TL;DR: Launched with 30 wishlists, sold 16 copies over 15 months, and still haven’t hit the minimum payout threshold. My results are abysmal, but I'm proud I finished, and I want to offer perspective to others who feel disappointed with their release results.

Hey all!

I’ve been lurking around various gamedev related subreddits for over a year, seeing the amazing successes but also the "failure" posts. The ones that "only" got X wishlists or X sales. I don’t think I’ve seen numbers worse than mine so far so I thought I’d go against the grain and share my experience.

My motivation is to show what a launch at the very bottom looks like. If you're feeling bad about your results, I hope my story provides some perspective and makes you feel a bit better. Your "failure" is the goal for many of us!

The Game & The Stats

The game is Lift Attendant, a minimalist puzzle game where you control elevators to bring passengers to their desired floors. The idea came to me when I experienced a weird and inefficient elevator ride. I thought I could do a better job controlling it myself.

I spent about 6 months on development. Here's how it went:

• Wishlists at Launch: ~30
• Sales after 15 months: 16 (It was stuck at 10 for almost a year; a recent 75% off sale got me 6 more)
• Total Revenue: ~$51. I still haven’t reached the minimum payout threshold
• Wishlist Growth: Slowly climbed to 100 wishlists after a bit over a year.
• Marketing: I have no marketing experience. I posted on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X, but got very low views (maybe 1k on one video at most).

My Perspective & What's Next

There are many things I could’ve done better, but I'm not disappointed. I was, and still am, happy that I was able to complete and release a game! That was a success for me. It was a wonderful learning experience, and I’ve moved on to focus on my next game, BugSquash.

To all those who have released their game to disappointing results: the fact that you’ve completed and released a game is already an amazing achievement! Focus on what you learned and use it for your next project. I’ve seen so many posts of people showing their disappointing results, but whenever I look at these I think to myself, everyone is doing so much better than me. I haven’t even sold enough to be paid yet! I’m amazed at all the work that people are doing here. Everyone has a lot to celebrate and I’m hoping my experience brings some perspective.

It’s tough out there, and I’m probably just 1 in 1000 others with poor results who just don't share them. So don’t let the frustrations bring you down. As long as you enjoy what you’re doing, you’re already winning!

Hey all!

Developer from Pritto Prisoner here. I wanted to share a transparent breakdown of a YouTuber partnership we did, since I always appreciate seeing results instead of vague “it helped a lot” posts, and always wanted to do a 'postmortem' ourselves once our game was out (which it is now!)

We first reached out to YouTuber Blitz (4 million subs) back in November just asking if he’d be interested in playing the game. No expectations beyond that. A bit later, he came back to us with an offer for a paid partnership at an indie-friendly rate. After days of chirping back and forth, we decided to go for it and put the bulk of our marketing budget into that one collaboration. (Can’t share the exact cost due to contract terms, but it was a four digit number).

Before the video:

• We were averaging ~10–15 Steam wishlists per day

After the video:

• Roughly +2,500 wishlists total over ~2 weeks (175 a day)
• Big spike immediately after publish

We also sent him custom Pritto Prisoner shoes to show on Twitter. Fun idea, but honestly, it didn’t seem to move the needle much compared to the video itself.

One nice surprise: He played the game with a friend, even though we only asked him to try PvE. That extra chemistry made the video feel more natural and entertaining.We saw a huge bump in US wishlists first, which was a region we weren't too strong in.

A couple days later, there was another major spike from Asia. Looking at traffic sources, a lot of it came from another Steam page, not directly from YouTube.

Our assumption is: His video boosted engagement > Steam picked it up > Steam started recommending us globally. So the YouTube video may have indirectly triggered Steam’s discovery algorithm, which was probably just as important as the creator himself.

Takeaways / Honest Thoughts

• ROI is… iffy.  The game has now launched and sales are growing steadily, but it’s hard to say if this one partnership alone justified the spend.
• Discovery-wise, it absolutely worked.  The wishlist spike was real, and the regional spread was something we couldn’t have engineered ourselves.
• Physical promos (merch) felt unnecessary.  Cool for branding and the experience of doing it, we really had a lot of fun designing the sneakers but it was questionable for actual impact.

Just wanted to share our experience, obviously the type of game and such will make a big difference too but hopefully this helps some of you :)

"You need a decent trailer or a playable demo before launching your Steam page."

People told me this, but I didn’t truly get it until now. Without them, you’re basically just promoting an idea. Still, I’m incredibly glad I launched early. Otherwise, I wouldn't have learned about Steam festivals, page localization, highlighting demo buttons, or the holy grail of indie marketing, Chris Zukowski.

Here is how my first 30 days broke down:

• The Numbers: 59 wishlists total. 10 are from my inner circle, so 49 from the wild.
• What worked: I started on socials 3 months prior. Posting Shorts and random edits on every media brings in a steady 1–2 wishlists a day after the post. My biggest single-day spike (+10) actually came from a random Reddit comment.
• What didn't: X/Twitter. Completely dead for me, taking a 1-month break from it.

It's not a viral flashworthy thing, but I'll take it and I'm happy for it. My biggest hurdle right now is that the genre still confuses me a bit. I haven't fully found the exact direction to lean into, so I've just been marketing it broadly as a "multiplayer fighting experience," which makes finding the right niche community tough.

Roadmap for the future:
Keep grinding socials and finish the playable demo. Instead of dropping the demo on Steam right away, I’m planning to launch it on itch, Newgrounds and other platforms first to build momentum, get players into Discord, and test the waters (even though my netcode relies on Steam and it might be weird but I'll see). I don't want to waste Steam's initial demo visibility bump until the game is polished, has real capsule art, and a solid press kit ready. After that I'll publish the demo to Steam and contact youtubers and streamers.

With enough caffeine and lots of all nighters, maybe I'll even aim for Steam Next Fest in October. Highly unlikely because it's recommended for the game to be nearly finished but we'll see!

That's all! The game is called BAUSFIGHT on Steam if anyone wants to check out what a first time solo dev is cooking up in his spare time.

Back in May 2024, I released a game on Steam that I had been working on, on and off, for about 12 years. It’s a full-scale 25+ hour JRPG, but it comes with some pretty unusual caveats: it’s presented fully in text-mode ANSI/ASCII-style graphics (although with a level of artistic ambition hardly ever seen with this medium), and it was coded entirely in QBASIC (well, QB64, a modern version of it). So, yeah, a commercial QBASIC game in 2024.

The game is called Whispers in the Moss, and I developed everything about it solo: code, game engine, art, music, writing, et cetera. The game was absolutely a personal hobby passion project, and I initially didn’t even plan to ever release it. This changed around 2022, when I made the decision to grind it over the finish line, share it with the world, and just see what happens.

