Man, about 1/2way through this you get sidelines with negativity and what was possibly unliked or badly recieved about NeN.
not exactly my intent for this question and seeing it made into a discussion video.
I am glad you do take your audience into consideration. It seems like it was not at the forefront of the project, perhaps you were more passionate about making the game and not so much about targeting a specific demographic. I guess mental health effects everyone so that is sort of universal, but the gameplay style/themes and overal execution seems like it wasn't rightly targeted at a specific audience or demographic aside from "gamers". It is not really going to fall in line with popular youth-based games that are twitch based, colorful, over the top or highly open world/customizeable. But it also isn't geared towards older games looking for a retro experience with pixelart graphics, reto-hard gameplay and layers of depth most kids today would cry at. I guess in a way it is targeted at some of the more "casual" crowd, you don't need a gamepad really or tons of controls, there is no interface per say, and it has its share of jump scares and levels. Strangely I could see this game doing fairly well if it had reliable autosaves (on a phone, I assume it's all working fine now with ouya and pc) if you edited the design slightly so you could explore and pick up/put down the game in short spurts. It kills any real sense of immersion, but using a touchscreen to point where you should go would feel fairly natural and the worst that would happen is the graphics scale poorly, but since more and more phones and tablet like devices are going up to 1080p or even 4k, that shouldn't be any issue due to the crazy pixel density.
i guess in this case the biggest reason the game would fail as a app is the lack of vapid gameplay. it's too "deep" in it's visceral tone and themes. I could totally see it appearing as a "cinema" thing in another game though.
as in, you walk into a theatre and explore it to find a large screen playing clips of the game, or if you make it to the projection booth, you have the option to play part of the game itself on a large theater screen, complete with glare, slight frame stutter, scratches/dirt and slightly distorted soundtrack... would be a kool way to get folk interested in buying the full one if they liked playing part of it as a mini game.
I think teens who are troubled and might actually fully get into the game are part of what you got, but the game may not be as fast paced, shiny, and interactive as games now are and so they are not all keen to it. older folk that can appreciate what you are doing, and understand and can read into the themes and ideas in the game are likely unsurprised as it's all stuff they've learned and moved past earlier in their lives. Of course some young folk will defy this as some old folk will. and yes.. i'm being terribly anecdotal.
I think knowing the folk you want to make the game for helps a lot in choosing the right tones for the game overall. kind of a "big picture" thing so that whereas the music/gameplay/visuals all match on a aesthetic/thematic level, there is also a overall texture to it that will feel "right" to the folk you think will be buying the game. it's nit pickery.. but it can make a big different. it is why they do focus testing for games whenever possible, but not always.
On an unrelated note.. as a possible point of discussion on a video, or on here, I'm curious if you might know and be able to explain why it is so easy to just forgoe communication with backers for extended periods while developing a game? I see a lot of campaigns falling into updates every 2 months and at times well beyond that (and backers getting cranky). I was hoping you could shed some light on what potentially causes this and how it isn't neglect or malicious intent but just "because of this.. and that"