Drag & drop!

Hi guys! We are working a lot for a big refresh to release at the end of the summer (with also a new feature).

But recently we updated the website with something new!

For Indie Developers 

- Drag&drop images 

Now a new and modern system to upload the screenshot for your game page! Just drag & drop!

- Select your Cover

A lot of indie devs asked "how the thumbnail was chosen"... Now it's incredibly easy! Just pin the image that you want to use as cover!

For Indie Lovers/Players

- new medals Challenges & Completed Challenges 

We are released (and still testing) new medals for users that joins and complete the challenges!

- replaced Your Games (in Options area) with Challenges

Challenges first! A lot of users use indiexpo just to explore and play games and they don't care about the Your Games are in their dashboard. So we replaced it with the Challenges!

But not worry Devs! You can still see Your Games in several Areas of the website!

It was not the best way to start the new year...

When things go well, no one ever thinks that it could all go wrong...

2021 had just ended, with the team on Discord, we were discussing how this year we had obtained more subscribers and views than the previous year. There were talks of new features being added, improvements being made and how they can impact the site in 2022.

Everything was going smoothly, and we did not suspect that the unexpected was just around the corner. The first days of January the site began to have problems. The server appeared unreachable, and the site is inaccessible. We start the "standard maneuvers" and after a couple of postponements, everything was back to working.

Two days pass and the site is down again. No changes had recently been applied to Indiexpo, which made it difficult to understand what was going wrong. However, this made us understand that the problem was at the server level and not at the code level.

The "standard maneuvers" didn't help this time, so we were lucky enough to have the site programmer come to the rescue. He finds a strange connection between the site and the server. He doesn't quite understand what's going on, but he finds a way to recalibrate some settings and the site is back up and running.

But after a day the site is down again, and the error seems even more serious.

Chat started to think that the site is closing. We received emails and reports of users who were unable to access the site for days. Talks on social media had everyone guessing to what was happening on the website.

We contacted the service that sold us the server. They reassured us by saying that the problem does not depend on them, and that they do not detect problems, but the site is still down. This time it cannot stay up for a few minutes without crashing, and the programmer no longer knows how to address the faults. This was seemingly impossible.

The service staff who sold us the server propose a hardware replacement. Components that should improve the performance will be presented and replaced.

We accepted and waited anxiously.

Then the news...

We are contacted again, and we are told that during the replacement of the various components, the hard drive with all the games and data appeared to be damaged.

We immediately check the backup, and we realize that it is not up to date at all and the material that we could lose would be substantial. So understandably, it resulted in the closure of the site.

The programmer explains that if the hard drive still turns, maybe we will be able to recover some files. If it does not turn, we should go to a specialized centre to try to recover the data. However, the latter option would be very expensive, risky, and extremely difficult.

It was agreed that the work would be carried out in two attempts.

The first attempt is made.

It fails...

This 12-year long work could all end. The beginning of 2022 can mark the end of a site that is now part of our daily life.

We begin to contact a specialized centre (with exorbitant costs) and we begin to think if we should start over (impossible) or change the site entirely. We were totally disoriented and helpless.

The second attempt begins.

Success! All games and data are recovered!

The site is put back online, the backup restored and enhanced.

indiexpo still lives!

Thanks guys for being close and supporting us!

We are back to stay!

Let's do it!

Where are they from?

Indiexpo's userbase is growing! As you know, the site is offered in 18 different languages, which makes it easier to find on many search engines from all around the World.

The passion for gaming reaches both young and adult people- and since it is hard for a very young boy to know english, if the syte is translated in their own language they can discover new games much more quickly and easily!

But where do all these passionate users come from? In order to answer that question, we want to show you Indiexpo's Stats regarding this topic.

From 01.01.2019 to 06.30.2019. The top 10.

As you can see, Italy comes in second place, because the website was born in Italy, and so the first games were all only available in italian

We added Hindi just a few months ago, but you can see how it already is in 4th place.

