The results are in!

In the last post I talked about running a 3-part promotion of FLIES, which included a brief advertisement on a trans-centric podcast, a giveaway partnership with a polyamory educator via Instagram, and a 33%-off weeklong sale on Steam and Itch.

Throughout that week, FLIES only sold 1-2 copies and wishlist numbers went up by ~50. With a combined price tag of $150 for the 2 promotions, I consider this a failure. But we keep on moving.

Wishlist conversions are at 3.4% over time. I thought with the VN being quite cheap, $4.01 on the discount, a solid few of the  wishlisters would shake loose from the tree and become customers, bumping that stat up. They didn't--probably for a mix of reasons, one of which being "it takes seeing a product multiple times before people will buy it" (I've heard this called the Rule of 7), and another of which being "the screenshots really don't look cohesive or appealing, so it's gonna take strong word-of-mouth recommendations to get people to go from 'this looks like a janky project I feel sorry for' to 'I've heard it looks janky but it's actually really great'". Those are my two main theories.

I am increasingly thinking to myself, that it might be easier to invest in a graphical revamp, spending a fair deal of money to get the assets redone in a cohesive style, than it will be to convince people that "Oh, the graphics aren't great but you actually get used to them" (which is basically as close to being harsh as anything a reviewer has said). Still, since sales numbers are low I don't have enough of a reason to believe that investment would pay off.

But I'm curious--if you're following this log and/or have it on your Steam wishlist, can you give me a peek into your thoughts? Are you put off by the screenshots? Waiting for more reviews from gaming press so you know it's good? Waiting for more episodes to release? Just busy with other games/life/global political upheaval so you haven't had a chance to grab it? Would be very helpful to know what prospective customers are thinking.

I'm chugging away on making episode 3.