Dream Warrior Postmortem

Dream Warrior is a small, retro-styled RPG with roguelite elements. Only instead of a great warrior, the player controls the town drunk. This game began life in December of 2023 as part of a game jam. Later, in August of 2024, I brought the game to Steam. Now, almost half a year later, it is time to take inventory.

Bottom Line Up Front

If you're like me, you are only here for the numbers, so we'll start there. If you'll indulge me, one quick note first: I knew going into this that Dream Warrior was not going to be a success. I am not delusional, only a bit dumb. I know enough about the market to know that a game that is somewhat short and, frankly, a bit ugly, will not (and cannot) do big numbers. I thus went into this enterprise with low expectations. Even so, the numbers were still only about 1/5 of what I expected. Without further ado:

• Revenue: $486 gross
• Steam units: 107
• Itch units: 1 (lol)
• Returns: 6
• Keys distributed: 127
• Key activations: 44
• Wishlists outstanding: 418
• Wishlists at launch: 167
• Wishlist conversion rate: 11%
• Production budget: $0
• Total expense: ~$140

The Beginning

Dream Warrior was not in any way planned. You see, I have a long-in-production game. I cannot bring myself to shill it. The usual suspects are to blame for it not being finished: imperfect knowledge, scope creep, sunk cost fallacy. It's a very common tragedy. Had everything continued as normal, I would have never made something like Dream Warrior. Everything did not continue as normal, however.

First, as you might remember, there was a global plague. Then I had a close personal encounter with the American medical-financial complex. Then, just in time for my savings to be spent, death in the family required me to refocus my time as a caregiver. So it goes. Either way, by the beginning of 2023, I didn't exactly have the bandwidth to work on the large game. Every time I tried, I largely spun my wheels.

I am, unfortunately, too deep into this game dev stuff at this point. During 2023 I kept my skills from atrophying too much by making a series of jam games. One of these won perhaps the most niche award in existence (which, believe you me, does not prevent me from calling myself, truthfully if unhelpfully, an "award winning Interactive Fiction author"), but the rest were largely not notable. The last of these games, however, was Dream Warrior.

The Jam

Once upon a time, there was something called a "forum". It's like a subreddit, only without a dystopian voting system. One of these was called Gaming World. Among other topics, that forum focused on games made by its members, usually using RPG Maker. After a large amount of history and a small amount of miracles, it reformed and hosted a few jams. I entered the second one.

The idea of a battle-only Dragon Quest game had been kicking around in my head for some time. Also, rather than fixed characters, I really liked the idea of semi-random FTL-style builds. So, that's what I went with.

It was a month-long jam. Even with my less than ideal schedule, that is a considerable amount of time for making a small game. I had time for the central idea, including 4 classes. Each playthrough was between 30 and 90 minutes, but there was no real story and only 1 ending. Even so, I was reasonably pleased with the result.

It got some good ratings during the jam, but nothing superlative. However, one of the Gaming World people streamed some of the games. Well, they spent about half the stream playing Dream Warrior. That put the idea in my head that the game may have an audience.

Post-Jam Updates

For reasons I do not fully comprehend, I returned to Dream Warrior a number of times in subsequent months. There were little things I wanted to add and features requested from some of the players. In order to have a bit of a framework for these improvements, I ended up entering a series of "improve your game jams" on Itch. This was good and something I would do again. One of the biggest obstacles that developers need to overcome is obscurity. Making updates in the context of a "jam" ensures that at least a few people will see and play the game.

Some of the best feedback I got came from this jam-based public development. For example, RPG players wanted quests and stories. Fair enough. Also, Dream Warrior is, like all my games, based in the engine I developed for the big game. That game, whose name I will not speak, ultimately is a historical take on the King of Dragon Pass formula. So: loads of reading and picking choices. Well, that's a bit too much clicking "next" for RPG combat, and the players told me as much. Point taken.

