Cloverleaf Games

Our new retail channel.

I thought I'd throw it to the wolves first (that's you lot) and get some feedback before I make a press release (hence the press release link for the site don't work yet!).

Cloverleaf games is the first stage in the expansion of the Indiepath Business. If you want to know more then I suggest you take a look.

Retail customers here : www.cloverleafgames.com
Developers here : www.cloverleafgames.com/about.php (we'll you're not going to buy anything are you?)

Oh and thanks to Grey Alien for doing a bit of proof reading for us.

Good luck with it Tim.

It's all so small. The game pictures dont stand out because they're just a miniscule discolouration of the background - ok I exagerate but my point is the main page just tells me you are MiscellaneousHumdrumSharewareWithin01 company.

I concur. It's a bit small.

Some of the graphics such as the 60 day money back guarentee make it look like you're your trying to append a tiny disclaimer.

Paying customers don't give a hoot about company information.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

{EDIT} Yeah - beware of the small print.

do you let developers sell their games themselves and you sell them at the same time?

I said the same thing about the "60 day money back" and the Games, About and Shop graphics in one of my emails (i.e. small unreadable mini-text), did you get it?

Yeah I got it :D

I will gather all the negative points and address them in one go.

@Slenkar, yes. If you signed an exclusive agreement you could sell on your site but not on any other, a non-exclusive would mean you could see wherever you wanted. Please contact me directly if you want more detail.

I guess it's like estate agents in that if you sell with more than one they up their commission?

It's all about competition and ROI, if my marketing dollar get's someone to download the game I want to make sure that it's me that gets the revenue. No point me spending all that money on marketing if they purchase elsewhere.

Btw, we track everything. We use some fantastic software by "Stuffed Guys", it allows us to follow a user from first click to purchase. If you want to measure ROI we got the tools.

What does your marketing involve, exactly? Something that an individual couldn't do by themselves?

Are we talking 'cookies' here? Are your users aware of this? I think you've just put me off visiting your site ever again. :)

@big10p, please email me directly if you would like further information on how are marketing works. For examples look for reviews of our games and look at editorials in magazines such as PC Zone and Develop. If you would like a resume then please ask, I would be delighted to send you something.

With regard to cookies, have a look at the technology used by the major portals such as Bigfishgames, reflexive, retro64 and realarcade - how do you think they track affiliate sales. And what is the issue with a cookie? How do you think this site knows who you are everytime you visit it?

It's probably server based. It's standard practice on every company based web server with a shop on the net... They simply track the session and see what you click, it enables them to work out where they are loosing sales and address those pages.

wow small, btu looks nice...

1600x1280 or something on this monitor is small, and 1024x768 same small

Big10p: Sure an individual with the right skills and knowledge might be able to do the marketing themselves, but why bother when you can spend more time being creative making games and get someone else to do it for you, probably better.

Adaware always tries to delete my cookies and it's a pain because they are useful for repeat visits to sites that you do actually want to track you. It's not like a cookies know when you last went to the loo or what you ate for breakfast or anything.

Just a "me too" posting -- the text and screenshot images are both way to small. It's a real eyestrain to read most of the text on the page, which is a shame.
Zooming the page in my browser to 125% or 133% makes it much easier to read and navigate.

Especially considering that a large percentage of casual puzzle game buyers these days are older people, this can be a pretty big deal. Too much 'work' to see what's going on, and people will just look elsewhere.

That said: interesting venture -- best of luck with it!

Indiepath: If I ever finish a commercial quality game, I almost certainly will contact you for more info. I'd much rather someone else handled the marketing and such - I wouldn't know where to start, anyway. That's why I was asking what's involved.

My comment about cookies was just me being mischievous. I wasn't being serious, hence the smillie. :)

P.S. Did you manage to make any use of that indiepath.net logo I did a few months back? Just curious.

I love it!

Just did a quick update, still small text - that'll change soon.

Now displays random featured games and displays the game list according to most popular. Lots of other nice stuff but it's all server side.

working at the weekend?! dedication.

Lol, no missus is getting ready to go out so I had a few hours to kill :D. I leave now and drink beer.

Actually, I code loads at the weekend (just hobby kind not for money kind), although today I've been converting Aikido videos into MPEG via a TV card. Tonight should be a code fest however. Enjoy your night out.

I also agree it's way too small. On my screen (and that's not particularly high-res) the information area takes up about 1/4 of the screen space, and uses a font that appears much smaller than what usability.gov recommends.

Other than that, the layout is clean and consistent, the colors (eventually) bright and clear. Is there any particular reason why the background starts out grey (making it nearly impossible to make out the grey text printed on it) and then switches to white as the page loads properly?

nice link FlameDuck