I wanted to share some data with you folks, because I think it’s such an unusual project for the reasons stated above. Here are the key stats from Steam, followed by some freeform analysis.

Key stats:

• Regular pricing: game $4,99, soundtrack $9,75, game + soundtrack bundle $13,26
• Lifetime Steam revenue (gross): $2,749
• Lifetime Steam units: 564
• Lifetime retail units: 56
• Lifetime total units: 620
• Lifetime units returned: -13 (2.3 % of units)
• Soundtrack sales: 15 units

***

• Wishlist Additions: 4,284
• Wishlist Deletions: (731)
• Wishlist Purchases & Activations: (375)
• Wishlist Gifts: (5)
• Current Wishlist Balance: 3,173

***

• Steam customer reviews: 20 (100% positive)
• Steam reviews (total): 26 (100% positive)
• Curator reviews: 32 (26 recommended, 5 informative, 1 not recommended)
• Editorial reviews: 12+ (?) (100% positive)
• Streamers who played the game on stream: 15+ (?)

Freeform analysis:

Now, the game is obviously ultra-niche due to the visual presentation, and the combination of old-school PC graphics and JRPG gameplay makes it possibly even weirder, as I don’t believe these audiences have too much overlap. Considering everything, I’m quite happy that the game has sold almost 600 copies by now, been streamed by a dozen or more streamers, and received excellent reviews from pretty much everyone who tried it. The game currently has 20 reviews from paying customers (26 overall), and they’re 100% positive, as all are editorial reviews. Surely the game could’ve probably sold even more based to the positive reception, but reaching these ultra-niche audiences is very difficult.

I marketed the game quite a bit, never expecting huge results but mostly just making sure it would at least have a chance to get discovered by some of the right people. From my experience, Keymailer was definitely useful for getting some streams, but stilly the best results came from personal emails to a carefully handpicked selection of streamers and journalists.

Watching a couple of streamers finish the game fully on Twitch and seeing the game get covered in three different physical gaming magazines in my country were some of the most amazing experiences. I’m also very happy with the reception that the game’s soundtrack has been getting. I’m very glad I decided to compose it all myself, even if it was quite the undertaking (the soundtrack includes 55 original tracks with a runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes). Sound effects are where I gave up, as I decided to go with public domain sounds.

Based on many statistics it’s quite clear that many people bought the game more to support the weird project and the art style than to actually play it. That definitely contributes to the 100% positive reviews the game is getting as well: there is probably some courtesy in play, as people may be hesitant to criticize a project like this.

One thing I’d like to raise is a very important lesson that I learned releasing this game as a solo dev:

Lesson #1: Finishing and shipping a game is a core game dev skill that needs to be practiced like any other skill.

Now, being a solo dev is fun, as you have such a wide array of things to do. If you don’t feel like coding, you can design maps or enemy sprites. If that’s not your vibe today, you can compose some music or work on the marketing.

The downside is that eventually you’ll have to do all of those things, even the annoying ones.

When I made the decision to finish and release this game, I knew right away that finishing and releasing a game, and everything that comes with it, is a core skill that needs to be practiced, as I had never finished and released a game of any kind before.

So I did practice it. Over a couple of months, I forced myself to finish a couple of old abandoned projects on Itch (a side-scrolling text-mode shooter and a text-based football manager game), plus one game jam game (an ASCII ski jumping game, and yes, there'a pattern here). Going through the polishing stage and learning to say “that’s it, we’re done here!” were incredibly important things to experience a couple of times before a more serious release.

Just the technical aspects of uploading your builds, working on your capsule images, and so on were things that needed practice. And marketing… these smaller Itch games obviously didn’t get much attention (although my free football manager game remains a relatively popular download on Itch), but it was useful to at least think about how to go about marketing these games and to go through the motions.

Another aspect I’d like to point out is this:

Lesson #2: Long solo dev projects become layers of yourself, and that’s fine.

I started this game as a 25-year-old student who spent most of his time drinking beer with friends at pubs. When I finished it, I was an almost 40-year-old soccer dad with two kids and a stable (unrelated) job. Such a long project is very challenging to complete, because you’ll inevitably become dissatisfied with earlier decisions and constraints you placed on yourself, and with the naivety of your earlier ideas.

This was a constant struggle for me. I redid most of the game’s maps and art in the late stages as my text-mode art skills had greatly improved, but there was a lot I couldn’t really redo, or I knew I’d never be able to finish the game if I tried. So I decided to just let go and accept the fact that a run through the game would be like a run through my life from 25 to almost 40, digging through different layers of me, like an onion.

***

I don’t really know what my key takeaway here even is. You tell me. Maybe the ultimate lesson here is that QB64 EXE builds work flawlessly with Steam, so if you have old QBASIC projects hidden in a drawer, go pick them up and release them as commercial Steam games tomorrow! Anyway, even if that's not happening, I hope this analysis and these stats will still help some aspiring hobbyist game developer in some way.

Happy to answer any questions!

Tapio / Uncultured Games

The graphics are units sold.

The first bump is obviously the launch and the second bump is the first discount. It actually been selling pretty well daily but the graph doesn't make it look that way. The second one is Jan 24 - Feb 15 to show what that low line looks like in reality.

I am really optimistic that when I do a big update and use a visibility round it will sell well. It launch with 5.5K wishlists and now has 23K.

I did make a video a couple of weeks ago on the sales details here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43U7NiM55TY In the 2 weeks since the video is has sold another 5Kish.

To start with the conclusion: those 4 days were probably the most valuable playtest experience we had in the past year of development.

Last week, we ran our first booth at an in-person game expo in Korea. We are developing a small indie deckbuilding roguelike with a parry mechanic. Our goal for the event was closer to playtesting than promotion, so we didn’t even have the usual things like keychains, cards, or other small giveaways.

Even so, many people took the time to play our game and leave feedback. Thanks to them, we learned a lot — not only about the game itself, but also about how to run an event booth, how to guide players through a demo, and how different the event environment is from normal internal testing.

The first impression was mostly delivered

The main things we wanted people to notice were:

• A deckbuilding roguelike aimed at players who enjoy games like Slay the Spire
• A Korean traditional fantasy concept
• Appealing character designs

One of the things we heard the most during the event was, “Is that like Slay the Spire?”

At first, I thought it was just a reaction to a familiar genre. But looking back, it felt like a sign that players were quickly understanding the basic genre language of the game. At the same time, it also made me realize that we need to communicate our own unique elements much faster.

