There has been much discussion on the usefulness of short-term price discounts on improving sales and revenue for video games. To further this discussion, we’d like to share some data from a recent sale we participated in on Steam. (Note, I asked permission from our partners at Steam before publishing this article and they gave us their blessing.)

Our games, Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII, were released on Steam in April of 2011 at the price of $3 USD. They have done well but as you might expect, sales have been dying down over time. On April 6th, the games were featured in Steam’s Deal of the Day during which time they were 50% off ($1.50) for a period of 24 hours. The games had been in holiday sales before this and at one point had even briefly been in a larger discount (66% off) but this is the first time that they were featured in a sale specifically for them.

During our 24-hour sale on Steam, we sold approximately 125 times our daily average from the week prior to the sale (when articles about our new game started coming out and gave us a sales boost) and approximately 230 times our daily average from the week before that (when we had no such boost).

Not only that, but in the week immediately following the sale, our daily average was about 35% better than it was immediately before the sale. Now admittedly, we had the benefit of getting additional coverage for our studio due to the articles about our upcoming new game, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, but since that coverage began before the sale and continued after the sale, I think the post-sale boost was primarily due to a lingering effect from the sale and not due to coverage of the new game.

From our experience, I think we can draw a few conclusions.

1 – The visibility of a sale is more important than the amount being discounted as long as the discount is noticeable. Our Deal of the Day did substantially better than our Holiday sale even though it was a smaller discount because we had much greater visibility for the Deal of the Day. In contrast, with the holiday sale, just about everything on the store was discounted and so our particular sale got little attention.

2 – Beyond the period of the actual sale, short-term discounts can offer long-term benefits as they get people talking about your game and may get you a position in the Top Selling charts, both of which can result in additional sales.

In short, periodic sales can be extremely beneficial but only if the sale has visibility. And though some people believe that short-term sales are just making potential future sales come sooner than they would have otherwise, in actuality, I believe this is a case where success breeds success – not only do sales not decrease your potential for future sales, they actually are more likely to increase your chances of future success.

Space Quest was one of the major game series that got me into gaming and game development so it is with great excitement that I can announce that THE TWO GUYS FROM ANDROMEDA (aka the two designers of Space Quest) ARE BACK TOGETHER AND MAKING A NEW GAME!!!!!!!! Wooo!

No details yet other than it’s space-themed and an adventure game. You can check out their official site here.

The official website for our upcoming game, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, is now up. Visit it here.

The 1st preview of our upcoming game, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, is now up, courtesy of Joystiq!

You can read it here.

PAX East plans!

We’re going to have a booth at PAX East showing off Penny Arcade’s On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness 3 so be sure to stop by so you can check out and play the first part of the game.

Also, there will be a panel about the game at PAX East on Friday 9pm-10pm. Panelists will include Jerry Holkins and Jeff Kalles from Penny Arcade as well as Robert Boyd and Bill Stiernberg from Zeboyd Games.

Hope to see you there!

On January 4th, we decided to drop the price of Cthulhu Saves the World on the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) platform from 240 MS points ($3 USD) to 80 MS points ($1 USD). The game had been out for just over a year, Microsoft had just relaxed pricing restrictions on the platform, but mostly I was just curious as to what would happen.

For a baseline, before the price drop, we were selling about 20-21 copies of Cthulhu Saves the World a day on average on the XBLIG platform.

Here’s the first week of sales since the price drop (I left out the 4th because the price drop was only in effect for a short period of time that day). I’ve also posted a couple notes on relevant events that happened on specific days.

And now for some thoughts.

Since the price drop, we’ve been getting more sales a day than trial downloads. The game has gotten good reviews from a number of sites and from user ratings and it’s only a dollar so it’s understandable than many people would decide to buy it without trying it out first. It’s also possible that some people may have downloaded the demo in the past and with the price drop finally decided to buy it.

Although it wasn’t always like this in the past, now a game’s position on the Top Downloads chart is an average of a week and not just the most recent day. Hopefully, what this means is that it’s much harder to get in the Top Downloads list but once you’re in, it’s more likely that you’ll stay in. Cthulhu Saves the World was at about #100 before the price drop and started improving with each new day. With January 11th sales data in, we now have a full week of sales since the price drop and our rank is at #18. EDIT: I was just told that the Top Downloads chart is a day behind the most recent data we receive directly on our sales which means that our rank should go up tomorrow since that will be the first day that the chart reflects a full week at the lower price.

Top Downloads ranking is determined by adding sales & trial downloads together. Not sure why they do this – basing it just on sales seems like it would reward the higher quality games more. Note: this is just an educated guess based on data I’ve seen since becoming an XBLIG developer; Microsoft hasn’t actually come out and said that the ranking is sales + trials.

If you assume an average of 21 games sold a day before the price drop, the price drop has increased our average daily revenue on XBLIG by about x3 so far.

The price drop doesn’t seem to be affecting our sales of our games on Steam or the XBLIG version of Breath of Death VII either positively or negatively. Both are about what they were before the CSTW XBLIG price drop.

Not sure why our stats jumped so much on the 11th. It was a jump for all countries so I don’t think it was a specific website. Maybe we passed some sort of critical milestone and now we’re more visible or being offered as more recommendations on xbox.com or the Xbox dashboard.

So all in all, it’s been a big success so far. Keep in mind that we were able to get a fair bit of media coverage on the price drop (the fact that we bundled in an announcement about upcoming ports didn’t hurt things) – just dropping your game’s price won’t do much good if nobody knows about. Hopefully, sales will continue to do well over the coming weeks and months and this won’t just be a short-term boost.

