I think the landscape has changed a lot over the years. Today it is all about generating buzz. The video game world is not unique in that way. Consider the case of the folk duo The Civil Wars. The now have two albums that went gold and five Grammy nominations over the past two years, which they probably have made about $10 million in profit on. But what is easy to overlook is that they gave their first music album away for free! It's still for free on their website. Not only did they give their CD away for free they spent over a year touring the USA and playing shows back in 2009, most of which were free or give a donation.

So 1/2 the battle is making some type of product that people want to buy. The other 1/2 is marketing. And the last 1/2 is that you must be willing to do #1 and #2 for several years without the expectation of significant revenue. Yes, there are three halves there. That's how difficult I think it is. There are three ways to go wrong. (a) a bad product. (b) a good product but bad marketing or (3) a good product with good marketing but not being able to hold out financially (I'm looking at you Winter Voices).

Congratulations on that !
Tous mes voeux de réussite pour 2014 :)

All right, let’s begin.
Spoiler warning for anybody who haven't played the game yet.
Possible spoilers for Earthworm Jim, Superfrog, Oddworld and Another World.
Also, sorry if I sound too harsh at places, it wasn’t my intention. Mind you, I haven’t finished the game yet.

Story.
Call me biased. Tell me story is not what puzzle platformers are about. It's all true. Still, I don't like the story. Or maybe I don't understand it, after seeing only the beginning (but, you know, they say that the first impression is what matters). Let me tell you what I got:
There are two rats being neighbours. One unnamed rat drops his garbage into Ethan's bin. Ethan rushes to beat the living crap out of his neighbour. While they try to beat the living crap out of each other, a meteor strikes wrecking Ethan's property and giving him superpowers. Ethan quickly beats his rival and waves his hand at the Moon, like he decided to beat the living crap out of it as well. The game begins.

Why it doesn't work for me:
- I don't care about a conflict over a garbage can, and that's the intro's main feature :).
- I like puzzle games. In those, the characters usually use their wits to defeat the enemy. What does Ethan do? He rushes with his fists ready. No sneaky approach, no witty approach, no diplomatic approach, only Ethan's fists of fury :)
- All I know about Ethan after watching the intro is that he's a violent person living in some anarchy state where everything is decided by physical strength.

Character.
Let me introduce my old time pals: Earthworm Jim, , [url=http://www.gog.com/game/oddworld_abes_oddysee]Abe and Lester Knight. What do they have in common with Ethan? Two of those guys are small animals, just like Ethan. The other two solve puzzles and dodge dangers, just like Ethan. I like them. I was - and I still am - thrilled to go on adventure with them. Why, you ask. Well, every one of them has his own reason to glue me to the monitor:

Superfrog:
- Just look at him (the old, in-game one - he's kind of ruined in the HD remake). He's friggin' cute. He goes 'ribbit' like a frog, he's so happy when I beat a level and so helpless when I drop him on a spike by accident. And look at the way he runs. And look at his 'enemies'. And at the trees smiling at him. He just cheers me up.
- Why is he a frog? Because he was turned into one. Yeap, he has a backstory. Childish one, but I don't feel like questioning it. I have my motivation to move my frog forward.

Earthworm Jim:
- He's wacky. He's cheesy. He's funny. He does stupid things when I leave him for a while. He mocks the genre and videogaming in general. He mocks something I hold dear, storytelling in games. It's the lowest kind of humor, yet - it works and it's hillarious.
(- another thing worth mentioning: the game really does miracles in terms of mechanics: classic platforming, racing, River Ride clone, weird quiz, swimming, escort missions and more; playing EWJ 1 and 2 be ready for surprises at every corner)
- Why is Jim an earthworm? He uses his body as a whip. There are segments where you simply play an earthworm, unarmed and only able to jump by using his body as a spring. His main enemy is a crow. Sometimes he's attacked by normal crows who try to get him out of his suit and eat him. So, Jim being an earthworm is fully integrated into the world.

Abe:
- He’s an escaped slave. You just feel for him and his people.
- Why is Abe a Mudokon (that is, green humanoid alien)? Because the plot is built around racial conflict. And, as a Mudokon Abe has psychic abilities that help him in his quest. So, once again, character’s identity is important for the game.

Lester:
- He’s a guy who got himself trapped in another dimension. You have two motivations to go forward: one is that you want to help Lester escape this rough place and another – you want to explore another dimension’s culture, architecture, social norms (for as much as you can as a fugitive).
(- Lester is a guy, so his identity is nothing special here; still – it deals with ‘stranger in a strange place, alienation and interdimensional friendship).

Now, let’s look at Ethan.
That’s him
Once again, it can me only me, but it makes me think: What a smug bastard. He’s not as wacky as Jim, not as cheerful as Superfrog and not as sympathetic as Abe or Lester.
And one more thing. Why is he a rat? All those guys above have to be who they are for the game (plot, mechanic, doesn’t matter) to work. Ethan being a rat is kind of… random. For what I’ve seen so far, he doesn’t express any typical rat traits.