Brazil has always been around the top of the rankings. Russia has been going down, which is rather strange, since it had previously been 5th.

If you are an "indiexpositor", you should know we are also working to show this kind of statistical information in your Statistic Area.

2000 Games and time of cleaning for a Party!

On indiexpo are hosted over 2,000 Games!!
It's great if I remember that it was born on very small communities and forums.
Now it's a big website with great and small projects.

But now... It's time to cleaning! (to organize the Party)

Yes, it is! It's not useful to be a big website with a lot of games with broken link.

In fact indiexpo wants to be different from other websites. Here you are totally free. You can upload your game on our servers or add an external link with a direct download.

Using this second opinion it's possible that your games will be removed by the web hosting that you are using. Or you need more space on your cloud and delete old folders with your game.

So we're contacting dev by dev. If there is no reply, we are deleting the game page.

We want to create a clear place with games to play and discover!

How long it takes to complete a task

One-Man-Company or Team ?

User Stories: Signorino Alessio - How to Make an Horror Game

Hello guys! My name is Signorino Alessio!

I'm the developer of Silent Memories P.T., a fan RPG Maker game based from the famous original game Silent Hills P.T. developed by Hideo Kojima for Konami.

I just want to say first of all, thanks all of you supporters, when everyone test it and says how good it was, that makes me very happy! 

I'll continue to work on it, to give you something that Konami didn't.

About your games:

As a developer, I want to give some advices if your planning to create games!

First of all, you really need to think what you want to do, and be sure if you could really work for that game, because if you think to do something you can't realize, you could give up soon. I had this problem one time, trust me. My favourite RPG tool is VX Ace, because is professional but simple. It can support most of formats and it have a lot of resources. You can obviously choose some other engine, but this is what I love.

If you are planning to create something big, find help and create a team like us, you can't do it all alone! About the publish, it's better by starting on RPG Maker Forums, that's the nice place to publish your games, like I did on "Rpg²s", one of the best Italian Forums. You can add your games on IndieDB ecc... I would prefer Indiexpo because it has free access for every player and developer, and the staff is really helpful!

My story: How Silent Memories is born?

I always liked and played the Silent Hill saga. I meet this game my first time when I bought Metal Gear Solid, which included the Silent Hill 1 Demo. After the PS1 game, I played Silent Hill 2 & 3 on PS2 and I really started to love this series. Even if I couldn't play other Silent Hill games, I always watched the others series on Youtube.

The day I met Silent Hills was during PewDiePie's gameplay. 

I really liked the atmosphere of that game, but then it comes the bad news: Silent Hills Cancelled. After 2 years, I saw a lot of fan games based on P.T., but I never seen a RPG Fan Game, so I just said "Why don't we try too with an RPG Maker version?". So the project started, and finally is here. Of course, I couldn't make it without my friends, everyone in the Team helped for Testing, Graphics and especially my two best friends Silvio Fosso, my Co-Developer, helping every time, and Dakota James Emery Dennis, our best composer, who did a Soundtrack Cover of the original Silent Hill 1 Theme.

My pubblic:

People seems enjoy our creation, and that make us really happy!

For the success, we started to think about a sequel with the full story of this game.

For the sequel I searched a lot of theories of the Silent Hills fans, and we found everything useful for the full plot! We're just thinking to call the Sequel

"Silent Memories P.S.", which means "Playable Story" or to leave it Silent Memories, because the first letters S.M. could mean "Story Mode". People asked to make it for MV, but unfortunally, that engine can't use my strategies, but anything could change. I want to say again, thanks all you folks!

Our goal, is to let people know, that TwoD Studios can bring some beautiful games made in Italy! 

Thank all you folks and thanks to Indiexpo and his staff!

- Alessio Signorino, TwoD Studios

6 Tips for using hashtags in a Game Page

A hashtag — written with a # symbol — is used to index keywords or topics on indiexpo. This function was created on Twitter and now we use it also on indiexpo, to allows people to easily follow topics they are interested in.

