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I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spe

I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spent about 2 months making Rogue Bit just over a year ago: https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/ https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/ And it sold over 25000 copies so far.

thegeekpirate 7y ago
Just to add on to the "not a roguelike" list (it's an adventure game), Stone Story RPG (https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/).
- umvi 7y ago
  That's not really ASCII art. I mean it is, but iirc it's custom shader code in Unity made to look like retro style ASCII art. So it's actually way more difficult to make than a grid of ASCII characters.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Depends if its easier for you to do 3D. I remember when I found thr ThreeJS ascii shader I had a bit of fun with it...
  - flafla2 7y ago
    Although I get where you’re coming from, I disagree with the assertion that this makes it “not really ASCII art”. At the end of the day modern terminal emulators use a graphics API at one point to render characters on the screen. You wouldn’t say that iTerm2 isn’t a “real tty” because it has a metal backend (in this case, iTerm2 is also using a custom shader to render ASCII/unicode — more complex than this game of course). Where do we even draw the line? Is ASCII art only legit if it can render natively in a traditional terminal? How about only one without hardware acceleration? POSIX compliant? Further down the rabbit hole we could draw a line in the sand at tty’s with no window manager. It would still be trivial for the developer to add an “textshot” feature to export a frame to .txt, so I’d still qualify it as fitting the ASCII art aesthetic.
    - owl57 7y ago
      isn’t a “real tty” because it has a metal backend I was at first confused. Of course "real ttys" have some metal in their back end! (I'm too young and my default mental image of a "real tty" contains a CRT, but there's probably even more metal in a teletype.)
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > it's actually way more difficult to make than a grid of ASCII characters Any pointers on how to set up a grid of ASCII characters? That'd be what I would use tcod for. It seems like it should be easy, but I guess I don't know how to look for it.
bmsleight_ 7y ago
The trailer did not really show me any game play. So I can not judge it and see if I want to buy.
- babuskov 7y ago
  Showing gameplay would be pointless because 99% of the gameplay is in player's head, analyzing the code, maybe even writing some down on paper. If you just look at the screen, it doesn't make much sense. Here, try looking at this gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RskXHDLzo&t=183s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RskXHDLzo&t=183s It's hard to pick any point in that 75 minute video that would be a good trailer material. There's nothing visually spectacular except some static ASCII art and there's no surprise mechanics that would draw attention. The game itself isn't about ASCII art anyway, so having that in the trailer wouldn't make you learn much. But then again, it isn't a game for everyone. It's for people who are into hacking, computer internals, binary/hexadecimal numbers or assembly/machine language.
  - Pyxl101 7y ago
    Every game that Zachtronics releases has a gameplay trailer, for comparison. Perhaps it would be useful to look at some of those for inspiration: http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/?curator_clanid=32946839 https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/?curat... https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/?curator_clanid=32946839 https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/?curator_... I think a gameplay trailer could be made from content from that video, by stringing together a series of short clips. Show the player moving around, manipulating things. Each clip a few seconds in length. Similar to the trailer for Exapunks, you could display text like "Solve puzzles" "Manipulate bits" "Hack your way to safety" (or whatever makes sense). Maybe end with a sequence where something drastic happens (the player does something and the whole screen changes), fade to black. I think it'd be useful to show the player what the gameplay is actually like. Sure, it's not for everyone, but you can still show what it is.
    - 7y ago
master-litty 7y ago
Tangential question, was it difficult for you to receive the development kit for the Nintendo Switch? I'm creating a game right now and I can't get them to respond. I'd love to hear what worked well for you.
- babuskov 7y ago
  Well, I have another, much more popular game that I pitched to Nintendo to get the dev kit: http://sonofawitchgame.com/ http://sonofawitchgame.com/ It's got features from festivals like IndieCade, and had really good Steam reviews during Early Access, so getting a dev. kit was relatively easy. Rogue Bit came afterwards. BTW, I tried to check out your game, but your websites (both .com and .us from HN profile) seem to be unreachable? If you're pitching to Nintendo, you need to make sure everything works and you present yourself as an established studio.
  - master-litty 7y ago
    I see, I'm definitely not anywhere near this established yet, the process is more formal than I thought. I'll try another pitch when I have more objectivity (solid website, steam reviews or similar) to present. And thank you for the heads up, that means a lot to me -- There is intentionally nothing there at the moment.
jere 7y ago
25k? Interesting. I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch.
- babuskov 7y ago
  > I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. I have 4 games on Steam, and "review to sale number" ratio is all over the place, so it isn't that easy to use for estimation. You can get some idea, but 2500 is nowhere close really. > Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch. About 2/3 of the sales were on Switch. I was surprised as well. I meant the game to be Steam-only, and then some of the players asked for a Switch version. I was blown away after the first month of release. IMHO, turn based (or just slow paced) puzzle games are awesome for Switch because of the portability. In the evening when the kids have finished playing their Zeldas and Dragon Quests, you can lay back and solve a couple of puzzles until it's time to sleep. Looking at my personal play times, the game I play on Switch the most is "Baba is You".
  - jere 7y ago
    No doubt. I have a one year old and playing Slay the Spire on Switch is the greatest thing ever because I can just fit it into whatever I'm doing. Maybe I should pursue this console harder... I know that review ratio isn't perfect but it's still a good rough estimate. It did in fact clue me in that the majority of your sales were probably from Switch. Thanks for the response!
gbmor 7y ago
I've not heard of Rogue Bit before, but it looks really cool and intriguing, so I just bought a copy. Thanks for contributing to the indie game world!
- babuskov 7y ago
  Thanks. If you have any feedback on the game, feel free to shoot me an e-mail (it's in my HN profile).
Kyzrati 7y ago
So amazing, all these smart people making commercial games in such a short time, and then there's me still working on the same old thing year after year, even though it was released a long time ago xD

thegeekpirate 7y ago

Just to add on to the "not a roguelike" list (it's an adventure game), Stone Story RPG (https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/).