Graphics:
I like this industrial feel. I like that you went for something else than pixelart. Some backstory for that place would be nice (Ethan runs into a forest and the game begins in a factory), but no complains here. Not as captivating and eerie as this but still nice.

Puzzle:
Once again, nothing to complain. Not too easy, not too hard; nice and functional mechanics. Not unique or special, but fun.

Overall:
I like and support indie games, because they can go where no AAA developer dares to go. In terms of , [url= http://www.gog.com/game/papers_please]gameplay mechanics or genre blending. I want something fresh, and Ethan, in terms of gameplay, is a solid puzzle platformer. One of many.
Playing it safe is the way of AAA devs and publishers. They have enough resources to sell their mediocre products as something special. Playing it safe as an indie dev, you are on the way to damnation in the hell of mediocrity.

Thanks for the interesting reads in the initial post.

Puzzlers aren't my favorite genre so that's why I'm not interested in this game. Also I feel like there have been published many similar games in the past and 10$ may be too much for it. Would have expected more in the range of 8$ normal and 4$ at sales and 6$ initially. The graphics looks pretty good to me. I'm not very demanding in this department.

Maybe it was just the lack of marketing power. If nobody knows you nobody will also buy from you. It might be sad but that is probably where publishers come into play.

All in all I think it's a good game although in a kind of saturated genre and deserves more players for sure.

Thanks for the feedbacks guys!

We're now working on releasing it on Steam - if you could help us, that'd be great!

http://www.seaven-studio.com/forum/ethan-meteor-hunter/help-us-release-ethan-on-steam-logo-change/

Thanks :)

Depending on your budget, focus on EFIGS first, then Baltic (Polish & Russian). European/Brazilian Portuguese is a very small market and you should really only deal with them with prior consideration (the Brazilian and Portugese markets are actually used to English-only releases).

As for Chinese, the value of Chinese localisation is debatable anyway.

You would specifically need to include the hanzi that you want in your font. Unlike Japanese, Chinese doesn't have a phonetic alphabet that you can fall back upon, and hanzi rendering is a bitch to implement with compound ideographs. You would really need to have someone competent in Chinese involved in the modification of the engine, and with the extremely limited market for single-player titles in China and Taiwan, it's not worth the hassle anyway. At least with Japanese you can always fall back on hiragana and katagana if your engine doesn't have the capacity for the kanji, although Japanese isn't usually really worth it either.

Logo #2 is the best. Clean, simple, and intriguing. The others are either too specific or put too much emphasis on the character. But, does #2 really represent the tone of the game?

I like the macabre of 7... but I'll vote for 2.
In-game Ethan is much more likeable than his big cut-scene incarnation.

Yeah that's the debate we have. However, Rust has the same: very nice polished logo, totally different from the art game. Still, n°2 best sale! So...

2 and 3 draw obvious comparisons to LIMBO and Braid respectively, which I think you should avoid. 7 is probably a little too macabre.

5 is the one that appeals to me the most - it creates a sense of empathy with Ethan, which was lacking in your marketing until now, although there is something not quite right with that image that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe the colour scheme.

Yeah, I was eyeballing 6 as well. Gives Ethan a sense of empowerment with him juggling AND balancing on that wheel. Not sure if it's representative of the game though.

I agree with you on 1, 4, 8. 1 focuses too much on the flamethrower anyway, the cogs in 4 look awful and 8 is outright dull.

Either way, 5 and 6 convey a sense of challenge, 6 a sense of empowerment, both of which are good qualities to sell a game on.

It kind of tells straight away what the game is about - puzzle platforming. it also looks more action oriented than #3 and #5, which I think is more representative.

I also think #6 is the best one. You immediately know what to expect and it's kinda cute.

Two things bother me about #5. The first is, yes, the color scheme. There's not much contrast there, just varying shades of yellow and brown. Ethan himself barely stands out. The logo also blends too much into the background, with "Meteor Hunter" in particular barely legible. The contrasting logos on 1, 2, 4, and 6 are easier to read and add a bit more interest to the image.

The second is that there's too much empty space in that scene. I know that was done deliberately to stress the point that he's pretty well stuck on that piece of wood (empathy, like you said), but I don't think there's enough visual interest. That might be a consequence of the fact that everything's the same color, though. #3 is a similar image, but feels a bit more balanced due to better contrast.

If #2 is too far outside the game's actual tone, and judging from your trailer I'd say that it probably is, my next pick would be #6. It's a dynamic image with fair use of color, it shows right away that you can expect a physics platformer, and it emphasizes that the game is about the action, not the rat.

Stay away from #7. It's unnecessarily grisly, and not really a good introduction to the character for your audience. Plus, your web site plays up the game being kid-friendly.