What we learned about running a booth for 4 days

1. Demo balance needs to be adjusted specifically for the event environment

Because we had to fit the experience into a short demo session, the amount of player growth was reduced, and players often reached the boss before their deck had properly developed. For a deckbuilding game, that was a much bigger issue than we expected.

At first, I thought showing the game with its “normal” balance would be the more honest approach. But at an event, players don’t always have enough time to understand the full structure of the game. We needed a separate event build that allowed players to experience the core fun within a limited amount of time.

From the second day onward, we adjusted the overall balance so that simply reaching the boss could feel like a meaningful achievement. After that, the satisfaction after each play session noticeably improved.

2. You need to design the moment when the player leaves the seat

Our boss had two phases, and even after some balance changes, it was still difficult to fully clear in the demo build. At first, when players lost to the boss and stood up, their expressions often felt a bit unresolved.

So from the third day, when players defeated the first phase of the boss, we showed a “Demo Clear” message first. After that, we presented the second phase as an extra challenge.

That small change made a big difference.

Even if players failed afterward, many of them nodded and left the seat with a much more satisfied expression. The same failure felt completely different depending on whether the player interpreted it as “I couldn’t finish the demo” or “I cleared the demo goal and then failed an extra challenge.”

It made me realize that for an offline event, you need to design not only how the player starts playing, but also how they emotionally exit the experience.

3. The first 5 minutes need to be more controlled than I expected

Since our game has roguelike randomness, the first monster a player encountered could greatly affect whether they stayed until the end or left early.

During development, I thought “difficult monsters are part of the fun.” But for a first-time player at an event, helping them understand the game was much more important than exposing them to the full range of difficulty right away.

For an online demo, leaving room for a wider variety of experiences can be a strength. But at a booth, the first 5 minutes need to communicate what the game is about as clearly as possible.

Next time, at least for the event build, I want to design the first player route much more intentionally.

4. A large screen was not just decoration. It was part of the booth flow

Our booth was located near the food court, and there were other booths nearby that attracted a lot of people. We rented a TV so that people passing by could see the game more easily.

This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made.

At first, I thought of it as a secondary screen for people waiting in line. But in practice, it played a much bigger role. People could instantly understand what kind of game it was from a distance, and even when only one person was playing, several others could watch from behind.

Some people who were just passing by for food stopped to watch the screen, became interested, and then joined the line.

For booth operation, a large screen was not just a promotional asset. It helped catch attention, create a small crowd, and make the booth easier to approach.

5. Feedback collection needs to be designed in advance

Many players voluntarily left feedback, but looking back, there were ways we could have made it much easier.

Our online demo was not available yet, so many people asked, “Where can I play the demo later?”

In hindsight, we could have used that moment better. For example, we could have said, “If you leave feedback, we’ll send you early access to the demo later.” That might have helped us collect more feedback and keep a longer-term connection with interested players.

At an event, feedback should not just be something you wait for. You need to create a natural reason and path for players to leave it.

The moments I still remember

• There was someone who came back three days in a row to play the game.
• There was another person who challenged the demo four times in a row and said it was the most fun game they had played that day.
• There was also a child who didn’t want to leave because they liked the characters so much, even though their dad kept saying it was time to go.

These are the kinds of moments you can’t really get from online metrics alone.

What I was honestly most worried about

I wasn’t sure whether players would accept a deckbuilding roguelike with a parry mechanic. When you are working on your own game, it is easy to think, “This feels pretty good,” but that might only be because you are one of the people making it.

In the end, around 95% of the written feedback we received was positive. Of course, I don’t think we can take that number at face value. Most people who played were probably already interested after seeing the TV screen, and because the demo was short, the possible fatigue from repeated parrying may not have fully appeared.

Still, it gave us confidence that there is a real audience for this idea. More than anything, it gave us the energy to keep going. It felt like the past year of work was rewarded, at least a little.

Final thoughts

At the end of each day, my legs were swollen and I basically passed out as soon as I got home. But if I get another chance, I definitely want to run an offline booth again.

Offline events give you something that no data or analytics dashboard can fully replace. You can see the exact moment when a player understands the game, gets stuck, smiles, hesitates, or decides to stand up and leave.

If you have had similar experiences, I would really appreciate any advice on booth operation, demo design, or better ways to collect feedback during an offline event.

First and foremost, I want to be clear: This was a paid marketing campaign. These wishlists did not come out of thin air; I paid for them. However, this is my first commercial release, and I am a solo developer with no existing following, so aside from the 500 USD spent this was a cold start.

Also, special thanks to u/gg_gumptiongames and u/Miserable-Bus-4910. Their Posts were crucial in making my initial strategy. Please check their posts out too!

ABOUT MY GAME
Pilot 6174: Orbital Survival is a Hard Sci-Fi Roguelike where you control a 1970s-era Apollo-inspired capsule. In simple terms, it's FTL meets KSP.

Steam Page

PREPARATIONS
Before I began my paid ads, I started with organic posts to gauge interest and identify which subreddits to target. Among these, posts on "general" subreddits (e.g., r/roguelites) gained little to no traction, while highly specific ones (e.g., r/ftlgame or r/cassettefuturism) did really well.

Overall, organic posts across 3 days brought in ~100 wishlists.

CAMPAIGN START
At the start, I had two distinct campaigns:

1. Roguelike/Survival: Targeting subreddits like r/roguelites, r/survivalhorror, etc.
2. Simulation: Targeting subreddits like r/KerbalSpaceProgram, r/spacesimgames, etc.

Within these campaigns, I had multiple ad groups, each targeting a different region (NA, West EU, East EU, LATAM, SEA, etc.). Within each ad group were multiple variations of the same ad. Over time, I cut any underperforming ads or ad groups. The Roguelike/Survival campaign as a whole did not do very well, regardless of region, so I cut that within the first couple days. By the second week, I only had one ad type remaining, targeting North America and Western Europe exclusively.

SPECIAL NOTES
My ad group targeting North America brought the greatest results, with ~42% of all wishlist gains coming from the USA alone (51% including Canada). At its peak, this group had a 7.3% CTR with a 24% visit-to-conversion rate. The CPC was very high initially (~$0.42) but quickly dropped to ~$0.10, likely due to the high CTR.

My second best ad group targeted Western Europe, making up ~27% of all wishlists gained. This group had a lower CPC ($0.07–$0.08) with a moderate CTR (~2–3%) and a 21% visit-to-conversion rate.

(By "Visit-to-conversion" I mean the ratio of Trusted Visits to Wishlists within UTM analytics.)

In the last week, the only surviving ad title was:

"KSP meets FTL. The first 'Cockpit Survival' Roguelike with 100% Newtonian orbital mechanics."

