Changing the name of the game, and why we haven't posted on social media in a while
Path of the Djinn is becoming Aliosso. The game has evolved so much from its infancy that the original name no longer fits it. We wanted a name that more closely suggested the theme of the game one way or another.
The term "Aliossi" comes from an ancient way of using animal knucklebones to make dice, if you want to know more, I suggest following the rabbit hole on Wikipedia, it's quite interesting.
Here's the logo of the game!
With the most important part of the blog post done, let's move to what will be the longest.
TLDR: after the Ukrainian Games Steam Fest, we had major issues posting on social media, with our Reddit account getting (permanently) suspended for no apparent reason.
Our original Reddit account had a few thousand karma. Up to a few days before the Ukrainian Games Steam Fest, we could post and comment normally. We've had no suspensions, bans, or whatever in the account's lifetime.
The r/Games subreddit organizes a weekly event on Sunday where you are allowed to make a post about your game. This was our post, created for the Indie Sunday of the 25th of August.
TITLE: Path of the Djinn - Fioretto Studios - Balatro x Slice & Dice x Astrea
- Power-scaling and cards of Balatro
- Dice a la Slice & Dice
- Single character per run like in Astrea
It's a fantasy game set in the desert, water is used to facilitate combat and dialogs. Dice can be customized, 2.5D, moddable.
We'll be releasing in 2025 Q2, and we'll have a demo for the February Steam Next Fest.
Sign-up to be part of the play-test through Steam.
Happy to answer any question you have.
As you can see, nothing suspicious here, however, after posting this our account got suspended. And here begins our odyssey. We contacted Reddit support weekly for the last ~ 2 months, without getting a reply.
We were only able to get a reply from the mods of r/Games, which told us it's a Reddit problem and to contact the admins, and from the admins through r/help, which told us it's an r/Games problem and to contact the r/Games mods.
You can't see our post on r/help because an admin removed it and told us that it was a FAQ. However, after about a week of back and forth where I suggested that, since it became clear it wasn't such a simple problem, he could perhaps allow my post so that 1) it could be a point of reference for people who have the same problem, and 2) it would allow the r/Games mods to enter the discussion without me being essentially the messenger between the r/Games mods and the Reddit admins, the request was denied.
I'll spare you the details but all this messaging, reporting, requesting support, etc. has been going on for a while, and it's clear that our accounts are dead in the water and we won't receive any support.
Needless to say, we were really cautious with promoting our game, and followed all Reddit rules, in fact, some of our accounts got suspended right at the first post related to the game (on an Indie Sunday), after weeks of organic and unrelated posting. However, we can't prove that, given that all our accounts got suspended and our posts are no longer visible.
We'd love to just buy some ads on Reddit, but apparently, residents of Ukraine aren't allowed to, see one of the countless posts about it. For the curious, many payment platforms like Stripe are also restricting services to Ukraine, and Ukrainians have to go through all kind of loops to survive between a rock and a hard place.
Given that Reddit is such an important space for indie games to be part of, we'll keep trying. We're working on getting an American residential IP and phone number and changing the name of the game. Hopefully, this should allow us to post on Reddit.
We've had similar issues on Twitter, where we were in a constant loop of being verified, checked, etc. Might try to create another twitter account.