Recently I have been able to use Itch.io to launch two very different games and I’ve been rather impressed with how easy they make it. The first was a text adventure-based game that is played in a web browser on their website. The second is an exploration demo that is a PC 7 GB download.
Both required way different things and it all seems to be working without issue. Even better their platform promotes a little bit of my game to their user base getting me getting plays from people outside of my bubble.
A Universe From Nothing A Text Adventure Game
The first one is just a small text-based adventure game that the player can select different options as they progress through a very linear story. It was created using a third-party scripting program focused on creating texted based games that play in the web browser.
Itch.io itself allows you to upload up to a 1 GB game directly to their website. All you have to do is fill out some basic information such as game title, description, and things like it’s an HTLM game and whatnot.
From there the game gets a custom page the players can play from. Along with a place to post development logs as game updates. You can also customize that page somewhat with a theme such as a page background color, border, and even using google fonts for the text which is a nice touch.
Nightly Dungeon Exploration Demo
The other game I have uploaded is a zone exploration demo of the larger game I’m working on. It was far more of an interesting experience getting the 15 GB file uploaded. You cannot just upload it directly to their website. I also did not want it to be public for a short while for some testing with others.
While their website has a 1 GB limit they have another solution that is quicker for uploading things to them called Butler. It is a command-line-based program that uses a command prompt. You can upload up to a 30 GB (uncompressed) game to them in this method.
The first step I took was to make a new project from the Itch.io website that I kept as a draft. This allowed only me and anyone else that I grant access to edit or see the page.
I then logged in from the command prompt. This required me to request access and granting myself access which was quite simple. Once I log out of their program the credentials get wiped locally from my machine. I can even go into my account and revoke the API keys as well.
It was then time to push my project to their server. I had zipped my project up and just needed to type in the right format to tell it what to upload, what page it’s uploading for, along with some other information.
This process took a while since my residential internet upload speeds suck. At least I did not have any connection issues with their server and evenly at 1-2 MB/s a sec it was uploaded.
After that, I just type in the command to check for status updates on the upload itself. What must have been only a 5 to 10 min window a fully working download link appeared on my games pages and I was done.
The cool part is my game page was still listed as a draft. I could however generate a private link to it to share around for those that I wanted to grant access. They also have much deeper distribution options if you wanted to issue download keys or set up a key group for up to 20k people.
It was then time to download it and make sure everything worked. I was rather pleased that the download speeds were around what I tend to get on Steam if not a bit better. Even those who have much better internet than me were getting 30 mb/s or better speeds. Which for something I’m not paying for is just amazing they are permitting that kind of speed.
Once everything was checked out it was time to make the page public. After that my game could be searching for and found by people looking to play something that was in beta.
I even made a blog post on their site and had different options to indicate to Itch.io how they should promote it for some extra views. Since this was just a little demo I just said it was a basic game update since I don’t know if there is a limited amount of times they will give it a bigger push on their site.
I have only scratched the surface on using Butler. There is an entire system for uploading patches and configuring things in different ways. One day I’ll be updating the project and testing those out as well. It will be interesting to see how the UE4 patching system and work out along with people downloading it.
I could even take things further and set up donations or different monetization options on Itch.io. This however requires a business PayPal account the last time I looked. I can’t set something up like that at this time. I’m also not quite happy with what PayPal is doing to many indie game developers.
Moving forward I can create development blogs under each of my games if I wish to. They can help generate more views and traffic to my game. They have a bit of a different format for posts than I use on PeakD. It’s not that much effort to make some slight changes to the formatting as I have done in my release post.
Final Thoughts
I’m quite impressed with how easy and painless all of this was for a distribution option. The documentation they have made things easy and if I need to expand things in the future they have many options and routes I can take things.
Other Posts:
- Nightly Dungeon Zone Exploration Demo Release On Itch
- A Universe From Nothing A Text Adventure Game Now On Itch.io
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar.
The exploration is looking great. Going to have to check that out when I get a chance. Itch is a cool platform. I love browsing the inbrowser games on there. Sometimes just blow hours at a time playing fun little free games on there. Honestly have spent way more time on those than any of the downloadable games. 😅
I try my best not looking at all the games on there. I would never get anything done otherwise!
🤣Yeah. Right there with you.
Itch also has a lot of cool developer resources. A lot of game tools and art packs exist on there. Often times for free (but not always.) Though I'm sure you are probably already aware of that. I think of my few actual purchases on there most are not games haha.
Nice, so is this kind of a competitor to Steam?
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It is. It a giant place for indie game developers to go. Anyone can just upload a game there without hoops to jump though.
Some games that end up doing well there will go off to Steam. Sometimes you can even find the free version of a game on Itcho before they went to Steam.
Busy weekend but next week I'm gonna give it a try! Yeah I find myself very pleased with itch.io I tried other like gamejolt or kongregate but I find that itch offer the best experience on both sides
I have not tired the others you have mentioned. Glad to know Itch is the better one to have gone with.
I still have quite a few things to explore of their ecosystem.
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