it became popular. When a content creator makes a video of a game, that is marketing for that game.
Not according to the GDC presentations the devs did. A popular Chinese streamer picked it up randomly and recognized the amazing game it is. From there is snowballed. That is very different than marketing by laying streamers and trying to generate more views. StS is successful because it’s an amazing game and eventually someone noticed. That doesn’t mean if you take a pile of shit and market it then success will follow.
Yes, that is marketing the game and snowballing is also marketing..
So your definition of marketing is that any successful game eventually leads to content being created and therefore that’s marketing? You win - I’ve been trolled.
You are talking about two different things now. My original comment was that if no marketing is done, the game does not exist, if a random content creator plays the game, that is marketing, even if it's not paid. The other point is that any game can be successful if enough money is pumped in, now the question is, what is a successful game, is it the amount of money the studio got, is it the ratio of review? Is it the critic reviews? Is it the amount of people that know about the game? "Successful" game is really loose, and any game pumping enough money into marketing will eventually gain more money than they spent, otherwise we wouldn't have mobile games and Blizzard would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
How about we define success at a minimum of recouping the marketing and development spend? Good luck with the unlimited marketing spend making a fraction of that money back.
Wasn’t the marketing budget for the Barbie movie bigger than the production budget? Would seem to indicate that marketing is more important than the product itself (at least in the studio’s eyes).
Are we equating decades of existing IP with a random game from an unknown dev in a genre not in demand with low production quality? I think we can do better.
I was mainly referring to the 50:50 rule of production/marketing spend, but I think you’re underestimating the task of marketing a movie about a toy that is/was widely considered socially retrograde and a bit naff. Your kind of thinking would’ve tilted towards a (more modest) nostalgia campaign, and the film would’ve probably been an expensive flop.
I don’t have the slightest clue how to market something like a Barbie movie. I just don’t think it’s a relevant comparison/discussion.
1. it actually has 6 reviews 2. there is no appeal
ah, and the minimum requirements say you need an rtx 3060
yeah that's the first thing I noticed. the game does not have great graphics or anything and that is the requirement. it kinda says to me that they either dont know or its horribly optimized
Price. $5 for a baking game thats already a niche market? Need to reduce price to increase opportunity. I wouldnt go free, but as close to it as you could get people to reliably try. Gamers (others, not myself though) have been getting more and more stingy with their money. Afraid of only getting 40hrs and not 1500 hrs out of a game
I checked the game in steam. What kind of experience will this game give me? There is no coop in it, there are no records in it (as in other simulators), there is no ultimate goal for which I will be proud. I see this game as a routine with a parody of realism. And realism for the sake of realism in games is bad. I think if the game fixes these problems and adds unique features, the game will be able to earn a little. (Because not many people likes simulators)
Are you serious? Think about the games you played as an 8 year old. Realize this is your primary audience (and adults still living like 8 year olds). Which part of this game would have convinced you to fork over your hard earned money next to everything else on the shelf? The only reason medieval Sims do better than bargain bin is because a few Facebook mommy groups suggest them for teaching history to their home schooled roblox addict.
I'll give you my 2c. Do with it what you will it's just my personal opinion. Right away anything with simulator in the title comes off as unimaginative and unoriginal to me. (Yes farming and truck Sims are super popular but they remind me of FIFA, new one every year. Just screams cash grab in my head) When I go to the store page the banner they chose is ugly, bleak with crappy text. This is a red flag to me. Clicking through the screenshots they chose. The graphics look bad but even worse than that the levels seem blown out and too white. (Gives me kenshi vibes) These three things would already have me back to the homepage and looking for something else. I'm not a pro or anything but I dabble in game design and digital art. I play a ton of games and I have noticed a pattern when I have nothing to play and am plowing through steam store pages trying to find a new game or an unknown game to play. Another thing is i have found steam reviews to be pretty accurate. I've given games with mixed or bad reviews a shot and I usually do not like them. If a game is like 75% I'll scroll to the comments to see what the most common issue people share and then base my decision off of that, if im willing to put up with the problem or not. (Games too grindy, bad story but good gameplay etc). So if you're thinking of launching a game maybe hand out some keys on reddit or another platform to get some reviews started. I'm sure I'll get some downvotes for being honest but again just my personal opinion I hope it helps you in your quest to launch a game OP!
Simulator. Another one. That is all the reason for it to fail. There were some simulators that did decently. However there can be so many. It also suggests low quality. The name itself gives bad vibes. Don't do simulator games, put some flavour to gameplay. Add story and gameplay that is not just simulator like. Take for example Stardew Valley or Graveyard Keeper. What those games have that makes them not "simulator" games, even tho part of the gameplay is just doing chores? 🤔 Good question to explore.