Using hashtags to categorize Games by keyword:

• People use the hashtag symbol (#) before a relevant keyword or phrase in their Game Description to categorize and help them show more easily in indiexpo search.
• Clicking or tapping on a hashtagged word in any message shows you other Games that include that hashtag.
• Hashtags can be included also in the comments.

Example of a Game with a hashtag:

Tips for using hashtags:

• You cannot add spaces or punctuation in a hashtag, or it will not work properly.
• We recommend using no more than 2 hashtags as best practice, but you may use as many hashtags as you like.
• Type a hashtagged keyword in the search bar to discover new games based on your interests.

6 Tips to Get More Subscribers on your Game

How many time you thinked "Oh! C'mon player click and subscribe!" ... ?

We already talked about how the first players of your new game should be the players of your previous game, inspired by several posts and books of Seth Godin.

If the player click on subscribe it's easier and faster. In fact when you will put a news/update on your indiexpo game page, every subscriber will receive an email about it.
And the 85% of subscibers open their emails on smartphone and check/open them.

So... how to increase your subscibers with news/updates ?

1. Create remarkable content. Your content needs to be amazing if you want people to stay subscribed and forward your games to their friends, family, and colleagues that aren't already on your list;
2. Promote an online contest, like a free giveaway (and don't forget to promote your contest on social!);
3. Add a link to your followers' signatures that leads people to a landing page where they can sign up for your game (you can also use the image that you can see in the Statistics Area)
4. Promote one of your lead-gen offers on Twitter or Facebook. Create a "Sociali Campaign" to promote your free resource to your followers;
5. Run a promotion on a partner game page or social page that targets a new but appropriate audience to collect new followers;
6. Add a QR code to your print marketing collateral (you can find it also in the Statistic Area) that people can scan to opt in to your "database".

Also for the Game Developers is the Time of the Video Interviews !

Community : a social group of any size whose members share the same passions, hobbies, works and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

It's nice to see how the interviews of the developers are showing and making a nice community (and not only on Twitter where the developers use #indiedev only to promote own games and ignore the others), where they report their experience, the followed indie games and authors and how they develop their games.

The interviews for a game developer are very important and in particular the video interviews. Now it's the time of the videos. It's not fortuity if Facebook is making moves to become 'video first'. Mark Zuckerberg says video will soon consume the lion's share of attention of its 1.7 billion users. And it's making aggressive moves to get people to make and view more video.

With a video you can tell fastly and easily infos about your games, passions and your favourite artists. So we're catching this opportunity realizing short videos with fast questions and fast answers.

The previous Summer we wrote posts (on this blog) about the Game Marketing and several developers contacted us. So now you can find their interviews here or on our Facebook Page.

We will continue to publish this kind of interviews and if you are a developer and want to join... contact us ! You will be added you in list ! :D But remember to share your free game or demo on indiexpo! ;)

See you soon !

How to Convince People to Click on your Game : The first Screenshot

The first screen of your game, that is used like cover of it, is very important.
It's like a good dress. If you are a boy with an amazing talent, a nice personality and rich... If you haven't a good dress is harder to "hit" a girl than have a good dress.

The first look/screen has only one goal: convince the user to click and open the page.

So you should hit him with colors, an animation or an original image. And, at the same time, the first screen will be also the cover of your game.

So I want to show you several "first screen" posted on the indiexpo that convince to click. They are all cured, animated (so they evidence own presence) and fresh.

Brain Reconstructor

Project Abyss

Abstract Arena

Owl Spirit

Keep attention and choose the right first screen!
And now you can also read the 3 features that should have a game to be downloaded !

Carpe Diem

Summer? New Tv Show? Halloween? Christmas? Olympics? Get this and create something mixed with your game or characters. It's like the Instant marketing.

It doesn't need to be inside the game... create an image and post it, it will get attention and people will click on the link to see what's that !

Example:

It's Nono from "Pocket Quest!" during Valentine's Day

How you can develop a game that attracts like the football ?

