cirno’s perfect summer vacation now on steam!
Our first release ever on Steam has happened! This feels like a huge moment for my life. While Cirno’s Perfect Summer Vacation is a short game. We put a lot of love into it. I spent a week working on the story, putting together the visual novel and just learning a lot through the process. I haven’t edited the game since the game jam. Looking back maybe that is something I would have liked to have done. We released the game for PC, Mac, and Android, but I do kind of wish I added more content into the story before releasing it.
However, Cirno’s Perfect Summer Vacation was more of just an experiment for me. I have always dreamed of making games, and I made the decision to make this the first game I fully publish. I have used this release process as a learning experience and boy I have learned a lot of important lessons.
lessons learned
The first major lesson is that getting approval for your game on Steam takes time. You should allow yourself plenty of time. Maybe a month or two from the time you feel your game is complete and the release date. I first set the date for February 3rd but later I realized this wasn’t enough time so I pushed it out to February 10th.
Another lesson I feel is important is that we should have a video trailer out for the game early on to help generate hype and to meet the store requirements. The video doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Showing in-game screenshots and action is very important. I hope next time to have a higher quality trailer out way before our release date.
Finally is to make sure that any possible objectionable material is out of the main promotional images. I am not sure if it is Moka’s cleavage or the bleeding eyeball on her chest, but the Steam censors object to her. I had to redo the marketing images to exclude Moka despite her being such a key character in the game.
closing remarks
On our first two days since we released, we have had 1000 people add Cirno’s Perfect Summer Vacation to their Steam library. I feel very happy and proud of this. This game isn’t a masterpiece, but I am just so happy to have finally fulfilled my lifelong dream of releasing a video game to the public.