[Sughly]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Machinarium has won several notable indie game awards already during its production, which helped the sales immensely. It also had the great fame of Samorost games to back it up. Jane doesn't have any recent hits like that on her hands.

The most impressive to me is the success of Time Gentlemen Please! which had no marketing budget whatsoever - all marketing (as far as I know) was the creators persistently asking a great number of people to try their game, support it, put it up on Steam etc.

I did say I could have mentioned Machinarium, but I understand there are other forces at stake there . Just merely pointing out, as you have, that it is possible for adventures to gain attention off little to no marketing.

'Tis true about Time Gentlemen Please, but the same can be said for Samorost. No marketing, just word of mouth. Amanita Design built their success of the same beginnings.

My personal opinion though is that the games mentioned above have a distinctly different art direction to what players can get in mainstream games, so they're being offered something completely different and they like that. To me I think a lot of adventure games similar to Gray Matter in look and art design fade a little into obscurity because they don't have that same immediate appeal artistically. They look kind of like all the other games people are playing, only adventure, and it makes it harder for them to be noticed. It seems the general atittude is something akin to thinking 'we get that in Mass Effect 2, but much better (in their opinion, of course), so why try it? It's just an adventure title', whereas a Time Gentlemen Please has the immediate 'wow what's this? looks new' appeal in which being an adventure is less important