It's been 5 weeks since "Makinavaja" it's been out, available to play on the Yoyo games website.
So far has had 322 plays, which is a very modest number in absolute terms, but on a personal level it has been my most succesful project. I achieved what I set ou to do in the first place which was to make the game known to the fans of the comic book and to get it published on the magazine that originally printed the comic book, called "El Jueves".
Regarding the feedback I've got, from the magazine itself, they were very appreciative of the work, and inmediately offered to promote the game. That was very important for me as if the game wasnt up to scratch they could have ignored me or even asked me to not use the comic book image.
Thanks to this promotion I achieved the majority of players. Unfortunately, a few of them complained about being unable to play the game, as the PLAY NOW (play from the browser) option from Yoyo games doesnt seem to work very well in a number of browsers. This lead to someone accusing me of being a trick from Yoyo games and to stay clear of the game.
Everyone had the chance to directly download the game and try it, but it's an option a bit hidden in the website, and it wouldnt surprise me that the number of players would have been much bigger if everyone could have played from the browser.
I did some promotion as well via forums, including Game Maker related and other general game forums. Game Maker Games forums were definitely more helpful regarding testing the game, it just looks more serious than the Yoyo games forums. In terms of numbers of people actually playing the game, it's hard to guess, but I imagine the more active you become in the forums, the more people will help you and try the game. Portal Game Over forums were also active in offering suggestions of how to improve it.
Finally, I did some promotion via twitter, and I was surprised how effective this turn out to be. I've only been using twitter for a few months now, and a basically I follow some spanish bloggers and podcasters. Having them to try the game and give some feedback was very rewarding, as I consider them experts on this field, and they were kind enough to tweet back. Also a professional Game Designer, Luis Rodero (Amnesia), tried the game and gave some feedback, so definitely this was an incentive for me to keep working in some more games in the future.
I know that all of this is very small fish to fry for all the professional people reading and writing in Gamasutra, but I thought it could be more interesting for other people like me, that read Gamasutra on a regular basis and gets inspiration from it, but can't dedicate many hours in the month to game creation.