Do you like football ? How you can develop a game that attracts like the football ?
And what I can learn from it to develop a popular game ?

So. We can start. The main question is :
Why do many people like football ?

The football is the most popular sport in the world.

It's so popular for three main reasons :
1 - It's easy
2 - It creates Heroes
3 - Money

1 - It's easy and it's "free to play".
This is, IMHO, the main reason. It's easy. Everyone can take a ball and start to play it. The rules are very easy and it's funny.
It's the same logic adopted by League of Legends. First of all it's free to play and everyone can start to play lol. Download, setup and play. The logic is easy, the rules are easy.



2- It creates Heroes
From dust to Glory. Maradona, Pelè, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, etc.They started from the dust (Pelè was a poor boy from Brazil) and now they are the best of the best. Cars, houses, models, pools, fans. The football creates the mith. Your economic condition is not so  important, You can be a star.

3 - Money
It makes money and the people makes money. Bets, sponsor, commercial spots, etc.

About the last point, in several countries it's also illegal win money with an app or a game. But think different. Your players can be money playing your game on youtube or writing a post on their blogs. If your game "captures" views, they will talk about it.

To Make a Text Adventure with Twine

Do you remember the first Text Adventure Games ?
Like Colossal Cave Adventure, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Adventureland, Zork !

Now you can create a game like them with Twine, where you don't need to write any code to create a simple story.

Twine publishes directly to HTML, so you can post your work on indiexpo (uploading the zip) and play it online. Easy and fast.

But... how to make a game with Twine ?
First of all : Download Twine.

The first step is Start . Don't change this name.

  Double click on it to write in it.

The player can go to that passage by clicking on the link, like any internet hyperlink. You can add it in this way:

Now your passage has an exclamation point in the corner. This means you're linking it to a passage that doesn't exist, because you haven't made it yet. Click on the button that looks like a piece of paper with a little twinkle in the corner!

Double-click it, open it up, give it a name, and write in it!

If you go back to the first passage and add ANOTHER link to ANOTHER passage, now you've got a branching story. Now the player has a choice!

 Or at least, she will when you publish the story. Click on "Story" and then "Build Story..." You can save the story somewhere as an HTML file.

Now put the file in a zip folder and upload it (clicking Add File) on indiexpo.

Game images in your Game Page

Game images can make or break your game's success. You can hire the best game designer in the world to create a killer design and ux, but when images posted on a website like indiexpo or Kickstarter are bad, downloads will be bad. It’s the first thing a gamer will look at.

Even studies show that people that "shop" online value product images. The most important features of a product page are:

Quality of the product images
Several images
Alternate views of the same game

In this post, we’ll go over a number of things you need to consider when adding game images to your game page on indiexpo.





One of the things we tell our developers is to use images of the gameplay in the different areas.

Using game images with the games in use works best (gameplay in high quality and/or full hd), because people will be able to see themselves playing that game. We need to try to give our players that same experience. So : in the Screenshots Area, use images of the gameplay.

It seems so obvious to use high quality images. But we have been telling you to reduce the file size for years, right. First of all, that doesn’t mean you have to use a crappy, blurred image of just a few kBs.

Internet connections are getting faster. There are just a few so-called white spots (locations with no internet at all), with a total size of a couple of baseball fields. That also means we’ll have less difficulties downloading your larger product image files. You’ll need larger images anyway, as that leads us to another necessary feature of our website: ability to zoom game images.

If there is no proper game image available, create one or capture your desktop (while you're playing the game).
It's the same as an online shop.

Shopify ‘s guide (one of the best Shop Online) on product images states:
"Your product images can be any size up to 2048px by 2048px, or 4.2 megapixels. […] Higher resolution photos will look more polished and professional to your customers, and we typically suggest 1024px by 1024px as a guideline for square product images."

Woocommerce states that the minimum dimensions should be 800×800 pixels. That seems to make sense, as it will perfectly fit most tablets as well without any problem. Smaller will lead to distortion, and we have established you want quality images, right?