Since we’ve been working on the same project for a while, we thought it would be fun and energizing to use a Saturday this month and try to make a game in a single day. We’ll be cheating somewhat though since we’ll be reusing old code & art assets. Not sure which Saturday we’ll do it (need to make sure both of us have the time free) but after we do it, we’ll upload the results for everyone to try out. Don’t get too excited – given the time constraints, I’ll be pleased if we manage to make a 5-min game.

Here’s the design premise I wrote up several months ago for the game idea we’re going to try to make. Of course, there will no doubt be changes between my old design and what we actually end up doing.

Mob Quest Design Document

Basic Premise – Desktop Dungeons + Katamari Damacy

Story Premise – The big bad guy is terrorizing the world! The only way you can defeat him is through teamwork! Use the magic mob crystal to form the ultimate mob of heroes and take down every enemy in your path!

–Basic concepts–

The game is a turn-based puzzle game divided into stages. The goal to complete each stage varies from stage to stage (could be to defeat a boss, could be to reach a certain mob size, could be to reach a certain destination, etc.)
Transferring from stage to stage could be set up on a Super Mario World style world map. Achieving optional goals in stages could unlock new paths. There could also be an overall score (combined total of individual stage scores) that unlocks various bonuses as your progress.
You control one “character” – a mob of heroes & townsfolk.
In addition to your standard RPG stats like HP, MP, Attack, and Speed, you also have a stat for your mob’s size.
You also have mob stats. These include your recruit stat (how many people can be recruited into your mob in a single move), your current LV & XP, gold total, skill points, and any abilities you’ve unlocked.
XP is gained from finding treasure, defeating enemies, increasing your mob size, and adding new classes to your mob.
Leveling up increases your recruit stat and gives you skill points which can be used to purchase new abilities and bonuses.

–Basic gameplay–

Each turn, you can move to an adjacent square. Gaining and using items and abilities do not cost a turn.
If your recruit stat is high enough, people will join your mob (increasing its size) when you walk onto their square on the map. Otherwise, you can’t enter their square.
Villagers are the most basic type of character and just increase your mob size.
In addition to villagers, there are also special class characters. If one of these joins your mob, your entire mob gains their stats and new abilities are unlocked for purchase with your skill points.
Your mob’s stats are based on the highest stat for all classes you’ve added to your mob. For example, if you had a knight and a mage, you’d have the Attack of the knight with the MP of the mage.
There is no separate battle screen. Instead, if you try to walk onto a space with a monster in it, you attack automatically and the enemy attacks back. (i.e. similar to Desktop Dungeons)
The bigger your mob, the more damage you deal. Likewise, as the enemy deals damage to you, your mob size shrinks and you become less effective.
Your damage dealt = Your Attack multiplied by your mob size.
Mob deaths = Enemy’s attack divided by your mob’s average Max HP.
If your speed is higher than the enemy’s speed, you attack first (thus taking no damage if you defeat them this round). Otherwise, attacks are simultaneous.
A mob is a fickle creature. If you travel across certain kinds of terrain, your mob size will decrease as people leave, never to return. The harsher the terrain, the faster the decrease.
Also, if you exceed the turn limit, X number of people will leave each turn. The turn limit and penalty per turn varies per stage (with some stages being very harsh).
Mob members lost in battle can be regained by healing. Mob members lost from terrain or turn limits are permanently gone.
The mob sprite would change depending on the size (have a few different versions of it and switch up or down as the size increases).

—Conclusion—
And that’s pretty much it for the basic gameplay concepts. Of course, the stage designs, special abilities, monster special abilities, etc. would give the game far more depth than the basic design suggests.

Cthulhu Saves the World celebrates 1-year anniversary with new platforms and price drop on Xbox Live Indie Games version.

In celebration of the game’s one year anniversary on Xbox Live Indie Games and in light of recent improvements made to the Xbox Live Indie Games service, Zeboyd Games is proud to announce a permanent price drop for Cthulhu Saves the World for the Xbox Live Indie Games service to 80 MS points ($1 USD) effective today, January 4th, 2011.

Cthulhu Saves the World was originally released on Xbox Live Indie Games on December 30th, 2010. It was later ported to the PC on July 13th, 2011. Since its release, Cthulhu Saves the World has sold over 150,000 copies and has garned critical acclaim from multiple gaming sites including IGN, RPGamer, Gamesradar, Joystiq, RPGFan, Eurogamer, and others.

With Cthulhu Saves the World’s new low price, complete and utter insanity has never been so easy to obtain!

Zeboyd Games is also pleased to announce a partnership with Tinkerhouse Games to bring Cthulhu Saves the World to a variety of new platforms in early 2012 including the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Mac. More details to follow in the coming weeks.

“It still boggles my mind that a random thought of mine while I was waiting for an appointment one day – hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Cthulhu was a hero in a Japanese-style RPG – is now an actual game that people are playing and enjoying. With this new price drop on XBLIG and the game coming to new platforms later this year, I hope even more people will be able to experience the weird adventures of Cthulhu, his own personal fangirl Umi, and the rest.”

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Zeboyd Games is a small development team with experience in creating high quality, amusing retro RPG including Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. They are currently working on Rainslick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 in conjunction with Penny Arcade. For press inquiries, media assets, and review code requests for Rainslick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3, Cthulhu Saves the World, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning and Zeboyd Games, contact Robert Boyd at rdespair@gmail.com or visit our website at http://zeboyd.com.

Our games are currently on sale in Steam’s mega-huge holiday sale. The combo pack with both Cthulhu Saves the World + Breath of Death VII is available for a mere $1.02 (66% off). You can get them here.

I know our games have been going on sale a lot recently (Halloween, Thanksgiving, and now Christmas) but there’s a dearth of major holidays in the first half of the year so I wouldn’t be expecting another sale for quite some time after this one is up. Of course, we may have other announcements to make early next year…