I released The Board is Yours almost 2 weeks ago with 800 WL and I'm reaching 500 units sold.

Work breakdown

This game is the result of over 600 hours of work. I initially planned the game for 300h (so the typical x2), and it's a very complex incremental game based on chess, which explains why most of the time was development. I did art and sound/music as well, and took a bit more time (100+ hours) for marketing, collecting emails, sending emails, keys, (but which basically lead to nothing yet).

Wishlists

Launched the page in december, and got basically no traction at all (as expected). I released a demo on itch which made around 5K plays and got me ~300 wishlists and a few more with the demo release on steam. I doubled this with the Next Fest and ended up with 800 WL at launch.

Launch & 10th review

I knew some people were interested in strategic thinking in the landscape of incremental games, but I wasn't sure it was a good idea to try to mix the two genres, because in the end, the game is definitely very, very, complex. In fact what happened is that for an idle game, the pacing is as good as the player is (quote from a player), which makes the game duration very hard to predict: some people cleared the game in 4 hours, others in 30h... But the result was amazing:

• Almost 500 sales, with 3.5% return rate
• Over 18 reviews, 100% positive meaning that the target audience of the game really loved it (especially when you read some of the in-depth reviews).
• 2h30 of median time, with an average playtime of 7 hours
• Zero bug report, and several good ideas for QoL improvements that are on their way for the first patch.

I hit the 10th review day 5 and got a huge boost of visibility from the discovery queue which went from ~40 per day to 2K. I also managed to have 2 bundles up with games recently launched, which brought a few more sales from incremental world, but I'm still actively looking for other bundles even if I have very little answers yet (it seems like bundles are very important for the long tail...).

An unexpected boost

With the release, and the good rating on a site dedicated to incremental games (incrementalDB), my game went back at the top of this site and I even managed to have a featuring on it which brought a few thousand people to the itch demo which was still up. After a week of visibility, the itch algorithm started pushing my demo a lot (the very same demo I released in february and which made 5K plays at the time), and it brought 10K more plays to the demo, which gives a very good idea of what the full game looks like. So I guess I got some sales from this as well.

What's missing

First, for now, I did not manage to bundle with chess-based games especially, which is too bad because some big title recently launched and some are doing incredibly well (looking at you Gambonanza), but yeah... I'm way too small to bring anything to the table for them so that's understandable (have a great day).

But the worst is that I basically got zero coverage from streamers. I had a few thousands of views (cumulated) for the demo version, but around 60 views (cumulated...) for the full game, despite sending plenty of keys and still working on that side.

It's still early and I have some hope, especially because the reviews and feedback show that I made a game that people definitely enjoy playing. But at the same time, the game is maybe too hard, not flashy enough and as a result not interesting show to people.

What's next

So I guess I can continue to convert on the long tail, with some marketing, bundling, and still hoping to have some streamer coverage, but I feel like I already managed to show the game to the right audience who enjoyed it, and there might not be that many more people left who could enjoy it. It seems unlikely that I will be able to reach the 50 reviews mark at some point, but the current result still feels like a success for a first game (not a commercial success, the projections looks like $2/h for the lifetime revenue of the game). I tried to make my game for a very specific target audience, and they responded extremely positively which is such a relief after so much work.

So now that I know I can make a good game for a specific target audience, all I need to do is choose a wider target audience!

Have fun making games!

Hi,

I made a game around chess movements called "The Board is Yours". It's about optimizing your position to generate the most resources possible.

Everything is based on which squares are controlled by the pieces and how they defend each other, but the thing is that rules become more and more complex as the game progresses, there is a lot of verification to be made, more control with weird constraints and the problem is:

I feel like there is no real heuristic I could use to find the optimal solution.

Obviously, with every new square and new piece on the board, the complexity of the greedy solver (basically testing all possible position) rises up to the point where it becomes too long (I put something like 10 second max), and then I "break" the solver in game.

I would love to know if you think there is something better I can do, like pruning, constraint optimization, etc.. I'm not even sure how to try to tackle this problem in the first place to build a more efficient solver if it is possible... So I guess your knowledge could definitely help me!

Keeping the solver way later in the game could be so useful for players...

Any help of ideas to test would be greatly appreciated.