You want to be able to look at a game from all angles. Show all the areas. if it's a RPG, show the battle system, the world map and the other maps.

P.s. Remember that on indiexpo you can also upload GIF !

Smile Game Builder

Here it's a new tool : Smile Game Builder !

SMILE GAME BUILDER is a software for Windows that enables you to create role playing games (RPGs) without programming. no programs or scripts need to be written for any of the elements involved in the building of an RPG, including the creation of maps for the stages of the game, allocation of items, various stage effects, and creation of balance in fighting. While all maps are expressed three-dimensionally, the RPG can be built without having to create any 3D-modeling data for expressing the three-dimensional qualities, or having to spend time on figuring out the layout and setting while considering depth.

It looks like Rpg Maker Series... but with a new cool feature... the 3D !

SMILE GAME BUILDER, a RPG creation tool enabling you to create whole new worlds of your own!

No need for any sort of programming expertise! 

All you need is a desire to create your own RPG.

You can try the free demo on Steam

Smile Game Builder was added to the Tool List on indiexpo.net !

15 Ways For a Game Developer To Get More Followers

1. Create dope art.

2. Use hashtags.

3. Comment and follow other people’s games to generate more followers and comments for you. 

4. Mention your Game Page on your other social media channels. Let your followers know what perks they get when following you.

5. Quality > quantity, so only post news you’re proud of and make sense for your game.

6. Tell your followers who you are and what you do.

7. Research the best time to post news on indiexpo so to get more visibility.

8. Be consistent. Know what you’re posting, who your target audience is, and how many times a week/day/etc. you plan on posting.

9. Use calls to action to keep your followers engaged by encouraging them to participate.

10. Don’t be scared of posting often.

11. Be authentic. You’re a real person, and so are your followers. Respond to their questions, leave thoughtful comments.

12. To boost your brand and increase visibility, create your own hashtag, and encourage your followers to use it.

13. Share candid, behind-the-scenes photos to showcase your brand’s unique personality.

14. Share your followers’ screenshots, especially ones that mention your game, to encourage others to post screenshots of your work.

15. Be yourself. Remember: your game rocks, and so do you.

Gamers are a part of 60 percent of American homes

April 28, 2016 – Washington, DC – Gamers are a part of 60 percent of American homes, according to new data released today by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The report also reveals that the most frequent video game player is 38 years old, on average, and has been playing video games for about 13 years.

Other key findings highlight gamers’ excitement for new technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. According to the report, more than half of the most frequent video game players are familiar with virtual reality, with 40 percent saying they will likely purchase their own VR headsets within the next year.

“This report illustrates how powerful storytelling, innovative hardware, and compelling design join together to fuel our industry’s growth and fan excitement. We are consistently upending traditional conceptions of entertainment and how consumers interact with media,” said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA, which represents the U.S. video game industry. “These advancements provide new opportunities for audience engagement, and have established this industry as the leader in groundbreaking entertainment and high-tech development.”

The report underscores another rising global trend spurred by the video game industry: eSports. Half of the most frequent gamers surveyed say they are familiar with professional video game competitions. Of those respondents, 45 percent follow eSports on social media, 40 percent follow coverage on cable TV, and 38 percent stream coverage live.

User Stories: Martin & dsoft20 - Tips for a Game Jam !

Hi, i’m Martin and together with dsoft20 we developed RE.CO.N.

I’ll share some info on how we developed the game in only two weeks as an entry for the Indie Vault Game Jam.

The theme for the Jam was “evolution”, certainly not a simple theme to develop as it can be interpretated in many ways and after a little briefing we opted to develop the theme as personal growth, borrowing from the Sutherland’s differential association theory.

In brief, for those who don’t know this theory, criminal behavior is learned from other persons trough interaction with them.

