To Kickstart or not to Kickstart

I’m Jamie, and a year and a bit ago I ran a Kickstarter for Spinnortality, a cyberpunk management sim. 6 months earlier that notion seemed ridiculous! Kickstarters are for established game developers who want to revisit cult classics, or designers with an established rep who are trying to do something different, right?

Then I had a chat with experienced game dev Alexis Kennedy who said “You could actually do this, you know” and gave me some advice. I ran the Kickstarter, it raised 140% of its goal, and all was well. I worked on the game for 6 months, got some government funding, worked on it for another six months, and released it about a month ago. It’s doing quite well.

Continue reading “To Kickstart or not to Kickstart” →

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“Spinnortality: the whole journey”, a presentation

On March 5th I gave a presentation at the Vienna game dev meetup about Spinnortality, from its first week of development to launch week. It includes some tips on how to run a Kickstarter, an overview of how my life has changed from before the game to after its launch, and how I managed PR and general project stuff in the run up to launch.

If you’d like to know how I made a successful indie game that is making enough money to let me do another game, this is a good indicator. (Note, however, that I got really lucky and not all of this will be replicable for you.)

You can download the presentation here:

Spinnortality post launch presentation

Spinnortality: crunching the numbers

I thought I’d share how Spinnortality’s launch went.

Sales numbers

Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we? I’m free to reveal my sales numbers since neither itch.io nor Steam (as of last year) forbid me from doing so, so why not?

In its first week, Spinnortality sold about 7000 copies on Steam, and 33 on itch. It made about $70,000 on Steam. (Bear in mind they take a hefty cut of that.) I’m not sure how much it made on itch but I think it was around $300.

(It has now, one month after launch, sold nearly 9000 copies on Steam and itch combined, for a total of $90,000. But let’s work with the first-sales-week figures for now.)

Continue reading “Spinnortality: crunching the numbers” →

Spinnortality is out now!

Hi everyone,

Spinnortality is out now! Technically it was out about 18 hours ago but suddenly I had a bajillion things to do come launch, so this update is a little tardy.

Buy it on Steam or itch

What is Spinnortality, I hear you ask? (Well, not all of you – some lovely people have bought the game already!)

Spinnortality is a cyberpunk management sim where you run a giant evil megacorporation in a dystopian future. You can look forward to:

  • Rigging elections, spreading fake news or just smashing governments with riots and coups
  • Researching awful products, then marketing them to make them irresistible
  • Pushing the boundaries of brain transfer tech to make sure you and the Board of Directors are always young, fresh and ready to perform hostile takeovers

If this sounds like your thing, the game is out on Steam and itch now.

Spinnortality, my cyberpunk management sim, is launching February 1st!

Hi everyone! I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit but I wanted you to know that my cyberpunk management sim Spinnortality is launching on February 1st!

What can you expect in Spinnortality?

  • Grow new bodies; achieve immortality with cutting edge tech.
  • Bribe politicians, spread fake news, rig elections.
  • Research products such as metacritic for friendships, sentient social media and ‘auto-career.’ Market them so they’re irresistible.
  • Crash stock markets, trigger riots or topple governments.
  • Determine humanity’s future.

I’ve been working on it for more than 3 years, and I’m very excited that it’s finally launching! Squeeeeeeeee! I’m also very stressed because if it doesn’t sell reasonably well then there goes my dream of being an independent tiny game dev. So I’ve got my fingers crossed!

You can find out more here and sign up for updates if you like, but I’ll let you know when it launches anyway.

Kickstarter ending very soon!

Hi guys,

Just a reminder for anyone who hasn’t pledged yet but would like to: Spinnortality is on Kickstarter for only a few more hours! If you’d like to grab a pledge, you’d better be quick quick quick 😀

The campaign has already been a big success, though: not only did we make our goal, we also made our stretch goal of colonising the moon! Wooo!

So what does this mean for me and the game’s development? Well, this means I’ll be able to work on the game full-time, which is FANTASTIC. I’ve wanted to be a real-life make-enough-to-do-this-full-time game developer for years, and now I at least have enough to make it to the game’s launch (which should be in August, but that’s just a rough estimate right now).

Anyway, like I said, the Kickstarter’s here for anyone who’s interested, I hope you guys have a nice holiday season (rapidly approaching) and a great new year 🙂

Spinnortality was in PC gamer! And some updates

Hello everyone! A quick update:

In case anyone missed it, Spinnortality has a landing page! You can go there for screenshots, videos and general info about the game.

It also made it through Greenlight, so will be on Steam. Thank you so much to everyone who voted for it! 🙂

Spinnortality’s going well. I took it to Vienna’s ReVersed festival where it was well-recieved – I also got a lot of very good feedback, so thanks to everyone who played and commented! It was also previewed in PC Gamer, which I’m thrilled with: I’ve been reading PC Gamer for years but never hoped one of my games might end up there.

Spinnortality at ReVersed; also my first time using a human-sized poster, which was less calamitous than it could have been.

Continue reading “Spinnortality was in PC gamer! And some updates” →