Hello, I'm the author of the blog post, this blog post cover statistics from early access + after it (~5+ months). And I'm showing statistics from my Android/IOS game + sharing some Steam wishlist experience and a lot more.
if you got any questions, feel free to ask :-} I'm just 23-year old newbie, I don't work in gamedev or as a programmer, I'm just newbie.
Good question, no budget for it, for localization I would pay $2000-$5000+ or even more. There are tons of words.
If on launch I was selling the game (Argentina) for $0.5, like 30% of that goes to me, so $0.15. Then for the pay of localization I would need to sell 13k-60k copies in Argentina. No chances. 13k copies just for paying for localization or even more copies.
Even big indie games don't pay for localizations, it's not worth it, selling 13-60k copies in xx country is hard.
Right now, the game is translated in 70% to Spanish by community. I know indie games that earned millions of cash, but still, they rely on the community translations.
My all previous games (mobile + web+ were failure.
From the blog
"Before the game launch, I knew that game will be a failure. I was expecting most sales from Latin America (low price), my all previous mobile games were a failure, wishlist number was low + in the first month of early access (outside of Steam) I sold 0 games copies. So, there were no success indicators. I got no problem with it, everything is running according to my plan, If my whole life is a failure, then a “failure” is something normal, it won’t affect me :-}"
That Fish Eat Fishes is neat. It's simple to play. It's very visually distinctive. Caught me off guard.
It's maybe too trivial for steam but there's certainly potential to make a game out of it. Add a timer. Add some multiplayer challenge. Add a power or two (dash forward). Make some levels to swim through in increasing difficulty and that's a definitive puzzle/platform game.
"meaning he sold to other developer"
No, I was marketing the game on yerba mate groups etc + Argentina gaming and many other places. I don't market my games to game devs because they are not my target :-}
I'm not posting info about my games on dev groups or anything, just from time to time, I'm back with my stats, but those stats are before posting about the game to dev groups, so sales comes from players interested in the game :-}