Soulash 2 developer: the ratio of one review to 40 sales is quite typical

Polish indie developer Artur Smirovski shared the results of the first month of sales of his Soulash 2 rogue sandbox, as well as the number of subscribers and vishlist. We tell you about his figures.

Soulash 2

On December 4, 2023, the budget title Soulash 2 was released for early access on Steam. The developer himself positions the project as a game with a procedurally generated open world, simulation of history, crafting, construction, trading and the ability to kill everyone.

With a base price tag of $ 17.99 per month, the game was able to sell 4,000 copies (the number of reviews for the game is 105). The number of subscribers to the project is also 4 thousand. At the same time, the number of vishlists at the moment is 30 thousand.

Dynamics of Soulash 2 subscribers

At the time of release in early December, the game had 20.5 thousand vishlists. As for the small number of reviews, as Smirovsky noted in the comments under the post about sales results in X, the ratio of one review to 40 sales is "pretty typical."

Despite the fact that the developer is pleased with the results of early access, he also notes that the first part of Soulash sold 8 thousand copies in the first week of sales in March 2022. He explains the difference in results, among other things, by the fact that the visibility of projects in early access on Steam is two times less than that of full-fledged releases.

In total, Smirovsky spent 4.5 thousand hours (or 563.5 working days) developing the published version of Soulash 2. The scores of the game, by the way, are much higher than those of the first part. If the original has 73% positive reviews, then the sequel has 90%.

By the way, about the first part. In December 2022, the developer also shared the history of its development and sales results on X (at that time — Twitter).

Soulash

The development of Soulash has been going on for five years. However, of course, not all this time. According to the developer, it took 7.5 thousand hours to create the project. As a result, in the first nine months, the game sold 18.5 thousand copies on all platforms (Itch, Steam and GOG).

"Taking into account the deduction of app store shares and taxes," Smirovsky writes. - "I earned $14.95 for every hour I worked on the game."

Fun fact: this is six times more than his PHP developer rate when he first started developing Soulash, but half as much as his team lead rate in web development at the time of the game's release in March 2022.

At the release of Soulash, the game had 2 thousand subscribers and 16 thousand vishlists.

Smirovski didn't spend a dollar on the promotion. I talked about the game on various platforms on my own: Reddit (average response), Twitter (good response), Imgur (no response) and RogueBasin (good response).

Plus, in 2019, the game released a paid alpha on Itch, which was available for purchase for $ 10 until the release of the final version. Before launching alpha, the developer released a free one-hour demo.

By the way, both parts were developed on a self-written engine.