In a few days, I believe my teammate will present our game, and we will provide feedback. However, are there any analytics included? Can it tell us how many people saw it? Additionally, I think the page is too cyber; I would be happier with a different page that is less AI-prepared and more esthetically pleasing 🙊
Looking forward to hearing what your teammate thinks once they’ve had a look!
About analytics yes, page views are tracked, so I can tell you how many people have seen your game’s page, along with other traffic data.
On the design fair feedback and I’d rather hear it straight than not at all. Worth knowing that I’m actually a senior backend engineer, not UI/UX, so I’ve been doing the design myself, which is probably part of what you’re picking up on. I’ve been getting inspiration from a bunch of places along the way from Dribble, anime sites, other well-known platforms. The hero artwork on game pages, for example, came from that kind of research, and I’ve been constantly tweaking things as I find new references. So different parts of the UI end up pulling from different places, which might be why it reads as a bit patchwork or “AI-prepared” rather than one cohesive look. Truth is the design took many changes to look better and specific changes not AI decisioned but again UI/UX is not my forte :) sry
I do want to get real UI/UX help on this, it’s hard to prioritize this right now. In the meantime I’m actually about to make a Mobbin account a UI/UX person recommended it for finding better references. I also get feedback from other devs and users or friends along the way, on both design and feature changes, and a lot of what’s shipped has come out of exactly that kind of back and forth. If you’ve got specific examples of what’s throwing it off for you, or pages/sites you think do it better, I’d genuinely like to hear them. I want to improve this, and outside eyes catch things I can’t see anymore after staring at it for too long.
A couple of things worth knowing there are actually two themes on the site, a toggle near the top of the page. The default neon/synthwave one you’re seeing, and a calmer “Midnight” theme that drops most of the neon styling, which might be closer to your taste. The cyber look itself was intentional, actually. It’s meant as a nod to 80s arcade aesthetics, not something that just came out AI-generated. I was going for that honestly it wasn’t AI but wanted something different and retro and esthetically good.
I understand the direction you were going for with the cyber/retro style. Personally, I think the different visual references make the theme feel a little less cohesive than I would prefer, so it’s probably not quite my style. But I can definitely see the idea behind it!
We’ve just uploaded our game to the platform, and my friend will be using it and giving us some feedback on the overall experience. Our game doesn't show up when we search for it right now, but I assume that’s something that can be fixed. I’ll also let you know if we notice anything that could be improved from a user’s perspective.
Additionally, as developers, we should make it simple for me to observe the statistics advancements in my game; many accounts should be added, just like in Itch.io. Because I use my own account to browse rather than the studio's account.
That’s an excellent point, and a fair one and I’ve already added it as a ticket.
It’s not a small feature under the hood, though, so it’ll take some time. There’s real business logic behind it for eg collaborator confirmation needs to work properly (the invited person has to actually consent and verify before getting access, not just get added), and then it needs to talk to the analytics side to actually pull and show stats for that specific game per collaborator. On top of that, there are financial constraints since everything has a cost, and this is the kind of feature I need to budget for rather than just bolt on.
Worth remembering too that even itch.io didn’t have this from day one or maybe first year of development. it’s the kind of feature that comes once a platform has enough scale to justify it. Software development is a constant, ongoing process, not something that ships complete after some time.
Right now the priority is getting more devs and more traction on the platform, but this is definitely something I want to add along the way as things grow. It’s a “when” actually and not an “if” for me.
Thanks again for raising these valid points.
Totally fair, appreciate you being straight about it rather than just being polite.
Your game appears the moment it’s approved. After submission I check it for quality (valid info, no offensive material) that kind of thing. Once approved, it goes into the library and the search index, and gets placed based on similarity to other games, moods, categories(free games) and etc so it’s discoverable that way too. Since its a newly added game also, it goes to the top of all games because the newly added first is the default filter in all games. There’s also a dedicated Dev Drops section on the Discover page for visibility. So the fact that it’s not showing up yet is expected. It appears once I’ve reviewed and approved it. Which I already did as we speak btw.
Another example of how discoverability works once it’s live is if you go to Mood → Cozy, your game is there right now it’s near the end of the list since I sort by rating. I noticed your game is free, and there’s also a free filter, so if someone goes to Cozy and filters to free games only, the list narrows down to just your game and one other. I’m still investigating better ways to handle filtering and ordering. It’s fairly simple right now because I wanted the core functionality out there for anyone who wants to use it, but it needs more thought and feedback to get it right. The goal also from gamers perspective is to help players (myself included) to find exactly what they want to play right now, and actually narrow the options down instead of scrolling forever. This way I believe as well helps indie devs for their game to be discovered and find its players.
