I was told early on that people would like Cave Confectioner because it is rather conservative in its feature set. It doesn't do the things that other games do. However, what I have found is that the play experience does not stick in the first 15 minutes or so.

This is what I'm talking about:


People start playing and drop off really early. The 30-minute mark is the dividing point. Half of players pick it up and put it down real fast. (But everybody plays it for at least 10 minutes so that's something right...)

For games in my Steam library that I have played for similar lengths of time, I would summarize the reasons as "I didn't learn how to play fast enough".

quick player dropoff = they don't know how to play

So, how does one play Cave Confectioner? I'll have to figure that out myself. "Maybe a tutorial..." Yeah, I hear you. Apparently the mini-tutorial in the cave isn't enough. I'm working on a better tutorial.