It took just over a week, but the steam page is up! If you’re planning to release a game, it’s good to get this up as early so you have something to point to as well to start accruing those tasty tasty wishlists. So, uh, WISHLIST SUPERANT ON STEAM!

Since I’ve never distributed an app on steam before, it all started with getting my steam partnership verified. Just give them all your personal, financial, and tax information and you’re good to go in two days.

There used to be a whole greenlighting process on steam many moons ago, but now distributing an app is as simple as giving Steam 100 green johns. Luckily, the steam partnership fee you pay at the beginning gives you your first app voucher for “free”!

Now came the fun part of setting up my store page. To expedite this process, I wrote game descriptions and made graphical assets while waiting for my steam partnership to arrive. Steam expects 8 different capsule images all with various dimensions. To do this quickly, make one full-sized, layered asset which you can recompose over and over into these different dimensions.

These banners are very important, as they will be the first thing the market sees. After playing a couple rounds of Jonas Tyroller’s [[Steam Review Guesser]], my good lad Sniper_Slayers and I spent 2 hours examining 90 different capsule arts. Combat-oriented games are north of the axis.

Elements of a Excellent Capsule

Of course, art is subjective, but we found the best combat banners to be those that:

• followed the typical title and protaganist on either side composition rather than a centered composition or purely text. It’s very much possible to make a different composition work, but left-right works very well for sole protaganists.

• the protaganist should be performing an action. This should convey what kind of character they are as well as the theme and intention. Agent 47 draws out a concealed gun, Arthur Morgan is in a standoff, and the Gungeon Crawlers are blasting away.

• the protaganist should stand out with one or many techniques. Hitman has got an excellent sihlouette. The Drifter has got rim-lighting. Using strong gesture, size, backlighting and color-contrast all make the image pop.

• the fontface, character design, and colors palette will all work to communicate the tone and mechanics of your game. Difficult games like soulslikes typically have dark backgrounds. Games with eastern settings typically have brushstroke titles, while sci-fi games should obviously feature sans-serif. Make your protaganist design thematically evocative, as they serve as the mascot and promotional material for the majority of games.

• If your game’s art style is a selling point, put it front and center. Obra-dinn, Factorio, Islanders, and Darkest Dungeon are all good examples of games whose visual style market themselves. My game’s art is very simple, so this doesn’t apply to me.

Besides content-creators, I’m pretty sure that the Steam Page is the most important marketing device, so take your time and get it right. I’ll end off with a look at my own capsule art.

This is my first time drawing something this big or complicated, so it took me a damn while. The title pops out. The chromatic aberrration on the blood gives movement to the image. The character design emphasizes the punching nature of game and the red stands out well on the blue background. There’s not too much color or detail so it’s readable at a small size.

However, I think the pose could be more dynamic, perhaps with more perspective or if I knew how to draw legs better. The spacing is little awkward on some capsules, and there wasn’t enough space to fit enemies on most compositions.

At the end of the day, it came out better than I thought it would so I’m pretty pleased.

And remember readers, WISHLIST SUPERANT ON STEAM!!

Tip Summary:

• prepare your assets while waiting for verification to get it done faster.
• make one layered graphical asset which you can compose into all the required capsules.
• keep your descriptions short. pictures are worth more than words, and gifs are worth more than stills.
• your game capsules are the face of the game. align the title, protaganist, and action in accord with your games mechanics and themes.

If you got any questions/wanna tell me sumthin:

• email: kevinjin729@gmail.com
• or, if that’s not your style: friend me on discord @andrygast