We did a couch coop game (CTHULOOT) and the number 1 refund reason we have is that it doesn’t have online.
(It doesn’t because we lacked budget)
So I’d say players now really expect online over local.
Unity was chosen because I am a C# guy coming from XNA, and Monogame was super rough at that time.
Also it allowed us to really focus on the gameplay and not too much and the engine, while having access to all consoles.
We still had a lot of headaches with it…
Now I’m considering switching to something but I’m glad I had that experience on a mainstream and fully documented engine.
Best of luck with your game, if you need advices send me an email via the Steredenn or Flipon contact address.
This comes right after the release of our game Flat Eye [0], which includes a quite new Content Warning system.
So far players really likes the fact that the system exists and that they can choose to skip or see the content. It's all about being warned anf having the choice.
I’ve released my game Flipon https://flipon.net end of 2020 and while it’s not a huge success, it’s still quite a consistent flow of income (300-500€).
Doesn’t require much maintenance, maybe some new content soon.
I’ve been consistently using it on my last 3 projects and I really like it.
It brings a simple visual clue to the content of a commit, it’s displayed correctly on all my git clients, and it’s just fun.
Also, you don’t want to have more than one emoji so I agree it forces to have more atomic commits.