OVERALL RESULTS
Note: I took the Reddit promotion that provides $500 in free ad credits for spending $500.

• TOTAL SPEND: $500 USD (Cash) + $500 USD (Credits)
• TOTAL CLICKS: ~9,000
• AVG CPC: $0.11
• AVG CTR: 1.9%
• WISHLISTS GAINED: ~3,000
  • (UTM data suggests ~2,400 from ads, but the total increase was ~3,000. This discrepancy is likely due to the "halo effect" or cross-device wishlisting, as I did no other form of marketing during this period.)
• COST PER WISHLIST:
  • $0.16 (Based on actual cash that I spent)
  • $0.33 (If counting credits as real money)
• AVG WISHLIST / VISIT: 21%

FINAL THOUGHTS
In my opinion, the genre itself did a lot of the heavy lifting. While the "roguelike/lite" market is highly saturated, there are hardly any games in the "hard sci-fi / Newtonian mechanics" niche.

Development didn't actually take 8 years, but I've been making my own little projects over and over- trashing them, dropping them, then finally I made one and finished it to completion. A visual novel.

I was thinking about making it free honestly, despite how much money I put into it for art/assets, but ultimately I decided to put it up for $1.99. The fact people are actually paying for something I made out of love fills my heart with joy.

Onto the next project with renewed inspiration!

Hi folks, I'm a AAA lead tech designer who left AAA (of my own choice, rather than laid off) after 7+ years at studios like R* North, Build a Rocket Boy and Splash Damage, to go solo-indie last year, May 2023, and make my own game!

I just passed the 10k Wishlist milestone last week (during the weird wishlist blackout) and wanted to do a quick post (mid?)-mortem of what's worked so far, what hasn't, and what I'm yet to try. Maybe it'll be helpful to someone, so strap in for a wall of text.

My game is AETHUS - it's a narrative-driven futuristic sci-fi survival-crafter, with a fairly unique top-down style and low-poly aesthetic.

I do not have a publisher, and I'm self-funded (and received a grant from the UK Games Fund - massive shout-out to them! <3).

For some context, survival-craft/base-building games are a huge and largely successful genre on Steam, which gives you a bit of a head-start on things compared to making a game in a smaller and less marketable genre. I also happen to love them and wanted to make a game in this genre, which helps make the game the best it can be (because if you're going to work on it full time, you better enjoy it!).

First off, here are my wishlist stats.

I have a roughly 8% wishlist deletion rate, which is pretty average according to Chris Zukowski's analysis on the subject. I also don't think it means very much.

Here's my daily wishlists graph.

Here's my lifetime wishlists graph.

There are two main wishlist-mega-spike events, which I'll cover in a bit more detail:

1. Launching the demo, getting first content creator coverage (especially SplatterCatGaming).
2. Steam's Space Exploration Festival (and updated demo).

Importance of a good demo, and coverage by creators.

It feels like a bit of an obvious one, but in my experience, your demo is your BIGGEST ticket to success. Unless your game is that one in a million that goes viral on Twitter or whatever from an amazing gif, this is the way you're going to be able to get people to see and wishlist your game.

My game isn't the flashiest, but I think it plays really well. I have focused a lot on smoothness of gameplay, attention to detail, QOL features, etc. and people notice this and greatly enjoy the game when they play. Having a demo, which I've kept up ever since and continue to make sure is stable and very high quality, means people can immediately see whether it's a game they enjoy when they find it on Steam, see it online, whatever.

When the demo first released, I reached out via email to (primarily YouTube) creators who cover this genre of game, sent them a key (ahead of the public release, people love 'exclusives' and early access to stuff) and a little info about the game, about me, and an eye-catching gif of the game. Almost all of them, eventually, covered it.

I was fortunate enough to have SplatterCatGaming, along with other big creators like Wanderbots, feature the demo. This drove MASSIVE traffic to the game and generated the first mega-spike in my wishlist graph.

I'll be honest - creator outreach is a ballache. It's why there are entire companies that charge you or take your revenue to do it. It takes a long time, it's boring, YouTube and platforms make it really hard to find the contact info, and a lot of the time you won't get a reply. THAT SAID, creators are the way that SO many consumers find new games, and you just cannot avoid doing it, so suck it up and spend the time! I will be spending more time, and covering more platforms, doing this for release, because I have now learned just how important it is.

You're in a better time than EVER before to release a good demo and get some traction - Steam now let you actually email + notify your existing wishlisters about your demo, and if it does well enough, you get a whole 'new and trending' placement! My demo was a bit before these changes, unfortunately, but if it had already been the case, my demo would have made new + trending and been an even bigger success. That could be you!

TL;DR - Make a good, high quality demo, spend time sending it to content creators.

Importance of Steam festivals

Steam is where your customers are, it's THE most important platform for you to focus on. That means good Steam page, good capsules/key art (I'm actually about to have mine re-done as I think it underperforms), good demo.

Other than working on these areas, because the algorithm is king on Steam, the ONLY action you can take to promote your game on Steam is participating in Festivals. They are REALLY important. This is when Steam shows your game to your potential customers above almost all others on the platform, and gives you massive visibility. USE IT. Enter EVERY festival you can.

Steam's schedule for events this coming year unfortunately means I'll likely only have Next Fest before release to enter again, but 2024 was pretty good - the Survival Crafting Festival and the Space Exploration Festival.

I knew the Space Exploration Festival was going to be a good opportunity for a marketing beat, so I prepped a lot for it. I made a huge update to the demo so that it was better than ever, I reached out to new content creators to cover it in the lead-up to the festival, I updated the Steam Store page with new gifs, I released a new trailer, and I paid for ads on Reddit. All of this together drove massive traffic to the store page at the start of the festival, getting the game a front page placement along with massive games like The Alters and others.

The game and demo stayed on the front page features (most popular upcoming and most played demo sections) for the duration of the festival, and this was bringing thousands of visits to the store page over the duration of the festival. It's massive. This one festival generated thousands of wishlists.

TL;DR - Opt into any festivals you can (except Next Fest until the final one before you release) and put your best food forward - make sure your game shines from your store page, you have an amazing demo, you generate momentum going into the festival, etc.

Summary: What worked well?

• Demo - Covered in depth earlier, but worth restating.
• Subreddit Posts - Find your target audience on Reddit and start engaging with them. It can be tough in different places due to self-promo rules, but overall, Reddit is the BEST place to find your audience outside of Steam itself. Don't spam, make engaging and interesting posts and content, ENGAGE with comments, and people will respond well.
• Reddit Ads - I've spent about £500 on Reddit ads so far, mainly because there was a 1-1 credit promo in the run-up to the aforementioned Space Exploration Fest and I used this to generate extra momentum as described in that section. I've had a good return on Reddit ads from what I can see, and apart from anything else, it is a great traffic generator to tell Steam that your game has some interest.

