Penguin Thoughts #2 - All Things Steam Store
“Just a moment!” (furious sweeping sounds) “I didn’t expect company so soon!” (the clatter of too many empty mugs being removed from the desk) “I don’t know Jellybean! I thought I said monthly but I guess I don’t understand the meaning of the word!”
Sorry about all that, welcome to the second Penguin Thoughts!
Table of Contents1
What have I been up to that is so important that I got ahead of schedule on this already? As the title insinuated, all of the things on the Steam store page have been updated!2
Release Date Announcement
New Branding
Steam Store Refresh
Demo Updated
1Oh so now I think I’m writing a book? Who do I think I am?
2Yes, I know, since when does a table of contents have a paragraph to start and no page numbers? Since today bub!
Release Date - March 31, 2025
That’s right! I have an official release date now! In all honesty, I have had this date picked for about a month now, but I just wanted to have the Steam page all updated and ready for its close-up.
More importantly, why that date? Well, it’s really not that scientific. I mostly wanted to dodge the big Steam Spring Sale happening 3/13 - 3/20, then I had a big trip to Milwaukee the next weekend, so tada, the 31st!
If you haven’t seen it, check out this tiny vid I did announcing the date.
New Branding - My Fiverr Experience
A big part of updating the Steam store page was upgrading from my JV squad, bench warmer attempts at the logo and artwork. Am I proud of what I made originally? Yes, but the project outgrew those efforts.3
That left me with two realistic options.4
Put on my big boi try hard pants and pour a ton of effort into making higher quality capsules and logos.
Hire somebody that knows what they are doing and has experience.
Thanks to some firm but honest feedback from my support team, I opted to hire out the job. It is a good thing I did because I can confidently say that I could not have done as good of a job as my artist, Angel Flores, did!
3It’s not you, it’s me
4And a secret 3rd option where I discover Juliet is secretly a talented graphic artist and she made them for me
What I learned however, is despite 10 years as an IT Consultant for FAST and all of the experience I had dealing with clients, I don’t really know how to be a good client myself! I struggled initially with describing what I was looking for in the project and was quick to be judgmental when I first saw the concepts.
With that in mind, here are my lessons from my Fiverr experience:
Message or contact the perspective artist first. Fiverr let me purchase5 without talking with the artist, which got me into a situation where the artist was already fairly busy.
Plan or budget for reworks or delays. I know, you need to set clear expectations on due dates so people don’t take advantage of ya, but the worlds rough and we all need a little compassion these days.
Trust the reviews. When I had some delays or wasn’t sure about the concept art, I looked back at how stellar their reviews were and knew we would get there in the end.
5In my defense, they didn’t make it obvious that I could message without purchase… which you all agree because naturally everybody reading footnotes is gonna be on my side!
Steam Page Update - TAGS TAGS TAGS!
Visually, the store page was already almost finished. We had a new logo, new capsule art, I took a bunch of new screenshots and made some new gifs that reflected the updated game visuals. It’s almost done! But I can’t help but feel I’m forgetting something…
Ah beans! I blacked out updating the main trailer for the game from my memory!
BONUS NEWS - Trailer Remake
That’s right, not only is this an early edition of Penguin Thoughts, but you get a bonus topic!6
Reshooting the trailer was not that difficult if I’m being honest. I approached it the same way I did the first time, just with an extra 8 months of experience using Unity. I had the script I was following, filmed scenes to fit the tone and show off as much game as possible, and edited in DaVinci.
Oh, almost forgot to say, and my voice over was done by JEFF STEITZER!
In case that doesn’t do anything for ya, he is the legendary announcer from the Halo franchise.7 Turns out, sometimes you just have to ask the legends from your childhood to do nice things and they happen.
With such a good voiceover, I had to make sure it great audio to accompany it. My usual go to of grabbing open license music off of Pixabay just wasn’t going to cut it.
So my big bro came to the rescue! With his talented take on the music, the new trailer on the store page is better than ever!
6Don’t say I never gave you nothing
7Gained the lead, lost the lead
You mentioned something about tags?
Yes! The last thing to finish up on the store page rework was updating the tags on the store page. The tags are what tell Steam what type of game I have concocted. It is how it knows what games I am similar to and what to show in the “More games like this” sections.
Turns out, “Choices Matter” and “Choose Your Own Adventure” lead to a lot of Adult Visual Novels and other porn dating sims being recommended…
Now I’m not here to shame anybody, you only see those recommendations if you have your settings to view mature content8, but I wanted to do better at making sure my game is associated with actually similar games.
After the rework, I think it is doing a much better job! Now I see things like “Crusader Kings 3”, “Foundation”, and only every 8th game is a porn game!9
8Sorry mom, I let steam show me nudey games
9This is down from every 3rd game, so bigger deal than it sounds
Updated Demo
Lastly, I finally updated the demo that is out on Steam to have all of the new features and everything included. It is still just the prologue act of the story, but it is actually representative of the game now. I had not updated the demo since last July when I did NextFest so it feels good to have my best foot forward again.
If you haven't tried the demo, try it now! It’s better than ever! 4 out of 5 dentists agree that it will lead to whiter teeth!
Woof, that was a long one. I think I may have set a bad precedent but this is an exciting time so I have lots to say! Until next time!
-Addison aka your local developer that loves footnotes too much10
10One last one for the road
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