Welp, figured it was about time to start talking a bit about what we have going on at KC. Lots of things have been moving and happening and lots more are to come.
Creeper World has turned out to be an unconditional success as small indie games go. It and its cousin the ‘Training Sim‘ have been played over 4 million times so far in 2010. Currently, the Training Sim is globally played between 5000 and 8000 times daily. Daily peaks during the major portal releases were over 70,000 game launches per day.
So I really can’t complain too much about these numbers. CW:TS is on track to surpass ChopRaider in another year (ChopRaider is currently in the wild for 2 years and has been played 5.1 million times). Chopraider, for those that don’t know, was my first ‘experiment’ in large scale distribution indie games.
Traffic to knucklecracker.com remains high as we head into being live for 1 year. Monthly unique visits hover around 100,000. Sales for the full desktop version of Creeper World have been good as well. Much of this can be attributed to the great user community and the custom maps. They have extended the lifetime of the game and I see no end in sight.
Here you can see the unique site visitors since the site launch on July 27, 2009:
KC Traffic stats
The long stretch at the beginning was me doing the “normal” indie game release stuff. It worked ‘ok’, just not that great. The giant spikes were major portal releases. The first was bubblebox.com. The others were kongregate.com, armorgames.com, addictinggames.com, and a bunch (like 1000) other game portals. The last spike was when badges were added to the Training Sim at kongregate.
So…. as we move forward I will be posting about upcoming releases (Yes, Game 2 is under development and I can’t wait to reveal what I have up my sleeve!). I will also take moments to cover numerous technical topics I care about. And I might even ask for help from time to time. So stay tuned, crack your knuckles, and get ready for what’s to come!
Too bad you have to depend so much on these portals. Good they’re there of course, but you’re almost at their mercy whether (and when) they add your game or decide to add badges for it.
I guess getting people to know your game(s) is harder than any coding part. I’m glad to see you’ve found your way to many available channels. It seems you really have to be an all round entrepreneur to become a successful indie game developer nowadays. I admire they way you’ve gained the expertise to do this all by yourself!
Congrats on the success of this awesome game! I know I downloaded it a couple of days ago, and I only just beat the story, and have a ton more that I can play. It was very much worth the $10.00 I payed. Are you able to give approximate numbers as to how many downloads of World 1 that there have been? Kinda curious how well the game overall is actually doing. I am planning on getting into development relatively soon, so would just like to see how successful a game like this is.
Haven’t visited this post in a while!
It’s always cool to hear from someone who found the game and enjoyed playing it as much as I enjoyed writing/playing it myself.
Globally, CW training sim is up to around 5-5.5 million global plays. This is the primary driver for site visitors, and demo download, and eventual purchases.
Sales wise, the game has definitely been worth it. Now to be completely honest I would have done it even if it had not been. I just really enjoy creating things and bringing the game to market was just another kind of challenge.
I do always like to caution potential developers…. the journey is long and it requires great commitment. You must absolutely enjoy creating software. The financial reward won’t be enough… it has to be something you would do even it only ever costs you money.
For instance, I like algorithms… especially the kinds that have emergent behavior. The kinds that reveal a glimpse into the inner beauty and complexity of the universe we live in. It all sounds melodramatic, but that’s how I look at it. The games I create all have something inside them that touches on the emergent. It’s not always manifestly visible, but it’s in there.
And long, long before I ever thought about making any money I was coding away simulations and watching them run. I’ve fallen asleep as a teenager as night turned into morning… all watching and recording the output of a “bugs” simulation (see A.K Dewdney’s BugWorld) I wrote in C and ran on a 286 running at 8mhz. Before that it was primitive AI algorithms on a C64…
If you have a similar passion for solving problems, understanding things, or discovering things… then you’ll make a great developer. And, if you like having fun every now and then you might find yourself writing the occasional game 🙂
That is very impressive, not gonna lie. You have definitely produced something here that is incredibly fun to play, and it is also something different. I know I’ll go around these flash game sites trying to find something different, and the Training Sim was the first totally new concept/take on an RTS/TD game that I have ever seen. Definitely made me take a second look at this page to see what else was offered, a potential full game, and that’s what was here. And the amount of time, effort and creativity absolutely blew me away.
I do have a couple of questions for you, as I am working on getting into more advanced programming. Why do you use Flash versus, say C#? I know, from what I have heard and read that Flash is just more widely used online, but even just for the full version? Would that prove to be a potential solution to your problems with finding a program to create the .EXE for? Just curious as to your opinion about that. I know it would take a lot to port it over to another language, but it has a potential to make the final process of actually compiling the final program easier. Just a thought on my part. You very obviously seem to know what you are doing, so I would be curious as to your decision.
As well, how much time do you spend daily (average) working on this? I know from my experience with programming that it varies greatly, depending on mood and mindset at the time. And for game development for something like this, what would be your suggestion for language to program in?
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