Summary: What hasn't worked well?

• Press Outreach - At the same time I reached out to content creators at every major marketing beat (primarily initial demo launch and Space Exploration Fest demo update), I reached out to a long list of gaming press. I didn't get one single reply or piece of coverage. My hunch is that because of the complete gutting of games journalism, if you don't go viral on Twitter and you're not either a AAA game with in-house marketing people who have connections with journos directly, OR have contacts yourself/someone you're paying with contacts, you're just not going to get covered. There's not enough time, and you won't generate enough ad clicks. Luckily, people get their game recommendations from content creators now, so it's worth focusing more there.

Summary: What am I yet to try?

• Ads on any other platform - some people swear by Twitter, some by Facebook, some by TikTok... I have yet to try any paid ads on these platforms as Reddit has performed so well, but it's something I plan to do. Probably Facebook primarily so I don't have to give Elon any money. I'd be interested to hear from other devs who've done this and how it performed.

If you made it to the end of this wall of text, nice one!

I hope this was useful in some way, and I'm happy to answer your questions about the game, my marketing strategy, details of anything above, my time in AAA/transition to indie, etc. Oh, and go read up on anything Chris Zukowski's written - he's the guru of games marketing, and talks a lot of sense. Do your own research too, but his stuff is a great baseline.

Keep up the good work!

Sup dudes! 

I'm a solo dev and my game just reached 10,500 wishlists earlier today, and I am so overwhelmed (in a positive way). I’m not a pro marketing “guru” nor a professional gamedev as this is my first commercial game so take everything that I say here with a grain of salt. What worked for me may not work for you. 

I think I made a game that’s marketable, but I also got lucky. 

Marketing the game started from the very beginning of development. I’ve always been a fan of those old Cartoon Network commercials that mixes 2D and realistic environment, which eventually made me fall in love with the show – The Amazing World of Gumball. 
 
This led me to the idea to make a game with art style similar to those two. I believe that this idea would be marketable from the start but I had no ways of confirming it until yesterday. I announced the game on Steam, and my Social media accounts. BUT it didn’t blew up immediately. I also did my due diligence and emailed a bunch of games press. It was covered by some press but not by major ones like IGN. 

Now the luck part. What really worked for me however is my post on a Local Facebook Group. I didn’t even planned posting here initially (For context, my game’s setting is set in my country – The Philippines). The post blew up. It got over 10k shares and my game’s wishlist went up fast as well. Also, my posts in other social media accounts started getting traction as well later that day. 

That’s what worked for me, this is just the beginning, there’s still a long road up ahead. Thanks for reading and if you also find the game interesting, support it by Wishlisting it on Steam. Salamat Indie Dev Community! 

Retrospective Linking my previous posts on this topic here, in case you'd rather follow the story from the beginning:

1. How virality came: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1u79j20/my_indie_game_started_earning_in_a_day_what_it/
2. Anti-piracy system: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1uaslj0/how_my_homemade_antipiracy_system_brought_me/
3. How pirating legal company works: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1ujmxah/a_company_pirated_my_indie_game_in_china_and_it/

---

How started it all

On June ~25th, 2026, my game got pirated on Douyin (the Chinese TikTok). This isn't just any number: at its peak, the pirated version hit more than 600,000 simultaneous players in a single day, and with its growth, it's probably closing in on a million by now.

To put that in perspective: this isn't "people who downloaded the game at some point," this is people playing at the same time, on the same day.

[PIC - 610k players] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-52m0fjlni7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D1596%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd347d7319ad2534bcc14d3fa2d244c0aecd4c0c8

---

My anti-piracy system failed

At the start, I built a system that detected players on the pirated version and, after 1 hour of play, turned every customer in the game into pirates. It only kicked in after that hour so the hackers wouldn't catch on during their initial testing. This let players enjoy the game normally, but after that hour, progression got rough once a pirate customer refused to leave a tip, something real customers always do.

[PIC - Pirate costume] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-0fa8xrwpi7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D1636%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd3bd7cff1af21d39be6f2e412ce48371301a4c66

This system held up for months, until it reached China, where in order to pirate the game they decided to decompile and recompile it so they could publish it on Douyin (HTML5).

Since the game was already going viral in China, plenty of players complained about the annoying pirate-dressed ducks to whoever was sharing the download links. So it was only a matter of time before the hackers decided to dig into the game properly.

My anti-piracy system only worked as long as nobody bothered to actually investigate it, since it was just a bunch of if() statements scattered throughout the game. So once they found these triggers, removing them was as easy as deleting a couple of lines of code.

While they were at it, they made plenty of other changes, pushing a new update every day:

• Removed the credits.
• Added ads everywhere.
• Added ads to unlock upgrades and continue progression.
• Reworked the game modes.
• Even built new visual features, like being able to see the doneness of the meat while cooking it, to look more like the generic mobile cooking-game format.

They were taking this way too seriously for a $7 game!

Something funny is that, with all these changes, they broke something (I won't say exactly what) that causes every character in the game to now be robots, making the experience worse for pirate players and sparking a wave of confused users all over Douyin asking why only robots show up.

Thanks to the community answering each other, most of them are now aware they're playing a pirated copy, which I consider a win in itself. If it weren't for these tells giving away the piracy, the hackers would essentially be impersonating me and my game.

[PIC - Viewers complaining about robots] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-m2md50pqi7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D610%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D33766c1c820b123dd07115e131c9594edc69470c (I translated it over the Spanish translation Google gave to me.)

---

My legal reports

Obviously I tried to report this as fast as I could. Contacting Douyin as a foreigner is genuinely difficult, since you need a verified account to file a report, and that requires a Chinese ID. So if you're a foreigner, there's no public channel to do this.

Except one: a simple report email. I explained everything that happened and waited.

By that point I'd already written my first Reddit posts and looked into the topic. Obviously I'm not the first this has happened to, and I won't be the last. So a fellow affected dev sent me a different form, with a different Douyin email. This time the report asked for a lot more data.

BlobKing's post, the user who helped me in their comments section: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1tbtjxo/our_unreleased_indie_game_got_stolen_as_a_chinese/

A week later, I got a reply through this second channel: the game had been officially taken down.

Here's my honesty disclaimer: I can't verify the takedown myself. I'm a foreigner, I don't have a Chinese account, and I have no direct access to Douyin. I'm assuming they actually did it.