Based on this theory we split the game in two half with two different methods of making choice:

1-infancy – as you know infancy is an age where irrationality and impulsivity are more common and you’re more prone to follow others, that’s why there’s no “moral scale” for your choice as the player can be influenced by the blue clothed kid that acts as “guide” to criminal behavior (naturally you can ignore him);

2-adult age – being an adult mean (in most cases) think before act, so the player is forced to think/choose from two actions using the “moral scale”.

In the end it’s a matter of acting before thinking versus thinking before acting.

With that in mind we discussed how to develop the game setting and the gameplay; at first the game was to be set in a standard fantasy world but that option was quickly dropped in favor of an aseptic and geometric sci-fi environment easier to model and texture.

The gameplay also changed from an action/rougelite to a more “simple” adventure game.

Why you might ask? The reason is simple, neither i nor dsoft are pros so we accounted delays and problems beforehand in our time budget.

Those changes in the end were right as problems, delays and unexpected occurred for various reasons.

As for the tools of choice we used Unity 3d as the game engine, Blender 3d and Gimp for the graphics.

As far as actual development the most crucial and difficult task was to create the event system used to trigger everything in the game, from cutscenes to doors openings; this task took most of the time of the development.

Meanwhile dsoft was scripting the game I made the graphics in a ps1 style using dsoft’s psx_retroshader.

The most problematic thing graphic-wise was modeling the environment; in the end I used 3d “tiles” and builded the level by joining them togheter in blender. 

This method has one major drawbacks that is the visual repetition of the assets, that’s why I used vertex paint to add shadows and color to the environments and with the addition of various props I tried, hopefully, to reduce the aforementioned repetition.

Together with dsoft I’ve scripted the story, made the cut scenes and planned the events of the game and put everything in place.

“Slowly” the game was completed and If you have played i hope you enjoyed it, or if you didn’t played yet you can play it here on Indiexpo .

Here some random and obvious tips from this experience:

-  Don’t underestimate your time budget;

-  Don’t be afraid to cut or simplify things;

- As an artist don’t overdo and choose a simple style and, if the game allow it, try to model the environment in a modular way;

- Last but not least have fun :D

- Martin & dsoft20

Is it possible to use the "instant marketing" for a video game?

Is it possible to use the "instant marketing" for a video game?
First of all: what is the instant marketing?

The Instant Marketing (called also Real Time Marketing) is marketing that is based on up to date events. Instead of creating a marketing plan in advance and executing it according to a fixed schedule, real time marketing is creating a strategy focused on current, relevant trends and immediate feedback from customers. The goal of real time marketing is to connect consumers with the product or service that they need now, in the moment.
It's very used on the social network where every day there are news to see and to scroll on own home page.


Have we an example of this kind of marketing in the video game industry?
Yes. Few months ago, during the Oscars, a guy realizes a video game about a topic that was very discussed: "is Leonardo DiCaprio going to win the Oscar ?"
It was very simple : you had to run on the red carpet, jumping and catching the famous little statue.

It was played by everyone. From Pewdiepie to all the YouTube community!
It was viral.

A perfect example of "instant marketing".

And now ? What you can do in this moment ? Rio 2016. The Olympics games at Rio can be a perfect argument to promote your game.
You shouldn't do a full game about it, it's not necessary; but you can create a post on Facebook or in the News of your game where to link your game at this event.

Good luck!

Distribution

Create your Distribution

1. Create contents :

• create a Gameplay about your game;
• create a trailer about your game;
• create funny videos about your game;
• create funny videos with your main characters;
• create funny arts about your game;
• create a meme with your game;
• create a meme with your main characters;
• show (in a short video) how you develop your game;
• show (in a short video) how you draw your main characters;
• show (in a short video) how you work with your team;
• show (in a short video) how you have fun with your team;
• show (in a short video) you and your fans during the events;
• show (in a short video) you and your fans have fun during the events

2. Find a places where you can share your contents. And choose the place where there are already players and gamers.

For this reason on indiexpo we added the possibility to post news about own demo or full game directly on own game page and, in a first moment, they will be seen by own followers and then by new users.

Improve your distribution and you will have new followers and new downloads every day.