One of the recent games on GoG had the dev complaining he hasn't made any money on the game. It reminds me of some other art game where they were complaining about the same thing.

We've had outrage marketing, so is this whine marketing the new trend where they say they're doing poorly to get extra views? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LC0Al9m8GWYJ:https://www.pcgamer.com/where-the-water-tastes-like-wine-was-a-commercial-disaster-dev-says-in-painful-post/%2Bwater+tastes+like+wine&hl=en&ct=clnk

Not really. A game postmortem typically contains these numbers, whether good or bad. In this case, bad.

If that is the case, it's really sad.
I have it on my wishlist. The full price is a little high for me. But would be picking it up in a future sale for sure. That the game has a focus on good storytelling and voice acting (as the trailers suggest) I find it a very interesting title.
I hope, sales figure will rise.

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It appears to me that the game, while having a high artistic vision, has some critical flaws.

(From reading the reviews.)

For one, the walking speed is apparently abysmally slow. And there's a mechanic to speed it up that involves some rather asinine steps.

For two, the hitchhiking mechanic seems a little silly, in that the roads are one way, and there's no way to hop a train without paying for one.

Where the water tastes like whine?

No, most game post mortems contains sales numbers, be they good or bad... it is kind of part of the main point, was it successful or not

This game must be fantastic, but being based on dialogues I feel that I wouldn't 100% enjoy it in English, and before buying it I would prefer an Italian translation. I hope the developers will think about adding new languages.

I'm blaming the Steam market over-saturation of garbage titles. They do an awful job supporting indie game releases. It's even been proven that selling your game on your own site is better if it has appeal and good word-of-mouth advertising.
Another instance of indies doing better on other platforms is [can't remember the name] selling so much better on the Switch than it did on Steam.

Postmortems aren't devs whining, it's devs sharing their experiences be it development or the sales of the game. They are meant to be lessons of sorts for other devs as well as for those that are interested of the industry as a whole.

If you ask me though, one big issue this game has is the name. Not that many people read many reviews and a name like "Where Water Tastes Like Wine" is a kind of a name that doesn't necessarily arouse that much of interest. It sounds more like a sappy TV-drama movie.

Also, what the heck does the title have to do with the actual premise? Like, I realize that's a plausible wishful phrase that might be uttered during the phrase, but...

I say the title is very much a draw. In a sea of titles that are mostly just random collections of nouns (with a very occasional adjective or verb), like "Wizard of Legend", "Kingdom Come: Deliverance", "The Long Reach", "Ancestor's Legacy", "Ash of Gods", etc.

A game with an evocative and distinctive title like "Where The Water Tastes Like Wine" will very much catch people's eyes. It certainly caught mine before release.

The reason the game didn't do all that well is that it came out the very next day after Into the Breach. Most people don't buy more than one game per week and considering it got less than stellar reviews, Into the Breach was the default choice. It was mine. And although the audiences for the two games don't quite overlap that much, that week's media cycle was occupied with Into the Breach. If it had the week all for itself you would have seen a lot more articles on websites, Let's Plays on Youtube and streams on Twitch, which would all have drawn more buyers to the game. Instead, it all went to Into the Breach. Frankly, I'm more curious about how many people have it wishlisted and are interested in buying it when it first goes on sale.

It seems hope is truly the last to die. Common sense, however, is an early casualty.

Hard disagree, personally, but you may be right. I like the name a lot, and in fact when No Truce With the Furies got renamed to something shockingly generic and forgettable I groaned, but RPS gushed over the new name. Wtf marketing.