There's a lot more where those came from too if you browse through the Point & Click sludge:
Cyberpunk Adventure with crazy art that just came out two days ago and has no reviews so far:
Thanks for the shoutout! (This is the creator of Neofeud) I have to agree that the 'Great Flood' of games has meant a bigger denominator splitting up the attention provided to each adventure game. Being a one-person developer myself, that has proved incredibly challenging. I like to joke that simply being a fiction writer is essentially a public display of delusional schizophrenia, in that you're inventing grand lies for hundreds of pages, flipping between personalities (characters) all day long, and then people shell out cash for your recorded insanity. Being a solo indie dev where you're jumping between writer, artist, programmer, musician all day is like that, but magnitudes worse!
But the hardest part, for me at least, has been the business and marketing hat. I literally spent eight hours or more every day for the last two months sending out press requests to over 1,000 websites, youtubers, streamers, bloggers, etc. as well as posting to social media, sites, etc.. A lot of the indie press' response has been, "We have a thousand indie games on our plate right now! But we'd love to get to you!" but there have been some articles such as
this one on IndieGames.com.
Unfortunately, I believe that article there was the biggest media splash Neofeud has had yet. I have been throwing the kitchen sink and everything short of a demonic ritual sacrifice to get RPS to cover my game, and after several pitch attempts I doubt even WannaCry ransomeware could help me get a signal boost from PC Gamer. And it's fine. I understand.
Add to this the scourge on the indie and small-scale game landscape that is asset flipping, which has caused some players to be turned off to the entire Unity *engine*, let alone taking a chance on some small, as-yet-unknown indie point-and-click-adventure, and it's just made the already tough nut of a sustainable adventure game business an almost adamantium shell.
I absolutely have hope for the adventure game genre, though. I had essentially given up on not only game development, but games generally, around 2013. I had worked for a couple mobile game companies, and a retired Microsoft executive who moved to Hawaii to start a game company. (I'm from Hawaii -- fun fact, unlike most mid-life crises which involve splurging on Lambos, when Silicon Valley types see a grey hair, they move to Hawaii and start a game company.) Unfortunately, making The Next Flappy Bird, or working on the next Texas Hold'em, where the biggest creative input we had was, "Do you think Suicide Jack's knife would look better in the left ear, this version?" along with the backstabbing and layoffs that came when the LA big fish came down and hostile mergerized the place put me off game dev for a long time.
But then, sometime around 2013, having resigned to teaching*, office drudgery, and possibly aspiring to be a programmer of high-frequency trading algorithms for Goldman Sachs or automating away blue-collar jobs to inspire Trump voters, I played a game called Primordia. It blew my frickin' mind open. And then I read that it was created essentially 'on the side' by three guys, and the bits of neural tissue and skull that was left of my mind, also exploded. I said, "You know what? If three guys can do this in their spare time, I bet one guy/gal could do it all if they set their mind to it." So I went down to part-time at the dayjob(s), and cut a deal with my wife to give me a good year and a half to take one good shot at a commercial indie game company, and got to working 12 hours a day. As an aside, my #1 tip for any aspiring indie developer is to marry a Canadian, because anyone else will divorce your sorry ass when you tell them you're going to go make video games for a living.
I will say, hands down, the best games I have played in the last two decades have come from teams of ten or less, and often one. All the Wadjet Eye titles, Primordia. I don't know how many were on West of Loating exactly, but I'm guessing not a lot. This is my opinion, of course, and though I actually started out in the 3D FPS and 'immersive sim' space (my biggest project before Neofeud was a Deus Ex 1 mod called Terminus Machina), I am now a die-hard adventure lover.
It has been absolutely a tough gig, trying to get visibility as a small fish, but you know what? I wouldn't trade indie dev for ten million dollars and tech lead at any AAA studio or almost any other job. I've worked in corporate / government monstrosities -- I actually made an entire game about it called Neofeud, hah! -- and I can tell you, even just having made the rent money** with revenue thus far from Neofeud, I have never been happier in my life. I have met the most amazing, dedicated, passionate people in the adventure game and indie world. I feel constantly supported and loved, rather than soul-destroyed and filled with self-loathing, that I was at the former places. I would be happy to make enough from gamedev to pay for a roof, food, and maybe get some brakepads for my squeaing 1994 Toyota, but all the rest of the money I would be throwing back into paying other creative and passionate folks to join me in a small team, and funding other indie projects.
Because I don't want to live in a world that is filled only with toxic military-industrial complex propaganda FPS's, asset flips, infotainment, 50 Shades of Grey, et. al..
There are so, so, so many games coming out right now, and it's indietopia... and it's also a nightmare to sort through. Steam doing away with Greenlight and adding Direct was a good move. But ultimately I feel it's up to these global networks of passionate creators and fans to boost the signals of these countless hidden gems. They are out there, I swear, so many of them, it is just a matter of finding*** them and helping them be found.
I am absolutely hopeful.
*Teaching has been immensely rewarding, and I continue to do it. Doubly so, as I was teaching 'at-risk' youth in the inner-city where I lived, who really needed it. I do still continue to teach, I help home-school my two kids along with Mrs. Silver Spook, and provide a STEM / robotics education guru of sorts to families in the community where I live. If anyone is considering it, it is highly, highly recommended.
**I am also freelance writing on the side to make a little extra cash right now, and trying to grow some food on our little homestead out here!
***To that effect: immediately go and check out
The Journey Down 3!