Happy Anniversary com__et 🎉
com__et released technically on itch.io back in June of last year, but some polish and improvements got added when I transferred it over to Steam and that's when the game was fully done. Well, except for also adding localisation, first for Simplified Chinese and literally just now there's Spanish and French too. But NOW it's done... as far as I'm aware.
Happy Birthday to com__et! And thank you to anyone who's checked out our little game. But a special thank you to the people who made the different translations of com__et happen:
- Simplified Chinese by Warlocs: Hannah Lu
with Project Management form Michael Stein. - Spanish: Katya Simonyan Kaizer.
- French: Tereza Vag (treflev)
with support from: Astride Couillaux, Ha-Thanh Gore-Koenig (MadameEtrange), Ludovic Seigneurin (Localicows)
com__et is the first time I actually did a Game Release. That means I put it on Steam, went to games showcases as well as doing legwork contacting streamers and reviewers who might be interested. It's undeniably a small game, but has more reach and responses than anything else I've done. By that metric alone, I'm pleased with it!
But now let's look at some numbers and then a couple questions...
Some Numbers 📈
At the time of writing, 1007 people have com__et on steam. A good 40% of that got keys from elsewhere, either because of me sending someone a key to play it for a showcase or otherwise, but also some are itch.io purchasers who also got a Steam key. Here's what the year of Steam sales looks like:
You have one guess what causes those spikes, and yes it is discounts! The first spike obviously being release, the rest are all cases where com__et was either on sale as a regular Steam sale or in a showcase of games by genre like the storyteller festival (end of January spike) or when I boosted visibility to release the Chinese localisation (end of May). All of these were tied to discounts, and those will email everyone who's wishlisted com__et to tell them it's on sale. The spikes are good pushes, though in general the sales are just steady and trickle through.
To give you some benchmarks:
- 2633 people have wishlisted com__et ever
- 1938 still have it on their wishlist
- 1007 people have com__et on Steam
- 529 of them bought it direct from Steam
- 247 lifetime unique users (people who've launched it once)
- 177 of them have the True End achievement
- 60 people have reviewed it on Steam or rated it on itch
- 2 people exactly have gotten the achievement for reaching the final scene of the game but not the True End that crops up literally just a few minutes later. If you're either person please message me because this exact situation is fascinating.
Note for all those numbers, I don't have much detailed tracking for itch.io so it's not a complete picture of things. But on itch it's largely a similar trickle of comments, ratings, downloads. The vast majority of people on itch got com__et through bundles which are always great for visibility, such as the Queer Hallowe'en Stories Bundle that's currently running.
Those numbers are hopefully helpful for showing the kind of funnel effect that happens. From people seeing, to wishlisting, to buying, to downloading, to actually playing, to finishing, to then reviewing it or commenting. You get less people taking the next step at each stage, so when I see 60 ratings and reviews, I have to extrapolate that out to realise how many more people have played and just not said. It's all abstract and somewhat opaque, I don't truly know how people are finding com__et. All I can do is splash it as many places I can that seem appropriate and hope I reel some people in. If you want to tell me how you found com__et, you can reply to this mail and let me know!
Even with the unknowability of numbers It helps a lot that so many people comment with very nice sentiments. Even when people have critique they're often posting because, like me, they thought there was something special in this game. And I'm very glad we agree.
Questions 🎙️
Here's some questions I was asked about com__et. Spoilers ahead, even just that I'll be assuming you have played, so parts might be a little confusing if you haven't!
Q: What inspired you to make the game, in terms of its narrative structure?
So the funny answer here is, I was playing popular visual novel Fate Stay Night. For the unfamiliar FSN is technically a route based game, where your choices change the affection values of different girls in the cast and these values can lead to bad endings but mainly the different canonical routes. However, the quirk is that there's a hard coded order to play the routes. It's not possible to see the final of the 3 routes first. So rather than these numbers being an expression of interest in characters or reflecting dynamics in interesting narrative ways, they feel purely like artifical gates. Pick the right choices at the right times in order to progress through a set path and see the true ending.
I found this largely frustrating and would've preferred a fully linear experience that just told me the story I wanted to read. I especially think the idea of a number abstracting the entirety of a character's affection is quite flat for something that's trying to develop a romance. Games always have to abstract things of course, because it's impossible to simulate every detail. But rather than the abstraction supporting the narrative or themes, it hurts more than it helps. This is what had me thinking about the false, performative nature of a meter like this and that led to the endings in com__et. There's only one real ending to com__et, all the others are wrong and should be pushed through. Having a high meter blocks you from doing this, a counter intuitive distraction more than a help.
Q: Were you planning to make a visual novel with the game's unique gameplay feature, hidden text gradually being revealed with each new playthrough as the protagonist becomes more honest with herself, from the beginning, or was that something you considered while developing the game?
The hidden text was a separate idea I ended up folding in. It actually came from seeing a ren'py feature I wanted to play with. You can tag text, like making something in {b}bold{/b} or {i}italics{/i}. You can create your own custom tags and apply whatever behaviour you want, even having them dynamically responsive to changes in the game (like a meter going up and down to control text colour for instance). I wanted to tinker with it, so styling text by the affect__ion meter seemed a fun approach.
I often have gimmicky ideas like this that're fun to play with. A satisfying little design puzzle I rotate over in my mind. I don't always stick with them, because sometimes it's nothing more than an intellectual curiosity. With the invisible text in com__et, I hit on something that felt like a meaningful metaphor for the self censoring of heteronormativity. The only thing actively holding "Me" back in com__et is their own actions. The background radiation of heteronormativity is a thing that "Me" needs to overcome, but once that push is made the choices are all in their hands.
So I kept it. As soon as the gimmick had a meaningful narrative connection, every other choice fell neatly into that paradigm. The reason I will usually throw out a fun but pointless gimmick is because it doesn't actually help tell the story. As soon as the gimmick synthesises with something and improves the narrative, it starts to make design choices easier.
Stay tuned for when I explain how conversation puzzles in Ravel the Frays help tell a story about neurodiversity. But this ends the celebration of com__et. I continue to be proud of it, but I have other things to work on that I'm excited to share with people too!
Someone else's work I recommend: Townframe
A very cute puzzle game where you have to recreate townscapes based on clues and requests from people. The concept adds a few layers that make for some inventive puzzle styles.
Play com__et!
If you already did, review it on Steam!
If you already did that, thank you.🥺