It has been almost a month since I released Mine Cart Operator, a small puzzler game about dwarves and mining carts!
I really like the idea of the build in public so in its spirit I decided to write up this small article to share with anyone interested the numbers and statistics from my released game.
The idea in this article is to present statistics raw, with just a few comments on some of the data with some of the insights that I had while looking at the numbers, but I invite the reader to not take any of the insights as “absolute truths” as each launch and dev are unique and have their own context.
Show me the numbers
Before I share all the numbers, some important context about the game.
It was released in itch.io on June 8th, initially released with 26 levels, costing 1.50USD, with the possibility of buyers to tip higher values for the game, and a free demo is provided for free which features the first 8 levels.
On July 11th a small expansion was released, which added a new mechanic and 10 additional levels to the full version of the game, on that same day a sale of 35% OFF in celebration of the mini expansion started which lasted until July 14th!
All the numbers shared in this article are statistics between the game release data (June 8th) and the day of the writing of this article (July 16th)
Now, to the numbers:
- The gross revenue: 75.50USD
- Payments: 15
- View: 481
- Downloads: 71
- Ratings: 3
- Collections: 3
- Comments: 4
A graph showing views, payments and downloads by day:
The breakdown of the downloads per platform:
- demo-linux.zip: 8
- demo-macos.zip: 32
- demo-windows.zip: 12
- linux.zip: 3
- macos.zip: 11
- windows.zip: 5
Here is another interesting piece of data, the top 4 source of incoming traffic on the game page from the last 30 days
- LinkedIn: 75
- Twitter: 62
- LinkedIn (android app): 32
- Game sales page: 20
The Insights
Two things surprised me:
I never expected the LinkedIn posts that I made about the game would bring back so much traffic and that MacOS builds would be the most downloaded ones!
I kinda associated those results to the fact that a good chunk of my network are Flutter Developers, and game development in that platform always seems to get the attention of these folks, which leads to the second surprise, for many reasons, MacOS is the most used operation system among Flutter (and mobile in general) developers, so it kinda makes sense how MacOS was the most popular platform.
Wrapping Up
It has been an interesting road so far, this is the first time that I release something out there for real, so it has been a great learning for me.
I hope that the numbers and data I shared here helps people on similar journeys as me!
I have a couple of possibilities for my next steps, which I haven't fully decided yet. Part of me wants to release the game on Steam next, and see how it performs there, part of me just wants to build more content for the game and keep focusing on the itch io platform for now.
Either way, whatever path I choose, stay tuned, as I will for sure share about the experience!
If you didn't get the game yet, check it out: https://cherrybit.itch.io/mine-cart-operator
Would love to hear your thoughts about it!
Cheers!
Top comments (2)
Thanks for sharing Erick! It's a fun game; moving the carts with the keyboard was a great improvement over the first version. 😄
I would say go for Steam and find a way to gather feedback from users in-game; or maybe even a Discord 👀 . Looking forward to seeing your journey.
Thanks for reading it! Yeah, I have been considering steam as next step, specially because I can't help myself not wanting to support the steam deck!
Btw, I already have a discord server hahaha, you can find the link in game by going in the about menu from the title screen!