Let me tell you about the other half of the job
So far I've written here about the game. What's missing is the half nobody warns you about, which is reaching your audience somehow.
I've been at it for a few weeks and the honest summary is that almost nothing has worked yet. I'm not writing this to complain, but because when I was looking for how this is done, all I could find was people telling you how well everything went for them.
The reality is a saturated market where most games fall into digital oblivion the way a grain of sand falls into the desert.
X and Bluesky
I opened accounts on both. Here they are:
https://x.com/TorreviejaStudi
https://bsky.app/profile/torreviejastudio.bsky.social
It's the easy part: ten minutes, an avatar, the first screenshot, and you're posting. The hard part comes after, which is posting with nobody on the other end. You write a post, you attach a screenshot that took you an afternoon, and fourteen people see it, three of whom are bots.
I'm going to keep them updated anyway, because I suspect it adds up to something in the long run. And also because when somebody finds me six months from now, they will scroll back, and they want to see that this has been running for a while.
On Reddit my post was deleted the moment I published it. Antispam filters, I assume, or some subreddit rule I never got round to reading. But honestly, they're being a bit stupid about it. No clear warning and no obvious way to fix it. You post, you refresh, and it's gone.
I could fight that — learn the rules of every community and earn my place for months before being allowed to show anything. Because you need points called Karma or whatever that whole story is. But on top of it all, Reddit isn't a network I especially enjoy. And doing this on my own, the hours I'd spend on a place I don't like and that throws me out on arrival are better spent almost anywhere else. Next.
Steamworks
No drama here, but you wouldn't believe the wait until they validate your account. You pay the 100€ fee — a hundred whole euros — fill in the tax paperwork, send the documents, and then you stare at a panel that says it's under review. And there it still is a week later...
If it takes weeks for Valve to validate an account, then the Steam page doesn't get built the month before launch.
itch.io
I posted the first devlogs. Zero impact. Not a comment, not a heart, nothing.
And I think that's normal too. The itch.io devlog front page is a river with hundreds of projects a day; you sit at the top for a few minutes and then you sink. It's useful for two things that aren't the thing I expected: giving your game page some depth when somebody does land on it, and reaching the people already following you. As a shop window it doesn't work.
The Godot forums
Same story, no impact at all. It says 38 people have read me there, but zero replies, zero hearts, nothing.
What I'm taking from it
That this isn't a switch, it's sediment. That the part I actually control is making the game and leaving a trail that shows I'm making it, and the numbers will come or they won't.
Thanks for sticking around.