Longer look at the Steam Next Fest results

Hello everyone,

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With the February installment of Steam Next Fest coming to a close, I wanted to write about how the festival went, what we gathered, learned, and what we are looking to improve.

The numbers

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Let’s first talk about the numbers: over 2000 players got the demo.
The most concurrent players was 10.
The wishlist count is a little bit over 800.
And the median time played is 15 minutes.

Thoughts

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Now, with all of that out of the way, I wanted to share my thoughts about each one.

We are super happy that so many of you decided to grab the demo and play it. People leaving suggestions and bug reports helped us a lot.

2000 players is definitely less than we expected, but we saw that there are some things that need to be fixed before the game can really thrive.

Maybe the number one thing is tutorials?

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My thinking process was that the game was straightforward enough for players to understand it without me explicitly pointing out what needs to be done and how.

I feel like every mechanic, other than the trimmer (it has specific rules, like you can only use it on pavements), was pretty much self-explanatory. On the laptop, to finish the mission, it clearly states that you need a combination of both mowing and leaf blowing.

I think we need to improve the UI part and not overcomplicate the game by adding huge tutorials, but a small description of how the game works would be good enough.

Intuitivity

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The median time is about what I expected, maybe a little less. I guess when people play the first map, the lack of intuitiveness in the UI and how you make upgrades was an issue for some players.

To mitigate that, I will make the shopping and upgrading more straightforward and easier.

And now for the wishlist count. 800 players is a lot. Hopefully those who did wishlist feel like they are going to get the game they expect, and that is my ultimate goal: to fulfill expectations.

Release date

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While the number is lower than I expected and than I want, I don’t want to focus on dragging the development out more than it already is.

That’s why I decided to announce the release date of the game: 9th of April 2026.

(but I will publish another article just for that!)

Overall, a very good Steam Next Fest. Now I need to go back to developing the rest of the game and fulfill those expectations 😊