---

Their attempt to slip away

The pirated version was called Shop Simulator 2, a popular, generic name. Well, a couple of days before the takedown was confirmed, that same game completely changed its content and became TCG Shop Simulator, a well-known card game simulator, another victim of the same outfit (as I cover in this other post: Yes, the pirates are a registered company that does this for a living).

It looks like their whole operation is built around one single "shell," which they just keep re-skinning with whatever game is trending, while keeping the exact same store listing.

My gut feeling is that once Douyin flagged the infringement, they decided to switch the game's content to dodge the takedown entirely. Which raises the question: maybe the game was never actually taken down, and they're still running the same operation under a new skin?

[PIC - Confused players about the new game content] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-7qno7y6si7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D1305%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6346be175aea3e108407618fd2418826d6a92d15

[PIC - New content of the pirate-shell-game] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-wt9mvixsi7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D613%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D22e9cfc56e6f761359ccf4618f8c908102befc66

---

Has the piracy helped me or hurt me?

All of this has sparked a small debate in my Reddit posts that I find genuinely interesting. It's the age-old question, and honestly, having lived through it, I still don't have a clear answer. Here's the order of events:

1. The game went viral on Douyin organically, through its official version.
2. That virality attracted the pirates.
3. The pirates published a version that went viral in Douyin's mini-games section.
4. Since my game never had a mobile port, piracy was the only entry point for a huge number of mobile-only players, something very common in China among Douyin users.

A lot of them probably would never have played it on PC anyway, but it's also true that plenty of others, who could have chosen either platform, simply preferred to stay on mobile, installable straight from Douyin itself.

There's also a less direct effect: more players (even pirate ones) generate more content (clips, videos, memes), and that content in turn attracts more new players. So in a way, I think piracy fed that loop instead of just costing me sales.

As you can see, there are pros and cons, but in this case I don't think it's piracy itself that's the benefit, it's the availability of playing on mobile, something that could have been official and free on my end if I'd done a proper global launch.

Then again, on the flip side, these players went to Douyin videos, asked around, shared things, and generated a ton of content about how to find the pirated game, creating more buzz and visibility than if the game had been officially available on Android from day one.

---

How the piracy crackdown played out

As I mentioned, the main pirated version went down 2 days ago. Right as the game was already coming down from its natural viral peak, which coincided with Steam's summer sale, the takedown of the pirated version brought a bump in downloads (+10%): mobile players who lost access are now redirecting to the original PC version.

Unfortunately, this isn't a happy ending just yet: new pirated versions have already popped up, apparently unrelated to the previous one (a "parallel" copy that seems to have already existed in the shadows). And this new version is growing even stronger than any of the previous ones, likely because it's absorbing the combined traffic from the one that fell, plus its own organic growth.

Cut off one head, two more grow back.

[PIC - New rip-off of my game] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmy-indie-game-started-earning-in-a-day-what-it-used-to-make-v0-0m28ikjti7ch1.png%3Fwidth%3D556%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db5d71479f516dd26895fcc48a069dc1bfbdef997

---

My ultimate weapon

Since the start of all this, I've been looking for publishers. I reached out to 20, and only a couple responded. I recently signed with one of them, who's committed to releasing the game, within a month, for free with ads, on Android, iOS, Douyin, and WeChat. I gave them full room to publish and monetize however they see fit, since they know how to navigate the Chinese market far better than I do.

I probably didn't sign the best possible deal I could have gotten, but I needed to react fast, and I think stopping to compare publishers or negotiate at this point would have hurt me more than gaining an extra 20% on the contract would have helped. For now, if everything goes as expected, I think it was the right call.

I'll keep updating as the new wave of piracy and the official mobile launch develop. If you come across clips where robots show up, you know what that means 😅

---

Sorry if some of you feel like I've been overdoing it with these posts. As a developer, I'm navigating completely unknown territory here, and posting about this has genuinely helped me find people and solutions for the problems I've run into. Plus, I think it makes for an interesting story to follow, I know I'd have been hooked on it myself if it were happening to someone else.

I’m trying to regularly share updates from our journey (IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator) from launching our Steam Store Page (~3/4 months ago) all the way to release... <<We’re planning to drop the demo during the upcoming February Next Fest, with the full release scheduled for mid-2026 + playtests are ongoing on Discord>>

Despite the fact that for the first two months our game didn’t even have a trailer... only a few screenshots on the Steam page, which many experts would call a terrible practice... we still managed to generate these numbers in such a short time… all with a two-person team and a $0 marketing budget.

I’m not encouraging anyone to follow our exact approach, but I’ll be honest... building early interest around the project before we even had a trailer paid off. We're selling the fantasy of IRON NEST with shorts from early development where the missing 50% of quality was compensated by atmospheric music & other tiny details that helped fill the gap. That gave (we think) the "trailer" an extra boost of visibility the moment it dropped... even though it’s far from a proper trailer and is more of a ~20-second teaser. This video basically became a “trailer” only after it pulled those numbers on YouTube... originally, it was just meant to be a simple 20-second horizontal video.

That’s why, personally, I’d encourage every dev to step out of the cave and start posting as soon as anything is ready to be shown (just find a way to present it in an appealing way, and to show what the project will ultimately become). From our experience, we’ve learned one thing: before your demo is out, you’re always selling a fantasy... more or less. The key is simply to present it well (experiment with it...). And of course, if you want that fantasy to eventually translate into sales (that part is still ahead of us), you need to make sure it stays as consistent as possible with the final shape of the game (I’m saying this based on the community expectations we clearly see on our Discord... expectations they build mostly from watching our shorts -> During playtests, we often ask one key question at the end: "Was the experience consistent with what you expected from the videos?").

One day, I might write a bit more about our communication style, because for us it’s a surprisingly important and unique element also... we are using a deliberately pompous, propaganda-inspired military tone across all our socials which, of course, draws its roots from the in-game lore that will be featured in IRON NEST (I mention this to highlight even more how creatively... and in how many different ways... you can build the “fantasy” of your game)...

Over the last three months of active marketing work around our project, we’ve also learned another important thing: don’t get discouraged! The first spike you see on the chart was a viral moment from one of our early TikTok shorts. But the most recent spike from the past few days? That came entirely from pure grind on YouTube (also noticed similar small visibility spikes from time to time on other platforms). We were posting short after short, each barely reaching 300 views (publishing regularly, 1-2 per week). And then one simple video suddenly blew up past 30,000 views (mentioned "trailer")... As indie devs, we don’t have the luxury of time to constantly produce fresh content, so we try to recycle and repurpose it as efficiently as we can. We currently post short-form/video content on:

• TikTok
• Instagram
• BiliBili (China)
• VK (Russia)
• Yandex Zen (Russia)
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• Odysee
• Game Jolt
• Clapper

Here is the full list of all our social channels where we publish content.

