Hello to our lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust supporters,
It’s been almost a year since LUNA launched! Today, we’d like to share what we’ve learned during the game’s development and tell you about our biggest successes (and failures). If you are planning to make a game yourself, we think you’ll find our experiences helpful!
The Backstage Experience
Many of you might know that after the game was released, we produced high-quality merch (pins, posters, postcards) as a way of breathing new life into our characters. We also ran another KS campaign to make our physical LUNA artbook a reality.
We’re so thankful that our book and OST have received such great feedback. LUNA just feels so much more alive now. It’s hard work, and the costs are high, but because we’ve also been inspired by many other great art books and albums in the past, it only felt right to contribute back to the community.
Our Successes (and lessons learned)
Over the last year, we’ve earned the community’s recognition and have received many awards and nominations as a result. It really is the best feeling knowing that your hard work has paid off!
We still consider the release of the game to be our biggest success. The harsh reality is that many games—not only indie titles but some big IPs—never see the light of day for various reasons. To see LUNA finally out there is a blessing in and of itself, and we’re even more thankful that the global pandemic did not directly impact our release. It’s no secret, however, that we—and the game industry as a whole—have been affected by the newly-imposed travel restrictions. None of us were able to attend conventions, talks, and festivals. We miss meeting people face to face, and we sincerely hope that life will get back to normal as soon as possible!
Now, it’s time to shed some light on what didn’t go exactly as planned.
Our ambition was to use LUNA’s fully hand-drawn yet content-heavy cinematics to tell our story in a unique way. However, players often felt that the story was a little ambiguous, and during cutscenes, some grew impatient. The slow walking pace might have also affected players' mood as they solved puzzles. We also received some criticism regarding the difficulty of our puzzles. Some thought they were too hard; others found them too easy or repetitive.
Obviously, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, but we agreed that the gaming experience could be improved for the better. This is why our team decided to redesign one of the most criticized puzzles, improving the characters’ walking pace (without compromising the game’s feel) and optimizing repetitive routes between puzzle-solving sessions.
“But the game’s already been out for a year; isn’t it a bit too late to apply such changes?” some might ask. Well, these optimizations are not bug-related, so there’s no need to rush. We’d rather take the time to decide whether they’re really worth changing from a game design perspective. And as most of you already know, indie games need time to grow; it takes time to assess feedback and see how other players react to the same design choices. All these changes will be available to experience in the next major update.
It’s rare for an indie title to blow up overnight, but we’re confident that more and more people in the future will slowly get to know LUNA and that our community will keep growing. With that in mind, the game should always be as polished as possible.
Slow Growth
The press often offers indie games publicity for the first 3 months or so after release, but after that, many small games vanish from the radar as new titles emerge.
Getting to our players is a slow process, but that doesn't mean we just sit and wait for LUNA to magically grow on its own. Over the past year, with help from both of our publishers, we’ve continuously tried to expose more people to the game. We attended Steam’s virtual festivals and ported the game to various platforms. Our next goal is to bring LUNA to mobile for Android and iOS—spoiler alert: We’re almost there!
As a team with no other investments, we’ve still not broken even one year after LUNA’s release. But we're getting there. Your ratings, merch purchases, recommendations, and reviews all help keep the dream alive. Making and releasing indie games is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s an uphill battle, but as we’re slowly heading toward our goal, we hope LUNA’s success will help us create more awesome games in the future.
Thank you for all your support.
Yours,
The LUNA Dev Team