In 2024, PandaBee released their tricky platformer tilt frog. Despite great echo from content creators, CEO Julien Schillinger says the game was a flop - and brings important learnings, data and numbers to GamesMarkt in a guest postmortem.
In 2024 a new game hit the digital steam storefront: tilt frog. A game about frogs and their natural habit to fall into wells. A game that answers, how amphibs would move only using their tongue. A game about heights and lows – both for the players as well as the developers at PandaBee Studios.We had big plans for our self-published game, but it didn’t go as expected.
On 11/11/2024 we released our first non-client, all self-orchestrated Indie Game.
tilt frog was supposed to be a Rage Game that gives streamers a hard but joyful time. A frog, a long physics-based tongue and 3000m to go - Up or Down!
We had very clear goals for the game at the start:
tilt frog was as much of our love child as it could be - between games and gamification for clients. So while we did work around six months on tilt frog, it was nowhere near one continuous development phase. Our responsibilities wouldn't allow that.
Furthermore, how else could it be, we did fund the development entirely ourselves. No outside funding. How much you ask? More on that later.
The development was wild. Between other projects and an art style that changed several times, development was not easy. Levels being designed, levels were tested then scrapped - same with game art. Even some mechanics had to go as it didn't go with our core design intent: It's all about the frog and the players usage of them. No world manipulating them.
Pascal Wagner
One of the biggest changes: we scrapped tiles and exchanged them for spriteshapes - We should've done that earlier. Spriteshapes gave us freedom and helped us achieve the art style we wanted, as they felt easier to "use and make aesthetic".
I uploaded over 100 TikToks (etc.) to the short form content videos. Tried my luck with r/gaming and reached out to over 2000 Content Creators using Pixel Maniac's fantastic tool. Of course, with gifs, keys, USP - you name it.
We made a few press releases and a fantastic steam page. We were part of several Fests & of course Next Fest.
Indies often struggle with Press and Marketing.
When we started with tilt frog we had a very clear goal: Upload to social media channels regularly and grow an audience there. In Particular: 1000+ followers on TikTok.
On our way towards this goal, we tried many strategies.
And what worked best:
What worked great for us was having the people watching our content name things. People commented like crazy, with names, animals and other ideas.
Going for 1-2 Uploads a week, between 10/2023 to 11/2024 we build over 2k followers, over 10k likes and over 50k views.
During the development of tilt frog we were trapped in the perception that regular media has so little effect, it would not seem worth the effort. Part of the problem in our perception was the game. It was a high risk, high reward game – a rage game that may seem a little too much like a usual platformer. Nothing that news outlets would probably care about, until we can bring in some major audience ourselves.
So realistically, all we did regarding press, was:
What we didn’t do were a proper outreach with exclusives such as trailers, localization of the material or even external PR support. For our next title we will do proper outreach for sure though!
Pascal Wagner
Pixel Maniacs Contacts tool. This tool was a real game changer for us. We were able to filter for all streamers who played all (VIP), 2 or more (relevant) or 1 rage game(s).
With this powerful tool in hand we:
In total we had over 90 streamers and a hand full of smaller YouTubers play the game and every one of them was a big joy to watch.
We had no marketing budget beyond 2k for a Key Art. None. We didn’t even decide to pay a reasonably sized YouTuber few hundred bucks for a video, as money is always tight. Is this truth fancy? No, but it’s the truth and I enjoy honesty.
We got banned twice on r/gaming. Enough said.
tilt frog released with an estimated 1,600 Wishlists which came from different festivals and showcases, streamers and our socials. Is that nearly enough for hitting Popular Upcoming or New & Trending? No - but tilt frog was complete and it's time had come.
We decided that tilt frog shall come out and that it's nature as a rage game has it's biggest leverage in streamers, which we put our hope in.
The last weeks before release were intense as usual, with bugfixing, lot's of testing and lot's of emails.
The game released on 11/11/2024 at 9,99 € and with a 10% release discount.
We had about 30 streamers play it with audiences up to 2k average viewers. Every of those streams was extremely entertaining and viewers clearly enjoyed watching the game! But day one, week one and sales that seemed related to streams were little. In the first 2 weeks we sold around 100 copies.
Over the coming weeks and months streamers picked up the game once or even played through it and each time was a shimmer of hope, that it would hit the typical "rage game for entertainment" streamers - but it didn't.
A magical moment after launch was when PhunkRoyal, a big German streamer, picked up the game for the second time - after playing the demo before. His entertainment style and the game matched perfectly and chat had a great time. So much even, that some of the chat members still quote "tuuut!" when Phunk plays other rage games - a sound that would play when players fell too far in tilt frog. This stream triggered a bigger sales spike of ~150 sales.
Numbers aside, as fun as the streams were and I really watched a lot of them - we were pretty down. Seeing a game fail that is liked by rage game players we reached but just wouldn't click with the broader public, looking at numbers not rising, knowing what went into it hurt. Of course we checked daily if something happened. And of course we got disappointed each day. I think many developers can relate.
In total the game sold 269 units and has made an net revenue of $1872,00.
The game was fully self-financed and self published. Luckily we did and do not depend on the success of tilt frog, heh!
Nowadays, over one year later, we're just happy we made tilt frog. It hit our internal goals of releasing a good quality game, which is genuinely fun. We had a blast with the people who started speedrunning, streaming or watching our content online.
Yes, it failed. And we do definitely have ideas, which factors contributed most. But we learned a ton and can say that we're proud of what we made and where PandaBee is headed towards nowadays.
No regrets!