That said, there are some risks. Some of the feedback I got was just dreadful. Not mean-spirited you understand; everyone was absolutely wonderful and helpful. I'm talking about feedback that would have been terrible for the game had I acted on it. For example a common refrain that I got was "the game is too long." Given the theme of the game and the tongue-in-cheek writing, one person even speculated that I was trolling by making a game that didn't end.

As I mentioned, a single run of the game takes between 30 and 90 minutes. In the context of a game jam, that is on the long side. However for games generally that is very short. In its current form, Dream Warrior is meant for multiple runs. However, were the game only one run at 30-90 minutes, that would be nearly impossible to sell. It's very important to take all feedback into consideration, but also into context. The kind of suggestions you get from developers and people who play jam games on Itch may or may not translate well to games on other platforms.

During this post-jam update period, I took Dream Warrior to a local nerd convention. I am part of an equally local game development group, and we usually have some sort of presence here. It was great to actually see people interact with the game. I even had a bit of a fan who kept returning to play Dream Warrior and some of my other games. Of course, given that it was a small con with a limited amount of stuff to do, it could just be that our table was the least-bad place for her to hang out. Either way, I found it hugely flattering.

Low-stakes in-person events like this are also excellent places to work on the elevator pitch. I knew I had something when people were walking away as I began the pitch but stopped and came back when I finished it. Subverting the expectations and giving players control of a drunkard rather than a hero is certainly unusual, right?

Steam

There was never any real intention of selling the game. However, by this point, the jam game had grown into something a bit larger. Slowly but surely, the thought of bringing it to a wider audience on Steam crept into my mind. As I mentioned, at present I am a very low-net-worth-individual. The median indie game on Steam makes about two grand. That is, of course, basically nothing, at least for those of us whose bills are denominated in American dollars. However, given my particulars, two grand would actually be meaningful.

What finally convinced me to do a Steam launch was twofold, however. First, my local dev group has a lot of talented people, given the area in which we're based. One thing we do not have a lot of however is shipped, commercial games. I've long maintained that the best thing we could do to raise the stature of the group is ship. Well, this was my chance to do just that. Next, at this same time, I noticed another game, Dragon Ruins, had followed the same path (i.e. Itch jam -> Steam release). It did well by indie standards. I resolved to do the same, and convinced another guy in the group to ship his most successful jam game as well.

Dream Warrior was bound for Steam. Unfortunately that other guy's game didn't make it. But more on that later.

I already had experience setting up a Steam page. None of this was new to me. However, if you've never done it, please understand that there is a lot of work. None of this work is hard work. There's just so much of it. All the assets, all the forms. Iterating on store presence. Figuring out builds and depots. Configuring achievements. Plan on spending at least a whole day on this, most likely several. Also this does not take into account review and waiting. Either way, with very few hiccups, I had a store page up and could start collecting wishlists.

Marketing

It's all well and good to make a game. However Steam is very much "bring your own audience." Games that do well on Steam are promoted by Steam. Games that do not do well on Steam are not promoted by Steam. This is just the way things work. If you want your game to be one of the ones that gets promoted, you have to drum up an audience that will buy the game, ideally on or around launch. The theory is very simple; putting into practice, on the other hand, is harder than it sounds.

I cast a wide net in the hopes that something would work. Nothing did, not really. Either way, stories in rapid-fire succession:

Twitter: or xxx.com or whatever it is now. I can't keep up. I have never been able to get much of an audience here. I tried doing some of the hashtags that indies love so much. Screenshot Saturday sometimes got a few views. Turn-based Thursday was more reliable. Everything else seemed like a giant waste.

reddit: Indie Sunday on /r/games was perhaps the most useless thing ever. My post instantly, and I do mean instantly, got 3 downvotes, which, if you know how reddit works, means the post was DOA. It eventually made it into positive territory, but it was a waste of time. I got more traction with a post on /r/JRPG. I didn't bother with other subs.

