TLDR: The demo sucks but we're fixing it
I want to extend a heartfelt 'thank you' to everybody who has played Milo and supported this crazy dream of mine. Four years ago I decided to make a game instead of growing up (I'm now 37 years old smh). But the joke is on me because I grew up anyway, and now Milo is four years old. He has legs. He can walk and talk. He even makes new friends. I sometimes miss when it was just us. When I reflect on how far he has come I'm both in awe and terrified, because I understand now that he doesn't just belong with me, he belongs with you too.
What Happened?
In case you're unaware, the Demo for Milo was featured in this past Steam NextFest. It was a massive disappointment as it performed far below my expectations, garnering about 1800 wishlists, around 15 (mostly) negative reviews, and 2,500 players). To be honest, i was (and frankly still am) devastated by some of the reviews. I'm not asking for sympathy, but it's difficult to hear things like this -
"It's as if someone plugged "code me a playable BO3 zombies clone but don't worry about the features, gameplay loop, or performance" into chatgpt and just slapped it up on steam."
"This is basically a barebones and sloppier version of cod zombies."
- during a major event showcasing my passion project that I've dedicated four years of my life to and sacrificed so much for. But thankfully among all of the reviews (including negative ones) there were golden nuggets of honest feedback that are helping us shape the future of Milo and make it a success!
What Did We Learn?
We learned that players who simply visit the Milo page are likely to wishlist the game (neat!) ...but only if they DIDN'T try the demo (players are 8x more likely to wishlist Milo if they don't play the demo). The median playtime for the demo is also very poor (11 minutes). In lay terms, this means that the demo sucks, but people are excited for the final product.
What Now?
My publisher/co-developer team at Yarrawah Interactive stumbled on an old build of the Demo and wound up having a lot of fun playing it. I played it too and agree that it's more fun than the current Demo and it performs better. So, we swapped the live Demo build so new players can(hopefully) have a better experience with Milo and hopefully play it longer. For those of you who are happy with the current state of the Demo, you can still play it on the beta branch on Steam (code: cream1234567). For now, we are going to continue developing Milo and addressing player feedback.
Thank you again for playing, and for your interest. I love you.