MfoM postmortem

It has been a little over two years since Manna for our Malices was launched to paying audiences on Steam and Itch. (Incomplete/demo versions had been available for free on itch during much of development.) Shortly before the official launch, I wrote the MfoM pre-postmortem.

I can’t give any intelligent update on almost anything covered in the pre-postmortem, which focused on themes and the kind of commentary on the genre I was trying to make. I’ve gotten a fair number of reviews, but none have mentioned these themes; if people are “getting the message” then they are keeping it to themselves. More likely, many people aren’t interested in reading too much into a $1 game. So, where that document was something like an “artist’s statement”, this one will be more like a proper postmortem and focus on business concerns.

First: I have gotten mostly positive reviews. Out of the 7 user reviews on steam, 6 were positive, and the single negative review was (upon reading it) mostly neutral. Out of the 8 curator reviews, only 1 was negative — and this reviewer claimed not to like the entire VN genre. On itch, the average score (across two reviews) is 4/5 stars, and on vndb, scores range from 6/10 to 8/10 with an average of 6.6 (based on 5 votes). Text reviews (on steam) generally praise the writing and the concept but complain about the art; they are mixed on the music. Basically, as far as I can tell, the people who have played this game have liked it.

With regard to pricing: I originally priced this game at $4 (with a 40% launch discount on…