Firstly I'd just like to say that I've enjoyed my time with N++ a great deal and don't regret buying it at all. I was a fan of N+ on 360 and this has been even better.
However, and I hope you take this in the right spirit, I think you've made a mistake with the pricing/amount of content. N+ sold very well on 360 but it was significantly cheaper (800 MS points) and it also had a demo (I think the lack of demos for digital download games has really hurt them this gen along with PS+ and the 'I'll wait til it's free on PS+' attitude but that's for another discussion).
N+ is a game that you really need to play to understand if you have no experience of the series. You need to be able to feel how finely tuned the physics and sense of control are to make sense of it. Screenshots do it no justice. N+ offered that chance while N++ doesn't so far.
The thing is, whilst you may be correct in saying that when you divide the price of N++ by the number of levels then it works out cheaper per level than N+, I don't think that's how consumers think. They just see the headline price and ask whether they think that is worth it or not. Unpalatable as it may be for people who appreciate these kind of games, I suspect the price for N++ will be considered too high by many whereas N+ was priced at the sweet spot. If you'd released fewer levels for a lower price, I reckon you might have fared better, because ultimately over 2000 levels is more than most players will ever dream of seeing bar the most hardcore.
I really wish you the best in recouping the money you invested in the project though. I do think you deserve more success, I'm just not sure the market is there on consoles for 20 dollar indie platformers like this, no matter how much content there is.
These are great points. I love this game, I loved the game on PSP, and I loved the game on 360. I appreciate the style put into it, the vision, the uncompromising design going from platform to platform. It feels like a game that can be played forever, and that's pretty much what I plan on doing. I love getting a few levels in every night. I can see myself playing this in a few years. It's just rock solid, fantastic stuff.
I'm an indie dev with just two small commercial games under my belt but I'd like to weigh in my opinion for what it's worth.
Back in the XBLA and PSP days, people paid attention to game releases. Each one was its own big event, sharing the spotlight with only a few each week on any specific platform (even Steam), and reaping the benefits of not only low competition but having the benefit of all the attention. N+ was a standout. It looked like nothing on the 360, played like nothing on the 360, was priced nicely and was notoriously difficult. I think you had a solid group of fans right from that start. Certainly I was one of them.
Things have changed so drastically with this new market. There's such an over saturation of games that visual styles that were once striking are now all too familiar. The "minimalist" game. The pixel-art game. The endless runner. The local multiplayer-focused game. The survival game. The brutal platformer. There's so much noise that it's almost impossible to overcome it on your own.
Because of that, our expectations coming into any new game are fleeting. What is this game? I check a screenshot, read a description, maybe watch twenty seconds of a trailer. Oh, one of THOSE games. Nah, I'm good. And poof, it's gone. I will never seek it out again, and days later it will be buried under the deluge of new releases.
I cannot stress how important it is for devs to get out of their own way when it comes to capturing customers. Most of us are developers first, and businessmen far second. We can't help it. When I price my next game, I'll probably be thinking of all the hard work I've put into it, all the money I've invested, all the sleepless nights of debugging, the quality and uniqueness and replay value, and other things that the general consumer
won't give two shits about. Then I'll get that out of my head and give it a price where it will actually sell.
That price is probably going to be $10-15 for my game. It provides a good value for customers. It gets pricing out of the way so that the customer can be sold on the game. If I'm already having to start out by convincing the customer that my $20 provides a good value for what they're getting, then I've failed. Customer attention is so much harder to get today that to lose it to a price tag is just all the more heartbreaking. It sucks to have that feeling of "underselling" your game (I think my next game is actually worth $20-25), but this isn't about making the most out of each individual purchase, it's about getting as many purchases as possible, which will only fuel more word of mouth and grow your game even further.
I'm so thankful SteamSpy exists, so that I can see if my assumptions are at least partly correct. Volume, a game by a much celebrated indie dev with a "minimalist" design priced at $20, has debuted to some low numbers if
these numbers are accurate. Axiom Verge, with some amazing reviews and coverage,
hasn't even broken 20k sales yet on Steam.
Some games seem to be doing great at $20. Invisible Inc. has
over ~120k in sales so far. That's because it owns it's $20 pricetag.
It's slick as hell in the presentation, and looks expensive. It's also a "visually simple" game but done in a style that looks like nothing I've seen, and is more akin to higher priced titles with the UI and visual choices. And, of course, it's a great game, as were the others I've mentioned.
N++ wasn't really a victim to low coverage (great media presence on some of the major gaming websites) or to search engine bugs (if anyone wanted to buy your game around the time the search engine was glitched, they would have likely known where to look with all the promotions plastered around the store). It got great coverage with the PLAY promotion. I think this game sadly sufferers from over-development (working on the game and putting money into it past the point of likely return value) and the high price tag, not to mention a whole new market where a visually minimalist design with hardcore platform mechanics isn't quite as unique as it once was, even one done as nearly perfectly as this one.
I do hope you release it on Steam at some point. If there's one thing I've learned from my own game, it's that it can have an absurdly long tail of sales thanks to livestreams and coverage by let's play/YouTubers. A demo would work great. The price is something you'll have to deal with forever. Quite honestly, the next best move is to get this on more platforms or move onto new games, because there's a hellish road to climb to try and convince new audiences on why your game is worth the money. If a Playstation promotional slot, great reviews and solid coverage won't do it, then I honestly don't know where you'd go from here.
N++ is a powerful statement against all the other hardcore minimalist platformers with an insane amount of content, perfected controls, amazing music and visual design, and sheer brilliance of just-one-more-time gameplay. For that, y'all deserve all the praise in the world.
Man, what a tough industry.
