Meteorfall — 2019 by the Numbers
Another year’s gone by, and it’s time to take a look at how Meteorfall: Journeys and Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale have done this year.
Meteorfall Journeys: Updates
Since launching in January 2018, Meteorfall: Journeys has continued to get free content updates. In 2019, I launched two major content updates. All-in-all, I spent 122 hours on Journeys in 2019.
The Daily Challenge Update
In March, we delivered one of my favorite updates — the Daily Challenge update. The Daily Challenge is a new game mode which features twists on the regular game. For instance, one of the most popular mode is one called ‘Loot Hoarder’, which automatically equips all equipment in the player’s deck each battle. There are about a dozen modifiers that are mixed and matched to provide a unique experience every time. About 300 players still attempt the challenge every day, which is pretty awesome. It’s probably my favorite way to play the game these days, since I’ve played the ‘regular’ mode to death.
The August Content update (new skins!)
The August content update added 3 new skins — Boris, Lagovaz, and Redbeard. Several new cards were added to support new archetypes for these characters, and several old cards were reworked to be more useful. I also added several new daily challenge modifiers to keep things fresh, including one that allows players to play as one of the bosses (Swampalina).
Meteorfall Journeys: Sales
(Sales are described in terms of ‘proceeds’ — revenue after share for Google / Apple. All $ amounts shown are in USD)
2019: $51,891.41
2018: $88,072.26
Not surprisingly, sales were less in 2019 than in 2018 (the year Journeys launched), but still respectable. In 2019, the daily average proceeds were about $144.
The split between platforms has also evolved over time. When we left off in 2018, the split between Android / iOS was 33% to 66%. Android recently crossed over 40%, and sits at 40% / 60%. Daily revenue on Android is now consistently higher than iOS.
On the iOS side, also notable was the launch of Apple Arcade, which may have decreased daily revenue in October. It seems like it at least partially recovered after the first month, bolstered by cross-promotion from the Krumit’s Tale Early Access launch.
Meteorfall Journeys: What’s Next?
I’ve been talking about the Ranger hero — Varfa — for a long time, but this time, she’s actually really close. She has the most unique cards of any hero and introduces a brand new ‘companion’ mechanic that plays very different than Muldorf’s minions.
I struggled the most with Varfa (compared to other heroes in Meteorfall), and she went through several iterations. In particular, I wanted to come up with a unique mechanic that fit within the boundaries of Meteorfall, but would fill the fantasy of being a ranger and having a companion helping you out. It’s well-tread territory in fantasy games, but finding something that worked for Meteorfall was definitely a challenge.
I plan to do a post all about Varfa’s gameplay in the next couple weeks. I think that she’ll probably finally release in the February 2020 timeframe, with a beta before that.
Krumit’s Tale: Early Access Launch
While working on updates for Journeys, I was also trying to keep progress going on Krumit’s Tale in parallel. The development on Krumit’s Tale started a bit after the launch of Journeys (roughly February 2018).
In 2019, I spent 606 hours on Krumit’s Tale (991 hours since the start of the project). 22 months after development started, Krumit’s Tale went live on Steam Early Access on November 5th.
I won’t rehash the first month’s sales numbers which I already posted a few weeks ago, but you can expect more updates on the progress of Krumit’s Tale in the months to come. One new development since the first month sales numbers was that Northernlion, a popular Youtuber and Twitch streamer, tried out Krumit’s Tale, and posted a video about it. Northernlion was a big influencer for Slay the Spire (you’ll see “NL sent me!” in a bunch of Spire reviews). The effect was pretty immediate, and lead to a pretty substantial bump in sales. Many of his fans have stopped by the Discord saying that they discovered the game through NL, and I was honored that he took the time to try out the game.
We’ve got a long way to go on the Early Access roadmap. The first major content update, featuring a new hero (Mischief), should be entering beta in the next couple months. We’re also working on the foundation for localization, so that players around the world can enjoy the game. Chinese is the current focus, but we’ll expand to other languages after that.
I haven’t yet decided when the game will leave beta and move to 1.0 (which includes Mobile), but I’m hoping it will become more clear as time goes on. At the very least, I’d like to finish four very distinct heroes and a Daily Challenge mode of some kind. Beyond that, I imagine a model similar to Journeys where I continue to support the game with content updates with new heroes, cards, etc… I’m excited to see where the game goes in 2020.
2020 is going to be BIG!
2020 (early 2020, especially!) is shaping up to be a big year! In Q1, we’ll have new heroes for both Journeys and Krumit’ launching. If all goes as planned, we’ll also see a 1.0 release of Krumit’s Tale across Steam, iOS, and Android. As always, I’ll continue to share sales numbers and other insights as the data becomes available.