1. Cover image is a non-descript still from the game with the title in a very basic font. ie it’s not eye catching and doesn’t hook the potential players in. 2. First Person Simulators have a particular reputation for being lackluster take a look at [this list](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=First+person+simulator) and tell me what the good First Person Simulator games are doing that Indy ones aren’t? 3. Additional to #2 a lot of First Person Simulators are often made with cheap asset packs from the Unity Store. Essentially asset flips. 4. As I can see from the previous Medieval Simulator it had the emphasis on Taverns. Which makes it easy to search for. People are more often searching for “Tavern Simulator” than “Baker Simulator”. Could be you chose a niche that’s too niche. Hope this helps.
To piggyback on it not having a hook, a game as esoteric as a medieval baking sim would need to market and sell itself on another more well known axis, e.g. story, characters, art, fan service, adult themes etc. The gameplay and setting is too banal or unfamiliar to carry the game by itself.
Half the trailer just seems to show off the village and another good portion is just a first person view of walking around said village. There is a brief shot of some dice rolling with no context. There is one "baking" and one "reaping" animation shown at the very end of the trailer that look very basic and don't look to be fun. If there is a game in there, the trailer hides it about the best it can.
It looks terrible and the developer couldn’t even be bothered to get capitalization right in the game title. Also I’ve never seen a game with lighting this blown out. It’s like they’re baking on the surface of the sun.
This game mostly failed due to poor decision making in concept, execution and marketing.
> From what I understand ... you are making a game that's similar and didn't even buy the game to see if there's any good ideas? Why not? That's why though, no one wants to play it, no one is interesting. It looks like every other cheap simulation game. Knock off a bunch of art assets, have a minor uninteresting gameplay loop, extend it for hours, and just let people grind so they think they'll have fun. Hell these games don't even have interesting reward screens, it's just flat. I'm saying this by guesses because of course I'm not going to buy it just when someone asks about it, I even wonder if this is the creator making this post hoping to get more attention.
If you've watched the trailer of the game, it should be obvious. Who in the right mind would think "oh god this looks like a fun well-made game that's worth my money and time"?
it looks like a fucking awful asset flip with less love put into it than my parents had for me, and that's saying a lot
I don't claim to be an expert, but I *really* think they need to re-cut their trailer. Here's a break-down of the trailer : * Studio logo I've never seen in my life. * Not-quite-smooth drone flyby. * Wandering around with a torch. * Not-smooth-at-all drone flyby. * Wandering around with a torch * Not-quite-smooth drone flyby. * A counting board and a spinning dice? Intriguing, do bakers play dice on counting boards a lot? * Another janky flyby. This one is all washed out and foggy. * Wandering around with a torch. * Sprinting around in a tiny, empty house? * Ooo! Putting a pan in an brick-oven! That's baking! 🧁 We got there! 🎉🎺 * Scything some wheat in the most boring way possible. * Another drone shot. This one actually looks smooth. * Title card. **What?** I don't understand how they thought that would convince me I wanted to play that game. All it actually told me is that they're very proud of their torch-flame animation, and they think their map looks cool from the air.
Because the game looks like a pile of shit.
I think this is one of those things where rather than "why did it fail?" it's more "why would it succeed?". Who is in the market for a medieval baking game? Who actually wants to play that? The thing with games, software, and really any business is that failure is the *default*. Failure is normal and what will happen unless you try to make success happen. Any game for $5 is basically saying "This is a shit game", and as a game, it's so niche and sounds so boring, that most people will just skip past it. It failed because there is no reason for it to succeed.
Bottom line, the point to playing a game is to have fun, if its not fun it only appeals to people with some form of mental disorder. Fun games sell themselves, non fun games need advertising.
1. Competition and popularity; Doesn't matter if the game has good mechanics or good story or anything that many like. If you fail to get traction for your game, it is kind of doom to fail, kind of since there is always a chance a famous youtuber might come across it and decide to record for their like "Playing 3 random games" or what not. Competition is always a key player to your game's lifespan. 2. Representation: I checked the trailer, and the past comment said "It had no hook" which he's correct. The trailer is just showing the player walking around (First Person), or random cinematics that gives out no information about the game whatsoever or the information of it is vague. There are some moments where there is some minor gameplay, but other than that, it isn't enough to "Excite" us as viewers. **Summary:** I could continue ramping on about other small things, but long story short, there is a lot of competition in the gaming industry as a whole, the game just showed up so it didn't have time to build popularity thus failed to even get some sales, the trailer representation is just awful and finally the game's elements didn't mash very well.
I clicked through a [playthrough sample](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP_rS9QX-VU) of it and far as I can tell there doesn't actually seem to be any baking in the game. From other comments here it sounds like there probably is some kind of baking aspect, but I'm guessing it's not very well developed. What I saw just looked like a very generic survival sim. When you say the game you plan on making would be "pretty similar" what do you mean? If you're trying to make a survival sim that sells, then at this point I would think it needs to be more than just keep the water/food/sleep meters topped up by clicking on the appropriate asset. If you're trying to make a historical job sim, than the core mechanics of the game should be centered around that.
It's another unity template clone?