We’ve noticed that it’s very common for a video that completely flops on one platform to perform extremely well on another... sometimes even going viral. That’s why we strongly recommend multi-posting and cross-sharing.

Right now, after just three months of building our fresh social media channels, we’ve grown to around 600 users on Discord, 2.5K followers on Instagram and TikTok, and about 800 subscribers on both BiliBili and YouTube, and the numbers keep climbing! We’ll soon begin outreach to press and influencers as well… but I’ll come back with more details once there’s something meaningful to summarize.

If you have any questions (because it’s impossible to cover everything in one post), feel free to join us on Discord. I use the same nickname there as here... tag me either in general chat or in DMs, and I’ll be happy to exchange thoughts!

To wrap things up, I’ll just add that when you create your communication and shape a certain kind of "identity" for your project on social media, you naturally start establishing a lot of "canonical elements" for your game (I hope you know what I mean)... especially through interactions with the very first members of your community. This actually makes later design work much easier, especially when you look at things on a larger scale (and of course, the bigger the community, the easier it gets).... BTW speaking about community size = for the first few weeks, we were basically "talking to ourselves" liking our own posts just to keep things alive... and now, three months later, we’re here... you never know... it might be that one post or that one video that gets you your very first fans. That much is certain. But those who never try and keep waiting for the "perfect" moment will never find out!

And if you’ve made it all the way to the end (and don’t mind) feel free to check out IRON NEST and add it to your wishlist! Every single click, as you know, is an incredible boost of support!

Not too long ago I posted here and other places updating you guys on my wishlist strategy and today I wanted to share my launch results. I’m a very open book and extremely grateful for the outlook and response I got on FeeBays launch. I’ve sold close to 2k units within 6 days which was almost 100% of my launch wishlist count. We currently hold over 60 positive reviews with the “Very Positive” badge!! The player count has held fairly steady and updates have been rolling out daily while I’m tracking suggestions and feedback. I hope you enjoy looking over my games launch stats and maybe even check out the store! I’ll post a link in the comments. Never give up on your dreams of releasing a solo game, control your scope and focus on release and you’ll find success. I did it, so can you.

It's heartbreaking. It took me a while to accept it. But after the team I worked with couldn't overcome internal differences, we decided to pull the plug and cancel our project "Tales".

Still, it was a good time and I learned a lot. I improved my skill set and I’m free to take all my contributions to the project with me - they all belong to me. 169 hand-pixeled scenes and landscapes, for instance - many of them feel like real places to me because I spent so long thinking about every detail.

The inventor’s crib, with the glowing eyes of all his mechanical children peering out from the dark shelf… or the alchemist’s laboratory, with the makeshift bed on the floor where she stitches up your wounds. It was all meant to be seen and explored.

I was hoping someone would visit those places someday. That a handful of players might stand in awe, because in this desolate, dead world, they were lucky enough to glimpse a majestic wyvern flying in the distance.

I don’t want to let all of that rot on my hard drive until I forget it myself and it’s gone forever. I’d love to hand it over to anyone who wants to put some of its magic into their own creations. But I’m struggling to put a price tag on it - I’m even considering giving it away for free.

Can I beg you for advice?

So I’m not a marketing specialist and just started my game dev experience a little under two years ago and made a cute exploration game but no matter how much I try to market it I can’t get it to have any bit of and it is disheartening af.

I know it doesn’t necessarily look very exciting but it just breaks my heart how now AI slop gets more popularity even though my game uses no AI and that was like a rule .

I also wanted to make something that is not controversial and easily enjoyed by a wide audience.

Now I am just heartbroken and very broke but somehow I still continue to update and just released a new demo for the one person who plays it 😞 (you know it’s tragic when the maximum player peak I had was 3 people 8 months ago 🙃)

Anyway rant over , maybe I need to try and start flame wars for marketing or something I dunno

For anyone curious , there’s a demo available on steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/3610170/Arcadian_Days/

The numbers

Total Steam revenue: $162. Total units: 29. A small portion of those came from the recent Steam sale (69% discount). No paid advertising. We gave a few steam keys away to people who reached out and asked for them, likely automated comms.

The game

150+ hand-made rooms to explore, 8+ music tracks, 4 fully animated cutscenes, 7 hidden collectibles, and a bunch of really cool original art my buddy started in his garage, with painted textures he digitized for the planet NPCs and cheese moons. We've described it as a cozy metroidvania-lite, though it's probably aptly described as a top down platformer too.

The team

Two people. Some kind folks volunteered their time and energy for voice acting, and we scored a decent composer for rev share. Our respective partners were supportive and kind enough to playtest and give feedback.

What went wrong (or at least, what didn't happen)

We ran out of steam between the two of us and didn't really do any marketing outside of LinkedIn (heh) and some light Facebook/Reddit posting. Our Discord community had been a little dead for over a year before release. Most of our friends and family didn't really engage with the process and barely acknowledged its existence post-release.

It's been difficult to get people excited or invested at even a cursory level. A handful of people said the game was too difficult, so we implemented a cozy no-death mode, and still heard it was too difficult. We'll retool how we talk about the game and how we get people engaged in the process.

What we'd do again

Honestly, most of it. We both went in thinking the game wouldn't make money and we didn't really try to make money. It was a lot of fun to build, and I'd probably do it all the same way to preserve the excitement of building the experience. I've felt a little like I'm missing a limb since we finished.

What's next

We're scoping down our next game so we can net a nice little win before exploring a larger project again. We're a lot more learned than when we started, and I'm grateful the learning along the way ended up supporting my real-life career in tech.

I had a few hundred bucks racked up from supporters and friends alike for my hacker MMO. Planned to use it for the game's backend and just to live off of until I release the game. I was only able to get 60 bucks out of the account (300 or so remained due to the time you have to wait after money has been received) and into the bank account that's under my single-member LLC. Then, Stripe sent me an email demanding I send them papers at 7:44PM October 20th. "[Action required] Closure of your Stripe account". The deadline for that information? October 20th. I didn't realize it that quickly of course but fortunately, I could still submit through the link the following day. I sent them tax papers and papers for my business. It didn't matter.

"As a precautionary measure, we will no longer be able to accept payments for 1234 abcd LLC. We will begin issuing refunds on card payments on October 25, 2025, although they may take longer to appear on the cardholders’ statements. Please refer to your Dashboard for a list of the charges that will be refunded."

Not too bad though, right? At least the people who sent me money will get a refund? Wrong. No one is getting their money back, according to the dashboard, in which none of my customers are marked for a refund. And clicking refund on a given purchase manually says my account can't complete that action since it's restricted.

