So, today was our first day on Greenlight.  I posted the game at 2:00PM CST, and I’m making this post about 8 hours later. 

Preparing this has been one of the most nerve wracking things that I have done, but the results have been exhilarating.  I tried to find some other indie devs who have posted about their day one experience, and found a few, but it still doesn’t really give me any indication about the magnitude of our success. 

And I’m calling it a success.  Right now, we’re sitting at 449 “Yes” votes, and we’re 8% of the way into the top 100:

All of the comments we’ve received have been overwhelmingly positive, and the support I’ve received from friends and family has been nothing short of phenomenal. 

I would have liked to have been “better” prepared for this point, but we’re under a time crunch.  In less than two weeks, we’re showing the game at the Screw Attack Gaming Convention, and I wanted to have the game on Greenlight already with some progress.  I’m hoping the convention will give us a big bump on Greenlight, and maybe some press coverage. 

I spent a lot of time looking at other folk’s Greenlight page and tried to learn from them.  Here’s what I thought worked best:

Include images!  The instructions for how to format your “description” don’t tell you how to do this, so it took some digging.  This really helps you stand out from the other games that are on Greenlight. 

Include links.  Again, the instructions don’t tell you how to do this, in fact, there are many sites that say they won’t work, but they totally do. 

Get to the point!  The first paragraph should grab people and get them interested.  The rest of the description should dive into more detail. 

Things I would have like to have done better (and still plan on doing!): 

Create a “for realz” trailer for the game.  This has been on the list for a while and I’m going to get something put together quickly.  The current demo video is basically me talking for two minutes explaining the game, and you don’t get to hear the great music and sound effects our composer Adam has been putting together. 

Create an animated gif for the game’s “box cover”.  Looks like about half of the games on there are doing this now, and IMO it really helps to add interest and attention to your game. 

All in all, I am super pleased with where we ended up for the day.  I plan on posting regular updates (hopefully daily; we’ll see if I can keep up with that pace) as we continue this wild ride.