Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Game development is a tough market, especially for smaller indie developers. I've seen quite a lot rise and fall over the last few years as creating games and getting them onto a store has become ridiculously easy compared to a few years ago so there's more competition than ever.

The problem in most cases is actually a staggering lack of community work.
Games nowadays have almost 0 chance of success if the developers do not spend time themselves to get into communities, introduce their game, and stick around and communicate openly and regularly.

That is, in addition to having a game that actually looks interesting to play (where this one also struggles a bit, IMO).

Getting some spotlight on large media outlets is out of the question anyway - and also no longer that relevant, as these non-niche sites continue to dwindle thanks to... well, that's a different topic.
Instead, you now have to get out there and communicate with streamers, youtubers and communities directly.
It is a lot of work, but I think indie devs can forget about any kind of success if they don't reserve some time for doing that every day for an hour or two.
Which certainly increases the workload, but I'd say most people going indie dev knew going in it's not going to be an 8hr/day job.

Case in point, I am part of a few communities (two of which have sections or are focused on strategy/sim games), but have never heard of this game before now.

But (yes, that's a large but).... this dev did the right thing, put money aside to focus on what is likely a dream of his or a life-bucket-list kind of thing and spent a year doing something that he likely loved doing. Without going into debt or anything like that.
Which is admirable. I plan to go the same route eventually.

Sadly true.
However there are companies that specialize in these topics (exposure on social media, publisher relations, etc.), in order to help new developers/studios to make their first project a success and keep them in business in the long-term. Remote Control Productions [External Link] comes to mind.

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Quoting: HamishMore than happy to pay $13.49 CAD to upgrade to a native version.

The original game is "native" as well, as it is written in Java. It just needs a bit larger heap size than OpenJDKs default setting, but there's a command line parameter for that.

Edit: I'm talking about the Retail version - no idea about the Steam version.

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Droggelbecher

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The first project of a distributed team that does not have a single dedicated game developer ... ... ... looks so awesome that I just have to back it.

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Backed it.
Not that the game world of Hero-U wouldn't be cringeworthy at times, but it has a certain charme to it, that I cannot resist. I would have preferred a proper Hero-U sequel to a visual novel though...

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Quoting: ColomboIMHO, all the Abbey games had problem with me.

When I heard "God game, where you can make your religion!" It was sold to me. But when Liam came with its review: "Dancing simulator with JRPG-like combat" I was done.

Similarly with the previous game with the giants that could change terrain. I imagined that I would have a single giant with associated tribe and battle against other giants and their tribes. Not that I would need to combine natural powers to make a habitable planet.

Their previous game was Renowned Explorers: International Society, and it's imho still one of the best turn based strategy games out there.
I agree on Reus though. That one was a bit strange.

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For me as a backer the initial early access version of the game was pretty much exactly what I was expecting from the description on the Kickstarter page...
(A few things were still missing due to early access, of course.)

I haven't played since the "Will of the people" update though, because from that update's description I was afraid that the game is now something completely different from what was envisioned during the Kickstarter.

In any case, I'm afraid that Abbey Games still had the same issue during Early Access that they had during the Kickstarter (which had a very modest goal, and still troubles reaching it): A lack of visibility. If people don't know about a game, they of course won't buy it...

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Thanks you Valve, I hate it.

I'd really like to know if Valve had an actual UI/UX expert working on this. It certainly does not look or feel like it... It feels overloaded, clunky and is painfully slow.
As a user I'd expect an application's UI to be as clearly laid out as possible, and not such a complete and utter mess. Don't get me wrong, the old Steam UI wasn't great either, but this is certainly a huge step towards the non-usability of iTunes.

You know what the new Steam Library reminds me of? 90s websites with <blink> and <marquee> all over the place. Oh, and annoying background music. Aaaactually, for the younger folks: This is what I'm talking about: https://badhtml.com/ [External Link] Looks just like the new Steam library, doesn't it?

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Please don't forget the advances Stadia brings on the technical side for game developers.
If popular game engines improve their start to have proper Linux support due to Stadia, it will make it a lot easier to port games to Linux, ideally even to a point that there are no extra costs once you have a Stadia port, and minimal costs if no Stadia port is required.

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Quoting: DaiKaiser93

Quoting: soulsourceMaybe this is helpful for someone else:
I couldn't get my PS4 controller to work in-game, but it works relatively fine with having Steam map the gamepad to keyboard input...

That's bizarre, I just tried mine (connected via USB) and it even recognized the correct button prompts.

UPDATE: It's also fully compatible via bluetooth.

Yeah, turns out that I had some udev rules trouble. I don't know what exactly was missing, but I had the curious situation that whenever Steam was running the device nodes for the PS4 gamepad just disappeared from /dev/input...
Non-Steam games worked perfectly fine, because, without Steam running, the device nodes were there, as they should be.

I've now re-installed the Steam udev rules (from https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/you-will-need-to-update-your-udev-rules-for-the-steam-controller.8593/ ) and since then the PS4 controller device nodes no longer disappear when opening Steam. Still, I'd really like to know what was going on there.

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