🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter 25 - We Harvest Shadows - David Whele, Indies trailers not at Gamescom , Indie Game Apocalypse
# 🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter #3 Things: 1 🎮 Game news, 1 🔎 Interesting Find, 1 📱Social Post. Written by a Part Time Indie Game Dev
Hi Everyone on this BossKey post 3 interesting things came up during Gamescom.
🎮David Whele new game We harvest Shadows,
🔎Is the Indie Apocalypse upon us? BitMeGames Weigh in.
📱17 Games that did not pay 100K to get featured on Gamescom ONL, and used other means to Market their games
🎮 Game News
We Harvest Shadows - David Whele’s new First Person Horror Farming Game
David Whele has announced his new game at Gamescom. I previously mentioned it here on post 22. I have been following David journey after learning about his game the First Tree through his Youtube channel and it inspired me to take up my own Game Dev journey.
Described as “A first-person farming horror allegory”
We Harvest Shadows is a gaming experience unlike anything else. It's relaxing yet terrifying. It’s beautiful yet ugly. It’s the type of experience which sits with you for years after the closing credits.
A Horror Farming Sim in the vein of P.T. or Animal crossing with horror elements. Sounds like it an alternate take on the Framing Sim Genre.
You can download the demo now. Will be taking a look at it soon. On IGN YT it has about 117K Views as of time of writing this post.
Do hope he does well with this game. I am downloading the demo to take a look.
Links:
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1559720/
Official Site: https://www.weharvestshadows.com/
X Twitter: https://x.com/i/bookmarks?post_id=1827096344512593922
📱Social Post
Indies trailers not at Gamescom Devs find other ways to highlight games
Games Com is Expensive to showcase trailers amounting to about 125,000 and more. Some developers are using social media X/Twitter to highlight their indie games under the #gamescom2024 hashtag, instead of paying 100K for the ONL Slot at GamesCom to showcase their games.
For developers, showing your game's trailer at Gamescom Opening Night Live costs upwards of $125,000. That can be an untenable proposition, so many of them are taking to Twitter/X to show them off instead.
Many developers felt left out of Gamescom Opening Night Live due to the high costs of showcasing or even attending the live show. This did not discourage many of these developers, instead fuelling their passion and desire to show them off to as wide of an audience as possible.
These great-looking games have yet to be released. Developers started this trend by tweeting/quoting the phrase, "Gamescom trailer is more than 100k dollars, so here's..." before posting GIFs, trailers, and gameplay of their games still in the developing stages.
via gamespot
Here are some that caught my attention:
Tiny Tires
MIGHTREYA
Bits & Bops
Biocrisis Return 2 the Lab
Motor Slice
Links to these trailers
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/indie-game-devs-band-together-to-show-off-hidden-rpg-fps-and-roguelike-games-all-because-a-gamescom-trailer-is-more-than-dollar100k/
🔎 Interesting Finds
Is the Indie Apocalypse upon us?
Biteme Games discuss at GamesCom about the indie Apocalypse
This week GamesCom is over and one video that surfaced is the topic about indie games apocalypse maybe it’s a bad time to go into GameDev to get funding for the next project?
There are many games coming out, there is many choices for publishers and consumers to choose from.
Some takeaways:
A game design doc and concept is not enough, You need a polished demo.
Publisher also have many games to choose from now it used to be 10:1 now its 20:1. So odds are not good.
Having some personal branding will go a long way in this digital climate where there is so much games vying for your attention.
Despite that I do think making games has never been easier than before. So one can try self publishing instead.
