u/buggydarwin

Game Title: Subvert the Panopticon

Playable Link: https://whalesnail21.itch.io/subvert-the-panopticon

Platform: Web

Description: 

• Navigate your prison while avoiding detection by your AI warden
• Input a sequence of characters by going from room to room to override the prison's security and escape
• The warden doesn't know who you are or what you're trying to do. It only apprehends prisoners that are deviating from the group. Copy the other prisoners' mannerisms to blend in when the warden is watching. Stop when they stop, and go when they go.
• Don't take too long! The clock is ticking and when it reaches 0, the warden will have total control of the facility and apprehend you.
• In order to succeed, you need to balance defying the group when the warden isn't watching and blending in when it is as well as keep track of the prison's layout.
• 2 difficulties, 2 endings

Free to Play Status:

• [x] Free to play
• [ ] Demo/Key available
• [ ] Paid (Allowed only on Tuesdays with [TT] in the title)

Involvement: Solo developer. I have a lot of ideas on where to take this game in the future; the current build is maybe 16% - 25% to where I want it to be gameplay-wise, including more complicated prisoner behaviors and overlapping mechanics.

I released my game from early access a little under 3 weeks ago. With that came a price increase from free to $2. I expected there to be a drop in conversion rate after the price increase, but not to this degree.

Week before release:

25,411 visits with 13,923 "purchases" and 14 wishlists

Week after release:

2,679 visits with 0 purchases and 11 wishlists

Is this typical?

I'm not so concerned about the drop in traffic. It happened around the time that I announced the game was leaving EA with an actual price tag, so I think people were pushed to grab it for free while they still could. Also somebody else made a reasonably popular post on Reddit advertising my game as free.

I'm more concerned about the visitor-to-action conversion rate. I understand that the difference between free and $2 is MASSIVE (few people will buy a game for $2 because they MIGHT play it later) but I thought that even a .5% conversion rate would be a conservative estimate. And since then, I've been getting about 1,000 visits / week with very minimal sales. Is there something wrong with my store page? Any advice would help!

Trailer for my game after a month of work

You are trying to escape a prison while hiding from an AI warden. You can hide by avoiding the warden's sight or by mimicking the other prisoners.

What do you all think?

https://whalesnail21.itch.io/subvert-the-panopticon

I originally started making my game with a very simple industrial color scheme, and started gradually adding extra color to make it a little prettier.

Right now, I'm wanting to keep an ultimately very subdued theme, but have been able to add some color to give focus to the player character, hazards, objectives and secrets with some slight attention to small accents. I think I might work on adding some color to the UI as well. What do you think? Any other suggestions?