Gel: Set and Match was another unfortunate casualty of the "lack of attention plague". I think my website, and Dtoid (Brad's review) were the only people who even covered it.

Maybe the problem isn't that the IP is new, but that the IP isn't something people are interested in. If the IP was both good and interesting, it would probably sell itself like all the classics did.

Raskulls looks like the developers put skeletons in yoshi's island. While this will have a niche appeal, it should be noted that the protagonist isn't a very appealing character. The protagonists of the most popular games are always, always faceless and unimportant, which allows the player to feel like the protagonist. The raskulls at a glance not only have strong characteristics (the skulls) but look completely out of place in their environment.

I am completely comfterble critiquing the developer's vision and artistic direction because I am the customer, and the developer's job is to give me a product that I will pay for. This may sound self-centered, but it is the truth of every industry, and the developer does not deserve to be in an industry in which he is unable to serve the needs of the most possible customers due to "artistic direction". Every decision should not be "What do I want to make?" but rather "What will customers want to play?", and if the developer is good at the job of making products the customer wants to play, he gets rewarded by sales. If he is really good at this, his game may even become a classic. However, it has no hope of success nor can it become a classic unless the issue of what customers will want is at the forefront of every decision (this is not the same as what customers say they want though, so to make the game it must be approached from the customer's perspective and NOT the perspective of an artist).

From the perspective of the customer, a single screen shot tells me that this game was probably built around what the developer wanted to make rather than what customers would want to play. With an IP not built with the customer first and foremost, customers will simply have little interest. In this situation, it would be best to scrap the current content entirely, and place the game in a setting that customers want to go, perhaps with blander characters that the customer could consider as the representation of himself within the game. Heck, the candy-land setting may have wide-spread appeal (although whenever a series goes into candyland, the reception for it is always initially very cold, such as was the outrage over Yoshi's island and WindWaker's unveiling), but the skulls themselves are simply not going to cut it.

yeah its hard to get peoples attention I've been trying for a bit while my game is still being developed.

@ prolifikstudio

If your really want the attention, then the easiest way is to make a system exclusive Wii FPS with good online modes. The Conduit was highly watched by all parties because it was the only title that had the ability to destroy the FPS market on the other systems. But the Conduit had some problems that kept it from reaching the expanded audience on the wii system; as a gamer I must say that the inability to use splitscreen with my friends while playing the online absolutely slaughtered it's ability to travel by word of mouth - I could not show others what it was like because we couldn't play it together. There were other problems too; the plot was generic, and the level design was irritating and mediocre.

If you want to tap into an untapped market, take the arcade gameplay of the FPS, strip down the controls to only the trigger, the A button, and the nun-chuck control stick, and make an E-rated Wii exclusive FPS that anyone can pick up. Give it an interesting context and interesting content, perhaps a "Alice in wonderland" feel, and make the FPS one that a mother would not mind picking up for her 5 year old son (that means no more violence than a mario game). While the world and content should be interesting, the plot should be bare and unimportant like in Mario games. That would give you the only FPS that taps into the expanded market, which would be much more successful than trying to tap into the hardcore market of the wii like "the Conduit".

A game in the hardcore FPS genre that successfully taps into the expanded market will probably sell itself; the "hardcore" will watch it like a hawk and the "casuals" will love it's pick-up-and-play nature and arcade addictiveness and spread it by word of mouth.

(On a side note, if you were to make something like that then as a gamer I would love to have split screen online multiplayer. As a person who is interested in giving sound advice though, I do not think online is all that important unless you are trying to sell a hardcore game, in which case, the hardcore would most easily spread word of your game by being able to playing online multiplayer with the guest system.)

Interesting read:
http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/

Yeah Raskulls