4chan: For whatever reason, my work tends to get traction here, and Dream Warrior was no exception. This was probably the biggest source of external traffic for me. I say "probably" because you cannot post links. The few times I did shill over there, I noticed a marked upswing of search traffic, both via search engines and within Steam. I would not suggest shilling here unless you are a regular, though. It's a very different place than it was 20 years ago; frankly the 4chan of today feels a lot like circa 2010 reddit. But it is still 4chan.

RPG Zine: Dream Warrior is an RPG with zines. Those are off-hand items equipped by the Straight Edge class. Long story. Anyway, as fortune would have it, I saw a call for submissions from Coin-Operated Press, an arty zine-publisher in Scotland, for a zine about RPGs. It was meant to be. Of course, the call for submissions was posted on /r/rpg_gamers and it got the typical reddit downvote-and-deletion treatment. So it goes, I suppose. I'm not sure anything came of this, but it was fun.

Physical display in a financial institution: I'm a member of a small credit union. One of the perks is a program to allow business members a month-long display in one of their branches. It was free, so I went ahead and applied. Against all odds, I was accepted for both the month and location I wanted. I didn't expect this at all and had to scramble to make a physical display to the tune of about $40. It came out pretty neat though, and I will reuse it at the local nerd con. I stuck a cheeky UTM parameter in the QR code: Steam tells me that this poster resulted in 8 visits.

Steam Curators: Look, we all know that this system is bad. However, I decided to try my luck, fully expecting nothing would come of it. Interestingly, if you take the time to find some curators who are not obviously scams and at least somewhat related, you can get some traffic. In particular, I noticed that Crack Smoking Time's post got me some traffic. I quite truthfully told them that people who smoked crack were a core demographic of mine. Every game has a different audience though, so definitely do your own research.

Content Creators

The above, of course, were the secondary marketing options. The Big Lie we tell ourselves is that if you send your game to content creators, you will get coverage. It probably wasn't much of a lie in 2010. The world moved quite a lot since then, though. Regardless, I decided to treat Dream Warrior as a real launch and go through all the motions, including sending keys to content creators.

I spent a frankly absurd amount of time curating a list of 120-ish YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, gaming websites, and so on. I tried to find the intersection of content creators that did both Dragon Quest and FTL. There were not that many who did, so I widened the search to pretty much any small-ish creators who played at least one indie game that was at least arguably related to Dragon Quest or FTL. There were a few large creators on my list, but you and I both know how that goes.

Following the teachings of TotalBiscuit, of blessed memory, I sent each one of these people a short, informative, and slightly customized email about the game. I included a couple of screenshots and a quick gif (well, technically a webm; times have changed and all) in the message. There was a release override key directly in the email. I also set an embargo a month after the email, but a week before launch. All of these points are things that TB and others taught us to do as best practices. Make it easy for the creator. Let them have everything they need without having to email back and forth. Let them know that you actually are familiar with their work on at least some level. Give everyone enough time to make a decision about when to cover the game, without having to rush content out the door. I followed the plan to the letter. Did it work?

No, lol.

At present, I think there are something like 20 pieces of content about Dream Warrior on the internet: 2 or 3 articles, some YouTube videos, some Twitch streams. That's pretty awesome! However of those, only 9 were ready to go by launch day. My plan of making a big splash of content in the week leading up to launch absolutely did not happen. Most of the people I emailed didn't respond. Such is to be expected; I totally ignore all the cold pitches in my inbox trying to sell me marketing consultants and music composition services. Some of the ones that did respond declined coverage, which is totally fair and I respect them greatly for coming back with a no. Some of the others that responded did so to shake me down for money. Interestingly, one of those literally does not disclose anywhere that they do sponsored content. Curious, ehh? I get it though. Everyone has bills to pay. I'm over here working on a circa 2010 computer that still runs Windows 7 though, trying to earn 2 grand on a game made for $0, plus a $40 poster and a $100 Stream Direct fee. I am the worst person on earth to approach with one's hand out. I have more to say on that topic, but that's another post.

