So, I’ve talked quite a bit about GENBA no Kizuna now. First about its conception and evolution (Part I, Part II, Part III) and then about its development, primarily focusing on all the reasons as to why it took us so incredibly long to finish it (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV).
Today, I’d like to get into the final bigger topic I wanted to discuss related to our new murder mystery release: the reception and my takeaways from it. By now, it’s already been out for three entire months, after all! So, let’s see what players had to say…
- Review Count
First of all, if you look at the store page right now, you’ll see that we’ve got 14 reviews, with only one of them being negative.
That’s pretty good! I also want to take the opportunity again to thank everyone who’s taken the time to write a review and help us get so quickly over the 10 review mark! That’s the point where a game receives a rating (“Positive”, “Mixed” or “Negative”) and gets a visibility boost, so as you can imagine, it was incredibly important to us to reach that milestone ASAP!
You really have our deepest gratitude for your support in this endeavor and I’d like to urge everyone to support indie devs in this way in general if possible! It’s literally one of the best things you can do for us!
- Review Breakdown
Alright, let’s take a closer look at the reviews, leaving the negative one aside for now. Unfortunately, out of the 13 positive ones we’ve received, there are a couple of players who didn’t actually finish the game. If we’re going by the stats and what reviewers wrote, at least two of them posted their review before completion. Actually, in the beginning, a couple more people did, but some later updated their reviews once they had finished GENBA.
Now, while this naturally helped us get our total review count much faster to 10 (which I am, again, very thankful for), I do admittedly have mixed feelings about mid-game reviews. For one, I myself was kinda worried a bit, because I couldn’t help but think: “But what if it turns out that, upon playing further, they realize it isn’t really their jam after all? What if they switch it to a negative review then…?”
And then, of course, players indecisive about whether or not to buy GENBA might look at these types of reviews and simply disregard them, because they do not reflect a full game experience. In that sense, it’s hard to say how helpful they really are and if they really can be counted in terms of “positive reviews”.
(At least with a lower total review count. If you already have a hundred or so reviews, people don’t usually take the time to scroll through each individual one, so at that point, the number of positive reviews may actually be more important than their content.)
But anyway, even if we exclude these two, we still do have 11 players who did leave us with a genuine positive review.
- Reception
Alright, now we get to the really important part! The content of the actual reviews. Now sadly, even when it comes to this, we have to disregard a couple. One review, for instance, simply says “rawr x3” and another “Press X to doubt“. And while I can see from the player stats that they both completed the game and therefore assume that they must have indeed liked it (I mean, otherwise, they wouldn’t have given a thumbs up, right?), these two reviews sadly don’t really tell me anything about why they enjoyed GENBA.
Or even what parts they may not have enjoyed so much.
Then, there are reviews like “My favorite visual novel of all time“, which obviously makes me super duper happy to hear!
But of course, as a creator, I’d love to get some detailed breakdowns as to what worked and what didn’t, so I can hopefully learn to avoid making the same mistakes again and further improve with future projects.
And thankfully, some of the other reviews are very detailed. And it’s from these that I noticed two major things. Even though they all say that, at the end of the day, they did enjoy GENBA, they also felt like it dragged on too much at times and stated that, between our two released projects, they prefer SHINRAI and would have liked something much more akin to it.
Here is one review in particular that highlights these points:
“After completing the game, I had mixed feelings. In some places, it was so boring that I had to skip through the text. Also I enjoyed the idea and atmosphere of Shinrai more overall. However, the mystery in this novel was intriguing and complex. The characters were entertaining, and the ending helped to smooth out any bad impressions. Overall, the game was enjoyable, but I felt a bit disappointed, because I wanted something more like Shinrai.”
This sentiment is mirrored by others. One starts out with: “This isn’t an easy review to write, dagnabit. Okay, Genba no Kizuna is a good game. I’ve had time to think it over, and I still stand proudly on this hill.”
Then, later on, it states: “Unfortunately, I don’t think this game quite measures up to Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair.”
And, of course, the one negative review really goes into this, too, basically stating that GENBA is too long and too boring. And this comes from a player who, in their profile, mentions SHINRAI as one of their top 10 games of all time and who only had high praise in that one’s review. Said person also left our Discord shortly after complaining about GENBA there and publishing their review, so I guess we must have severely disappointed them with our second project, ahahah…
- Sales
Anyway, all things considered, we really don’t have that big of a pool of player impressions yet to really say anything with certainty. Which that in itself may even be considered a problem. We got to 14 reviews super quick, but ever since then… we haven’t received another. I can’t really remember or check how many reviews SHINRAI got in that same time frame, but one thing I can say is that, between August 26 and November 30 in 2016, SHINRAI did pretty much sell twice as many units.
Monetary-wise, we don’t really see much of a difference, given GENBA‘s much higher price. Which, of course, might be the very reason for the lower number of units sold. A lot of players always wait for a sale of at least 20% before they buy, with the vast majority only going in at 50% or more.
But then, on the other hand, SHINRAI was the first project of an unknown group of developers, while GENBA was released with an existing fanbase, so you could also argue that that should’ve helped us sell more now than before.
- Takeaways(?)
In any case, it’s a complex and very difficult topic and, again, at this point in time, it may be a bit too early to draw conclusions.
It’s also tough to really see what went wrong if we only get statements such as “certain parts felt dragged”. Like, it would be very helpful to know what parts exactly were perceived as such. But as it stands, I can only do guesswork in that regard.
However, that aside, the way I personally feel at this very moment is that, while people did enjoy GENBA (some more than others), they may indeed have been much more thrilled with an actual sequel to SHINRAI.
I purposely went into a different direction with GENBA, in many cases doing the exact opposite of what I did with SHINRAI.
And maybe that was a mistake, at least business-wise. As a creator who spends many years on a project like this, I obviously didn’t want to do the same thing twice, especially not in a row. I want to try out new things. But players might feel differently about that.
But that in itself is a bigger topic which I’ll save for December! Lots of thoughts on that, haha. So, for now, let’s call it quits here.
- Thanks
Again, I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart, who did buy and play GENBA or even went the extra mile to support us by leaving a review or joining our Discord and/or Patreon. It really means a lot to us and I know myself that it’s difficult to find the time to write a lengthy review. Sometimes, it’s hard to find the time to play a game in the first place, never mind the money to buy it!
So the fact that people did decide to spend both their hard-earned cash and precious time on something that we have created…
Well, it really is something incredibly surreal and special. And we’ll never take it for granted. So, once more: thank you so, SO much!!
Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend, have a cozy start into the festive season and, until next Saturday, take care :3
(PS: Patrons of the 5$+ tiers can now check out a sprite preview for Nobara in our next project!)
