Devlog #1 — Realism, Risky Decisions, and Steam Visibility
So, I finally pushed the Steam page for Street Vendor’s Journey live today. Took longer than I planned, but it’s up, it’s real, and I figured Reddit is where I’ll dump updates about how I’m building this thing, what my launch plan is, and why the game is designed the way it is.
SVJ is basically a grounded life-sim. You start out at the bottom—like actually on the sidewalk—running a tiny produce cart and trying not to completely tank your family finances. Later on I want the game to open up into other jobs and small business paths, and add just enough automation so you don’t end up doing the same click-loop forever.
The thing I’m stubborn about with this game is avoiding that classic design shortcut of:
“You can’t do that because it would require too many systems, so we’ll just block it.”
Honestly most sims don’t tell you “don’t do that,” they just make the UI slap your hand. I want none of that. In real life you can screw up. You can give the wrong change, or hesitate and forget how much change you owe, and the customer might misremember too. You can sell bruised fruit, underprice stuff, overprice stuff, ignore your family’s bills for a week, or stand out there working in the rain because rent’s due. I’d rather let the player make messy decisions and have the systems deal with the fallout instead of throwing red popups.
Golden rule for this project:
If people can do it in real life, you should be able to do it in the game. Then the simulation can sort out the aftermath.
Now for the boring business side: with the Steam page up, the actual work begins. Social media helps, sure, but I think Steam’s built-in discovery is the real fuel for wishlists. So I’m going to try a weekly update rhythm on Steam and see if consistency actually matters to the algorithm. I’ll share numbers here too—what actually changed, what didn’t, and if any of it moved the wishlist count.
Week 1 goal: Localization.
Steam’s language filters are no joke. I already translated the store text into as many languages as I could, but I’m pretty sure the real boost comes from having UI + subtitles in those languages when the game launches. So that’s the first milestone I’m chasing.
Anyway, I set some “success criteria” for myself for this launch and I’m gonna try to hit them without burning out. I’ll post progress as I go.
#Day 1 — Steam Statistics
Posted Jan 9, 2026, 12:03 AM UTC