The content that did get made was great though. Just like watching people play in person at the convention, watching streams and videos was incredibly fulfilling. Certain scenes drew the expected nostalgic reactions. Also, much to my relief, the humor mostly landed. People got a chuckle out of the Goth class and had a full-on laugh when they found out what the skill "Traditionalism" does. Dream Warrior is easily the stupidest thing I have written, and during development I was frequently vacillating between feelings of having gone too far and not far enough. It was rather vindicating to know I didn't totally screw that up.

The content was also, occasionally, frustrating. I am a shockingly ancient remnant of a by-gone era. The games I played as a child were not filled with quest markers or slathered with yellow paint. Games now are. I made a game for myself which means, of course, that the things that are expected by the modern audience were not present. Oops. Additionally, I found that combining two very different games (i.e. Dragon Quest and FTL) resulted in wildly different expectations regarding difficulty. The FTL crowd found the game easy, perhaps too easy. I kind of agree with them. On the other hand, the Dragon Quest crowd got genuinely angry about how hard the game was. On the one hand, it is kind of an accomplishment that people would be invested enough in my game to rage a bit. On the other hand, I really did not expect that people would find the game particularly difficult. Either way, based on the pre-release content, I made a patch that addressed those concerns.

On the whole though, it was a good experience. We've all read the words and watched the videos about how to do outreach to content creators. Doing it is a different thing altogether, and a great learning experience. For example finding the correct content creators is only part of the process: tracking down contact information for them is frequently difficult and occasionally impossible.

I got to talk to a lot of interesting people. And there are actually videos and articles out there about my little game. That's always going to be cool to me. Despite all that, the effect on traffic to the store page was marginal. I'm not really sure if there are lessons to be drawn here. Dream Warrior is not easy on the eyes. Indeed, I did a fair bit of work to make it appropriately late '80s harsh. That just didn't work out, especially for visual media like Twitch or YouTube. There's no doubt a pretty firm, low ceiling on what can be done here with a game like this one.

Two More Weeks. Trust The Plan.

Just as Evangelicals await The Rapture and sci-fi nerds await The Singularity, I, too, awaited a momentous, transformative event. Before launch, I was hoping the pre-release content would boost my wishlist numbers. At launch, I was hoping I would somehow win the virality lottery, despite my meager amount of wishlists. After that, I was hoping that participating in Steam's Turn-Based RPG Fest would change my fortunes. Maybe a big post-launch patch and a visibility round would do something. I held similar hopes for the Autumn Sale. I'm writing this in the dying embers of the Winter Sale and can safely report than none of that did anything. Nothing will, I suspect.

There were a few more things I wanted to do with Dream Warrior. I don't think I will do them after all, though. I'm well beyond the point that I would have earned more doing tasks on Mturk for literal pennies each. As I said, I did not expect this game to make me rich. Not even being able to reach two kilodollars on Steam has kind of soured me on trying to sell small games on the platform. At one point it seemed as though I was going to lose money on a game which had a $0 budget, which is frankly not something that should ever happen. At that time I sort of regretted not just leaving it on Itch which, as it happens, is exactly what my friend from the dev group did. He made essentially no money on his game, but more than $0. However he spent less than 1% of the time on it than I did on Dream Warrior.

The Future

Dream Warrior was a good learning experience. That said, by any reasonable definition, it was a failure. In "money in my bank" numbers, the game generated a profit of about $120 (remember: gross revenue gets loads of stuff deducted and *then* the Steam fee comes out of the remainder). I've taken the L. I probably will not even pay especially close attention to the numbers now that the Christmas Sale is winding down.

I plan to make more games in 2025. I just don't quite know what or where. My responsibilities kind of prevent me from going heads down on work. Still, if I can find a way, I'd like to finish the big game. When I had both time and money, I invested lots of both into it. It would be pleasant to see some sort of return on that investment.

I might also like to try another small game. Only this time it would be an intentional launch, not one that I stumbled into. Of course I have basically no confidence in that being worth the time.

Either way, I hope any of this proves useful to someone. Everyone loves sharing numbers from successes. Numbers from failures are harder to find.

-Robert