So recently I’ve rediscovered this game and have been ruthlessly shilling it to my group of friends to try and get them to play it with a middling amount of success. It seems really hard to get some people to take the leap on a game in a genre they’ve never heard of, especially at the current price point when the game is in early access.
I also would prefer not to use shadier methods of acquiring the game like key resellers so as to support the devs as much as possible. This is a great game and is always more fun with friends, so I was hoping it would be a little easier to get people involved. Here are my ideas to make it a bit easier to be like “Hey, come check this out!”
More frequent sales
Free Weekends once in a while!
Maybe selling the game in two or four packs? Or even just giving a gift copy to people who already own it to send to a friend?
A timed demo. Something like a 60min-2hr demo of the game would be great to introduce people to TU and let them figure out if it is for them.
Over the years I have tried to get my friends to revisit the game. and from what I’ve observed from their criticisms/wishes, I think some really good updates to consider would be stuff like Mutators, more game worlds and deeper condo interactivity/friend condo stuff.
Some people are simply not that interested in the social aspect too much and just treat it as a “play minigames with friends” type of game, so I think updates like that could help in that aspect.
We participate in various seasonal sales, but we can’t put the game on sale all the time. Right now we’re on sale at the Humble Store.
Free weekends is something we’ve discussed, but it’s risky for early access games, if there’s new features that have bugs - it could ruin the entire experience for people.
As mentioned by others, Valve doesn’t allow developers to do two/four packs anymore.
Unfortunately a timed demo would be really hard for our moderation team, people would abuse it to avoid bans, and there is no system in place for such a demo.
We’ve been tackling interest in the game by working on features that the community most wants. Arcade Phase 2, Casino Phase 2, Mutators, additional Game Worlds, and Condo IO are the big priorities right now. Along with polishing existing games such as Laser Tag to make it more enjoyable and unique, and resolving bugs and crashes.
Ah, thanks for letting me know about the humble store sale! Thank you also for the response, I understand now the hesitance for a free weekend (though in my opinion TU is already better than 90% of full release games these days). Keep up the good work.