I’m hoping to get more indie dev uploads so I can figure out how to give them more visibility on the homepage too, still thinking through the best way to do that you know looking at other platforms, taking feedback, iterating. The Dev Drops section, for what it’s worth, actually came from a suggestion by another indie dev, I liked the idea and built it.
Definitely need improvements on how search results are presented, and design more broadly, as you said. I keep a Jira board with tickets for all of this so I can actually track it rather than lose it in my head. I’m approaching this the way I used to approach things professionally and it just takes time and a lot of iteration to shape a platform into something genuinely good, and I’m constantly working on it because I like the development side of it and I like indie games.
Really appreciate what you’re doing here you know, feedback like this is exactly what I need. What I think makes the real difference for a platform like this is users and devs actually taking the time to give feedback, and that’s hard to come by, especially for indie devs. So it means a lot.
Looking forward to hearing what you and your friend notice once you’ve both spent some time with it. And happy to share analytics with you as things develop. I’ll be straightforward about where the numbers stand, good or not.
Of course! And thank you for being so open about everything! 🙌🏼
I totally get that this sort of thing takes time, especially when there is real business logic, analytics, consent and costs involved. I liked that you’re taking the time to do it right rather than rushing to tick a box.
And honestly, it's great to hear it's a “when” and not a “if.” 😄 We’ll continue to use the platform and give feedback as we go. We want to help, too, from our side. Our game launch is going to be shared on LinkedIn with our connections and we are in an Indie Game Developer group where we will share it as well. Hopefully we can help you get some more devs and players your way.
Really looking forward to seeing where the platform goes. Keep building, keep iterating — we’ll be following along and supporting it!
Hi evangelos! First I'd like to thank you for the quick review of our game. Even though you wrote that "it might take few days to be reviewed", it was a matter of hours. ☺️
I just have one thing I noticed that I'd like to point out. In the second stage of submitting the game- the one where we fill in all the game's details - I got a little bit confused over the right dimensions for the cover image. It was written that it's recommended to be 616 x 353 (16:9 ratio) if I remember correctly, however when I put an image of such dimensions and see the preview of the page I find the cover image in 9:16 ratio not 16:9 so I went with what I found suitable in the preview. Yet, when the game got released I took a look at how it looks from my phone and saw that the cover images are displayed in 16:9 (unlike the 9:16 desktop view from laptop).
Here's how it looked:
By the way Linkedin has definitely a lot of indie devs, there's even a group there that has almost 150K member named "Indie Games Developer". We'll be posting about your platform, but like Senna said doing your own linkedin page could definitely help more. If you ever consider doing it we'd be happy to connect there too! You'll find our linkedin links in our profiles if you ever want to reach out. 😇
Hey Belle Thank you for taking the time to write this up. It was one of the most useful pieces of feedback I’ve had so far, and it led to real fixes.
You were right that the numbers didn’t add up. The upload form recommended 616×353 (16:9), but the “Preview Game Page” showed your cover in a portrait shape, and on the live site the shape changed again depending on the screen. When I traced it, I found two separate problems. The upload guidance was wrong for the shape the site actually uses, and the game cards were sizing covers by a fixed height and a flexible width. That’s why the same cover looked almost square on a laptop and stretched into a wide landscape on a phone.
Here’s what I changed:
One shape everywhere covers are now a fixed portrait 3:4 in the game cards, on the game page, and in the upload form preview, on every screen size. What you see in the preview is what you get on the live site.
Better upload guidance: the Cover Image field now says it’s your portrait box art, with a recommended size of 900×1200px (3:4), at least 800px wide.
A better mobile layout: on phones the cards took up almost a whole screen each. Games now show two side by side, and I trimmed the cards so the cover and title come first.
Responsiveness is trickier than it looks, because the same image has to work on a phone, a tablet and a big monitor. I’ll be honest. I already knew the mobile experience wasn’t where it should be, and I’d been struggling with how to make it properly responsive. Your report gave me a concrete case to trace, and that was the opportunity I needed to fix mobile and polish the game cards.
Since you adjusted your cover to what you saw in the preview, it should look right now, but if anything seems off, let me know and I’ll help.
Also, thank you for offering to post about the platform. It means a lot. I’ll be happy to return the favor and help promote your game as well however I can.
I will definitely make a LinkedIn page for the platform and I will aim for tomorrow and we will definitely connect there as well.
P.S. For any bugs or small issues you notice from now on, feel free to also post them in the #issues channel on my Discord, since that keeps them organized and I can follow up quickly. But if it’s easier to just message me here, that’s totally fine too. I’ll take feedback wherever it comes from.
