Game Dev Podcast | Coffee with Butterscotch

[Ep556] How to succeed on Mobile as an indie: Our "How Many Dudes?" strategy

·46 min·4 clips

Why Butterscotch Shenanigans says launching a free demo on mobile could mean 'literally everybody who would play it will have played it by the time we launch'.

The episode opens with the hosts, Seth, Adam, and Sam, introducing episode 556 of Coffee with Butterscotch on January 16, 2020. They state the topic: discussing the near-future plans for 'How Many Dudes?' and their mobile strategy. They mention an upcoming article by Simon Carless at Game Discover Co. about the game trending during the Steam winter sale. The hosts then review the current status of the 'How Many Dudes?' demo on Steam, noting it's generating about 3,000 wishlists per day from the discovery queue, which is double the traffic they saw with Crashlands 2. They discuss the upcoming demo update planned for January 23rd, which will add eight new languages, balance updates, reworked dudes, and a new boss fight. The conversation shifts to launch strategy, targeting end of June for Steam, Google Play, and the App Store, with potential console ports considered. The core of the episode focuses on mobile strategy. The hosts explain that mobile stores are culturally and structurally different from Steam, designed for free games with in-app purchases rather than upfront premium sales. They recount past experiences where making a game free led to a 1000x increase in players compared to a $1 price. They discuss the poor performance of Crashlands 2 on mobile at launch (about 10% of Steam) and how subscription services like Google Play Pass made it worthwhile. The team explores four mobile strategy options: 1) Premium with hope for subscription services, 2) Free-to-try with a single in-app purchase (like Loop Hero), 3) Separate free demo and premium app (like Steam, but unsupported on mobile), and 4) Free-to-play version with monetization alongside a premium version (like Brotato or Vampire Survivors). They decide against the premium-only model due to fighting store systems. They also reject having a separate demo on mobile before launch because mobile stores don't support the demo-to-full-game pipeline like Steam does, risking that if the free demo takes off, they can't monetize that playtime later via subscriptions. The hosts settle on a free-to-try model with an in-app purchase unlock for the full game, likely at launch, not pre-launch. They debate whether the unlock should be a single purchase or piecemeal dude packs, noting balance complications with piecemeal content. They also discuss abandoning their cross-platform cloud syncing service, Rumpus, due to platform restrictions and low cross-platform usage. The episode concludes with reflections on how game design shape influences market success, citing the example of Balatro's demo strategy, and a reminder to check out the 'How Many Dudes?' demo on Steam.

As heard by us

A practical, candid look at how demos, pricing, and subscriptions shape an indie mobile strategy.

Coffee with Butterscotch frames How Many Dudes as a practical indie-business case: how a Steam demo can build awareness, bring in player feedback, and still preserve some launch-day surprise.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

See how Butterscotch turns the How Many Dudes Steam demo into a public mobile strategy conversation without assuming the whole Steam audience has already played it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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