umvi 7y ago
That's not really ASCII art. I mean it is, but iirc it's custom shader code in Unity made to look like retro style ASCII art. So it's actually way more difficult to make than a grid of ASCII characters.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Depends if its easier for you to do 3D. I remember when I found thr ThreeJS ascii shader I had a bit of fun with it...
- flafla2 7y ago
  Although I get where you’re coming from, I disagree with the assertion that this makes it “not really ASCII art”. At the end of the day modern terminal emulators use a graphics API at one point to render characters on the screen. You wouldn’t say that iTerm2 isn’t a “real tty” because it has a metal backend (in this case, iTerm2 is also using a custom shader to render ASCII/unicode — more complex than this game of course). Where do we even draw the line? Is ASCII art only legit if it can render natively in a traditional terminal? How about only one without hardware acceleration? POSIX compliant? Further down the rabbit hole we could draw a line in the sand at tty’s with no window manager. It would still be trivial for the developer to add an “textshot” feature to export a frame to .txt, so I’d still qualify it as fitting the ASCII art aesthetic.
  - owl57 7y ago
    isn’t a “real tty” because it has a metal backend I was at first confused. Of course "real ttys" have some metal in their back end! (I'm too young and my default mental image of a "real tty" contains a CRT, but there's probably even more metal in a teletype.)
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > it's actually way more difficult to make than a grid of ASCII characters Any pointers on how to set up a grid of ASCII characters? That'd be what I would use tcod for. It seems like it should be easy, but I guess I don't know how to look for it.

bmsleight_ 7y ago

The trailer did not really show me any game play. So I can not judge it and see if I want to buy.

babuskov 7y ago
Showing gameplay would be pointless because 99% of the gameplay is in player's head, analyzing the code, maybe even writing some down on paper. If you just look at the screen, it doesn't make much sense. Here, try looking at this gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RskXHDLzo&t=183s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RskXHDLzo&t=183s It's hard to pick any point in that 75 minute video that would be a good trailer material. There's nothing visually spectacular except some static ASCII art and there's no surprise mechanics that would draw attention. The game itself isn't about ASCII art anyway, so having that in the trailer wouldn't make you learn much. But then again, it isn't a game for everyone. It's for people who are into hacking, computer internals, binary/hexadecimal numbers or assembly/machine language.
- Pyxl101 7y ago
  Every game that Zachtronics releases has a gameplay trailer, for comparison. Perhaps it would be useful to look at some of those for inspiration: http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/?curator_clanid=32946839 https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/?curat... https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/?curator_clanid=32946839 https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/?curator_... I think a gameplay trailer could be made from content from that video, by stringing together a series of short clips. Show the player moving around, manipulating things. Each clip a few seconds in length. Similar to the trailer for Exapunks, you could display text like "Solve puzzles" "Manipulate bits" "Hack your way to safety" (or whatever makes sense). Maybe end with a sequence where something drastic happens (the player does something and the whole screen changes), fade to black. I think it'd be useful to show the player what the gameplay is actually like. Sure, it's not for everyone, but you can still show what it is.
  - 7y ago

master-litty 7y ago

Tangential question, was it difficult for you to receive the development kit for the Nintendo Switch? I'm creating a game right now and I can't get them to respond. I'd love to hear what worked well for you.

babuskov 7y ago
Well, I have another, much more popular game that I pitched to Nintendo to get the dev kit: http://sonofawitchgame.com/ http://sonofawitchgame.com/ It's got features from festivals like IndieCade, and had really good Steam reviews during Early Access, so getting a dev. kit was relatively easy. Rogue Bit came afterwards. BTW, I tried to check out your game, but your websites (both .com and .us from HN profile) seem to be unreachable? If you're pitching to Nintendo, you need to make sure everything works and you present yourself as an established studio.
- master-litty 7y ago
  I see, I'm definitely not anywhere near this established yet, the process is more formal than I thought. I'll try another pitch when I have more objectivity (solid website, steam reviews or similar) to present. And thank you for the heads up, that means a lot to me -- There is intentionally nothing there at the moment.

jere 7y ago

25k? Interesting. I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch.

babuskov 7y ago
> I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. I have 4 games on Steam, and "review to sale number" ratio is all over the place, so it isn't that easy to use for estimation. You can get some idea, but 2500 is nowhere close really. > Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch. About 2/3 of the sales were on Switch. I was surprised as well. I meant the game to be Steam-only, and then some of the players asked for a Switch version. I was blown away after the first month of release. IMHO, turn based (or just slow paced) puzzle games are awesome for Switch because of the portability. In the evening when the kids have finished playing their Zeldas and Dragon Quests, you can lay back and solve a couple of puzzles until it's time to sleep. Looking at my personal play times, the game I play on Switch the most is "Baba is You".
- jere 7y ago
  No doubt. I have a one year old and playing Slay the Spire on Switch is the greatest thing ever because I can just fit it into whatever I'm doing. Maybe I should pursue this console harder... I know that review ratio isn't perfect but it's still a good rough estimate. It did in fact clue me in that the majority of your sales were probably from Switch. Thanks for the response!

gbmor 7y ago

I've not heard of Rogue Bit before, but it looks really cool and intriguing, so I just bought a copy. Thanks for contributing to the indie game world!

babuskov 7y ago
Thanks. If you have any feedback on the game, feel free to shoot me an e-mail (it's in my HN profile).

Kyzrati 7y ago

So amazing, all these smart people making commercial games in such a short time, and then there's me still working on the same old thing year after year, even though it was released a long time ago xD