______________________________

I've been asked more details about how it works so here are the in depth details :

This is not a chess-like 2-player game. no opponent, (no minimax/negamax target if I understand what's behind now correctly)

At one solver call, the game state is fixed:

• Finite board with unlocked (active/reachable) squares
• fixed set of pieces (with fixed set of specific authorized movement)
• fixed rules modifiers applied
• Nothing dynamic in term of "if previous cycle was *** then next cyle will be ***)
• each piece occupy one distinc square
• score function is indeed deterministic

So the best solution is one placement, the optimial placement that provides the best score.

Now that I see the difference with chess engines, here the solver is not trying to solve the whole game progression as it would be the case in chess, it only answers: given current pieces, board and rules, what is the best position (highest production possible right now)

to be clear, there is no win condition inside the solver, the game progression is outside of it. Solver is used everytime the rules changes / with addirtional pieces changes or board squares unlocked.

The current algorithm is:

I precompute the geometry of piece moves (pawn/knight, rook, bishops and queens rays, where they "can" reach" currently, which correspond to the square they control)

Then I build candidate placement (DFS over all assignmenets of pieces, with no 2 pieces on the same cell, and identitcal pieces are grouped to avoid duplicated permutations)

Then I evaluate the whole score in 3 passes because most rules depend on how many square a piece control, and which piece defend this piece as well, so:

• Pass 1: Compute for each piece all controlled cells, and apply production modifiers. Build protector graph as well
• Post pass 1: apply some global modifiers which depend on control, suqare balance, and other perks like connected rooks, bishops on diagonal, etc.
• Pass 2: compute for each piece how much they harvest, and the multiplication factor from protector

Currently, with N=active squares and P= pieces, the search is typically a bit lower than N!/(N-P)! thanks to identitcal pieces which can be grouped.

The evaluation of one position is pretty optimized, but the problem is on the combinatorial explosion in possible placements.

So what I'm using for that is a greedy placement as an initial baseline, and exhaustive DFS with a time budget, and then once the time budget exceed a threshold, I just break it in game.

And I tried to define some basic heuristic (like systematically exploiting perks that seem to be the most powerful), but there are so many inteactions: pieces produces on squares and share their production, squares themselves have modifier, pieces protect each other, with some upgrades that may affect how each piece protect each other, and other rules add conditional boost (multipliers based on distance between pieces, based on number of cells currently controlled, etc). This is where making a positional heuristic seem so hard I gave up on that point, but I'm wondering if there are methods to start designing something properly.

Hey, I just release my game "The Board is Yours" on Steam. It's a puzzling incremental game based on the legend of the invention of chess (even if there is no need to actually know about chess to play this game).

The game is about strategic positioning and upgrade mechanics, where you have to buy squares, unlock upgrades, exploit new rules and chain synergies through relationships between pieces on the board.

It's priced fairly low ($2 / 2€) and depending on your playstyle, and how much you like optimizing your position, it can take 4 hours to finish, or way (way) more...

I know my game is not made for a broad audience, but I think many people here might enjoy it. There is also a demo (although it's a bit outdated compared to the full release).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4238740/The_Board_is_Yours/

(And it's also fully playable on Steam Deck)

Strategic thinkers and incremental lovers: It is now time to assemble!

I just released my own take on the legend of the invention of chess. Don't hesitate if it sounds interesting to you, the description should be precise enough for you to know if you could enjoy it or not...

I also hope it will feel pretty unique in the current landscape of incremental games.

What you can expect:

• Deep and complex mechanics with regular prestige and new rules to exploit constantly
• At the very least, 5 hours of gameplay (up to... billions of years if you are not really into optimization), between upgrades, prestige and better positioning.
• 32 Achievements
• A small price, around $2 / 2€

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4238740/The_Board_is_Yours/

And no: you don't need to know how to play chess to play this game

Feel free to provide any feedback, or if you just enjoy it, please don't hesitate to leave a review, it would be immensely helpful.

Oh, and if you finished the demo version on itch or steam, you can have a quick start in game, but only if you manage to find the code...

It's a complex incremental game about the legend of the invention of chess.

I managed to gather 750 WL mostly from demo plays and Next Fest. I had almost no luck with influencers because my game is very niche and complex, and not really flashy and pretty looking. However some people seemed to really enjoy the concept and the complexity, so I made sure to finish a game that I'm proud of, and I'll be happy with the result, even if it will not be a commercial success.

Have fun playing and making games!