I spent much more time on this activity than I would like to admit. So much fun!

I’m analysing games following these criteria:

Built mainly by only one person;
Built-in a small amount of time (maximum of 18 months of development);
Small scope (I’m considering around 5 hours of gameplay);
I’m not looking at outliers (so no Braid, Stewdew Valley, etc.)

Successful: Bunny park

Bunny Park is an indie game about simulating a park for bunnies (auto-explanatory title). It was created by Elloise Laroche.

Eloise worked is a full-time indie game developer. In her second work, and she took around six weeks to develop it. She also keeps growing a community around her work, streaming the creation process using Twitch.

Her game generated around U$ 30K after one year of release by her post (elliebeanzz, 2021).

Store data

From steamdb: (Bunny Park · AppID: 1208600, no date)

972 followers

#7369 in top sellers

329 positive reviews

28 negative reviews

92.16% positive reviews

Revenue estimation besides the reported

GROSS REVENUE: $88,682.00

VAT: $17,736.00

RETURNS: $5,676.00

ADJ. REGIONAL PRICING: $13,054.00

DISCOUNTS: $10,443.00

STEAM CUT: $12,532.00

NET REVENUE: $29,241.00

The mistakes identified:

It is not a mistake, but the difficulty in marketing such a small project was particularly challenging.

Things that went well:

Small scope
Focus on the appealing and niche
Keep strict control over the time used

Failure: Fuzz Force: Spook Squad

Fuzz Force (solo developer) developed Spook Squad(Fuzz Force: Spook Squad | Home | Video Game, no date) for eighteen months which started in December of 2019 and launched in 2021 June. It is a mesh of roguelike and deck builder genres with cute aesthetics.

The author reported a revenue total of U$ 5k in his postmortem post on Reddit. (FuzzForce, 2021).

Store data

From (Fuzz Force: Spook Squad · AppID: 1422190, no date)

605 followers

#5768 in top sellers

35 positive reviews

One negative review

97.22% positive reviews

Revenue estimation besides the reported

Using (Steam Revenue Calculator, no date)

GROSS REVENUE: $17,585.00

VAT: $3,517.00

RETURNS :$1,125.00

ADJ. REGIONAL PRICING: $2,588.00

DISCOUNTS: $2,071.00

STEAM CUT: $2,485.00

NET REVENUE: $5,798.00

The mistakes identified:

Playtesting and polishing: It takes longer than you think.
Too much time was spent working on different ideas besides testing an actual prototype.

Things that went well:

Take into consideration the related events (Roguelike Celebration Steam Sale or Halloween)
The wishlist number spiked at week two after the launch.

Other conclusions:

It’s easier to improve an existing game than start from scratch, after all.
The spike on the wishlist count changed my perspective on the simulations, like the chart built by GameDiscoverCo. I just simulated the gains using the wishlist count at the wee one:

1,285	Wishlists on Steam launch.
64	Sales in Day 1.
257	Sales in Week 1.
19	Average cost of game
4,883	Gross on Steam in Week 1
$2,857	Net on Steam in Week 1
$8,570	Net on Steam in Year 1
$7,011	Net on console to end of Year 1
$15,581	Net on Steam and console to end of Year 1.
$15,711	Net on Steam to end of Year 3
$12,853	Net on console to end of Year 3
$28,564	Net on Steam and console to end of Year 3.

And compared at the week two after the spike:

2,599	Wishlists on Steam launch.
130	Sales in Day 1.
520	Sales in Week 1.
19	Average cost of game
9,876	Gross on Steam in Week 1
$5,778	Net on Steam in Week 1
$17,333	Net on Steam in Year 1
$14,180	Net on console to end of Year 1
$31,513	Net on Steam and console to end of Year 1.
$31,777	Net on Steam to end of Year 3
$25,996	Net on console to end of Year 3
$57,773	Net on Steam and console to end of Year 3.