Sales Figures for Bik - A retro point and click adventure

Having been out for 5 months I felt now was a good time to share some sales figures for our game Bik - A Space Adventure. I think it is good for the community to have access to such figures. This information can help others make informed decisions on what and how to invest in a project.

The game is available on iOS, Google Play, and Steam (for Windows, Mac, and Linux).  

Here is our trailer:

Creation/Background:

Play time for Bik is anywhere from 4hr:30min to 7 hours depending on the player.  

The game was made by 3 people in approximately 2 years.  Mike Pinto (me)(programmer/writer/designer/musician), Patrick Chase (writer/designer/lead tester), and Neal Numberman (art).  None of us had ever worked on a video game before, so there was a large learning curve.  

I had been a web programmer (HTML, Javascript, Php) for many years so i had a familiarity with programming (just not in game design). I decided to use Unity as my engine and had to also learn C#.

The first year was spent learning C#, Object Oriented Programming, game design, and building a point and click adventure framework within Unity.  I tried not to use assets from the asset store for many of the systems since I was learning and wanted to figure out how various systems work.

My framework included building an event system, inventory, xml based dialogue system, interaction system, save system, menus, achievement system, visual editors for all the systems, and much more. The assets I did end up purchasing were for pathfinding, dropbox syncing, sprite management, and some particle effects packages.

Writing took place sporticaly during the first year but went full force once the framework was complete and actual game building began.

Ratings:

User reviews:
Google Play: 346 ratings, avg of 4.61 out of 5 stars. Released Aug 2014.
iTunes: 164 ratings, avg of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Released Aug 2014.
Steam: 15 positive reviews and 1 negative. Released October 2014.

Press:
-RETRO – 4 out of 5 stars
-AndroidRundown – 9 out of 10
-Gamezebo – 4 out of 5 stars
-RPGFan – 80%
-SuperGameDroid – 4.5 out of 5 stars
-JayIsGames Review
-TapSmart – 4.3 out of 5 stars 
-TouchArcade - 4 out of 5 stars
-PocketGamer - 7 out of 10

As you can see, our press coverage was mostly very positive.  There were however two publications which I think may have hurt us with our niche audience (indie gamers and adventure gamers).  One was a bad review on RPS and another bad review on AdventureGamers.  I'll let you speculate on how those may have affected our sales.  

Costs:

Totals are approximate.
Art: $10,000
Various software/hardware: $2,000

Total cost: Approx $12,000

Sales:

Itunes:

Bik was an apple featured game upon release.  This generated about 5.2 thousand sales for the week we were featured.
Total # of sales for 5 months: 6.2 thousand. (income = $3696 after apple cut)

Google Play:

Total # of sales for 5 months: 1,555 thousand. (income = $1947 after google cut)

Steam:

Total # of sales Nov - Dec: 631(income = $1697 after steam cut)

Humble Widget on our Website:

Total: $312

Groupees Bundle

Total: $158

Total sales 5 months: $7837
(total game cost: $12,000)

Finishing up:

Upon release of the game I spent many weeks trying to get the word out through social media, emails to press and youtubers, game forums, and even showed at Pax with the Indie Megabooth (minibooth).  It's really difficult to say if any of those had any impact on sales. We even tried advertising on pocketgamer and youtube about a month after release.  Those produced no noticible increase in sales while the ads ran.

I hope these numbers and little bit of behind the scenes can help you out while planning your adventure game!

Twitter: @zotnip
www.bikgame.com