I’ve been working on getting Cryptozookeeper submitted to Desura, mostly to explore what the process is like these days. If what I learn helps other people, then that’s great!
Desura is definitely the sort of site worked on by many different people who, ah… maybe don’t know what the others are doing. There’s some conflicting information out there on how to get your game approved.
I guess the biggest thing I found is that when submitting, you’re told you don’t need to include a movie trailer. You do! Cryptozookeeper sat in limbo for a few weeks. I mailed one of the mods or admins who said, yeah, we’d put this up but you need a video trailer. I’ve since started working on one. (Boy, the free tools to make movies are pretty great, aren’t they? I don’t know how every .avi produced with Windows Movie Maker isn’t of the author hanging themselves. I assume the original 1.0 version was shown to Ian Curtis before that last tour.)
In the meantime, I commissioned some art for the game, as Desura (and Steam) require things like “box art” or “splash pages.” Here’s what Jenny Pattison created. I think it does a great job capturing the essential chaos of the game:
You can download a much larger version here, if you like, for wallpaper or what have you.
I’ll update this as I continue the process, but feel free to add your own experiences with these game services as well!