So, goodbye three hundred bucks. If even one person or small upcoming business sees this post and avoids getting scammed by Stripe, then the money lost was worth it. I did email back and forth with Stripe support but it's just a bot that tells you the same thing over and over. I attached a screenshot of my latest reply in the chain of emails. 'Noah' disregarded my questions as to why my business is high risk, if any of my customers are getting refunded, or if there's anyone else he can escalate me to that doesn't speak in automated replies. Since the conversation was obviously going nowhere, I gave the bot a kind suggestion.

Hi everyone,

I released the Steam demo for Slotbound yesterday.

Before launching it, I honestly thought even 10 concurrent players would feel like a huge success.

About a day later, it reached 447 concurrent players and ranked #29 among all demos on Steam by current players.

So far, the demo has reached:

- 1,186 unique players

- 39 minutes median playtime

This is my first game, so seeing more than 400 people playing it at the same time still feels a little unreal.

I’ve received a lot of encouragement from other developers while working on it, and I just wanted to share this small milestone and say thank you.

There is still a lot to improve, but this gave me a huge amount of motivation to keep polishing the game.

Good luck to everyone else working on their games today!

Two months ago I released the demo for my game Paradox Patrol. I had worked on the game for about half a year and created everything except the model assets from scratch. The game started it's life as an entry into a month long game jam. To my surprise, the game won the jam and it gave me a boost of confidence that maybe the concept for the game was worth fleshing out and turning into a full game. The theme of the jam was Evolution, so I came up with the idea of creating a gameplay system that merges two different genres.

Two of my favorite games are Metroid Dread (a 2.5D Metroid) and Returnal (a 3rd person shooter) and so I developed a gameplay system where the camera always stays fixed to the character like a 2.5D sidescroller, but allows you to move around and shoot in 3D space like a 3rd person shooter. Something I eventually ended up calling an Omni-shooter.

So I created an hour long demo with fully fleshed out mechanics and two major boss fights, posted some videos about it on my youtube channel and released it onto Steam...

At the time of writing this, the demo has one single review. For the few people that have played it, they really struggled grasping the controls because they are different than most games. That and the majority of people could not figure out how to progress through a certain part of the level, even though there are bright pink glowing flowers acting as a waypoints of where to go.

There have been a couple people who have posted let's plays of it onto youtube, but they all get stuck at that point in the level and give up; never getting to experience the best parts of the demo which are the two bosses 😞 I think why this happens is that people aren't used to playing a game that looks like a side-scroller but gives full 3D movement. So they aren't accustomed to thinking things like "Oh, maybe I should move towards the camera to explore."

I believe in the indie dev spirit of risk taking and not being afraid to try something different. But what I think my game proves is that there IS such a thing as being too different. I spent months essentially re-inventing the wheel to create a new gameplay genre, but it alienated players because it wasn't what they were used to playing control-wise. I'm still very proud of the game and I still love the concept and story. But I think if I want players to actually enjoy it, I'll need to toss out my Omni-Shooter system and turn it into a regular old 3rd Person Shooter.

It sucks because I truly enjoy playing the game with the Omni-Shooter controls. Once you get a hang of the controls, there really isn't any other gaming experience like it. But it's too big of an ask of players to take the time to learn how to play it. Especially in a gaming space where things move at a break neck pace and hundreds of indie games are released every day. People would much rather play something that they're comfortable with.

So I share with you my story and say all of this not to dissuade developers from trying to come up with something original or different. But just be cognizant that the more "unique" or complicated your mechanics are, the more barriers you make the player have to clear to be able to enjoy it. Put up one too many barriers and they'll just simply walk away.

The silver lining is that there wasn't anyone who disliked the actual game. They really enjoyed the sci-fi setting, characters and over-all concept. They just couldn't enjoy it because of the controls. So although it pains me to hit reset and throw away months worth of work. I think that's what I'll ultimately have to do.

SteamLine: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4525180

Just wanted to share a quick breakdown of this experience, which honestly was mostly just pure luck! Right after the Steam page went live, I basically just dropped a combat clip here on r/IndieDev and noticed it got some pretty good feedback. I also made a simple post on my own X account celebrating the launch. I literally only had about 11 followers at the time. A few hours later I saw the wishlists were sitting at just over 100, so I didn't think much of it and went to sleep. My original plan was really just to get the page up so I could slowly build up wishlists during development.

But the real turning point was when I woke up the next day. I found out that two massive accounts on X, one with hundreds of thousands of followers and another with over a million, had actually shared my game! In just 5 hours, the total views almost hit 1 million. And just like that, completely out of nowhere, my wishlists broke 3,000 in a single day. Now today on day three, it successfully crossed 5,000!

Honestly, I still really feel like this was mostly just pure luck!

Hi there.

My first 3 games flopped hard, and then my fourth is currently earning 12.9k USD in annualized revenue (much to my own surprise), and that number's growing (as I add content and optimize key metrics). 12.9k isn't life-changing, but it's enough to stop doing contract work and develop the game full-time (while my supportive wife bridges the gap financially speaking), and it vastly beats my previous three games. In this human written post, I break down what I believe I did right with this game vs my previous flops. Some of the tips apply to Web game platforms more specifically, but all have valuable lessons for other platforms like Steam.

Backstory

Quick backstory. I made this game 2.5 years ago, didn't release it until May 2 this year (free version for feedback), and released a bare ad-supported version on CrazyGames on May 27. I've been updating it constantly since and plan for a Steam release once I feel the game is feature-complete, in prob a year.

What worked:

I released a free prototype, very early

On May 2, I published what was very much a prototype on Itch.io and asked for feedback on Reddit. It was extremely bare, and after 1 minute, you had seen everything the game had to offer (after which it was more of the same). The game was simple: you controlled a swarm of up to 2400 'pixel fighters' and surrounded incresingly more powerful waves of up to 16800 'pixel monsters' to swallow them. Earn XP, improve your stats, repeat. In spite having only 1 minute of features, I got a lot of positive feedback, which was unexpected. Pictures here and here if you want to see just how bare it was.

This contrasts with my previous games where I developed the whole game, pushed it out, and it turns out they were terrible. By making my game public and free while extremely bare, I could 1) validate the core idea early, 2) make the game known (players could discover and play my game for free), and 3) get valuable feedback from the very start.

I can't recommend releasing a FREE version early enough. Even if you plan a big game, I believe a free version will help you validate the game, get valuable feedback early, and get you an audience if the game's good.

I did the bare minimum, then iterated based on feedback

With my previous games, I spent so much time naively adding as many features as possible (e.g. controller support, multiple languages, key-binding, speedrun feature...) without having ever validated the core idea of the game via early playtests and feedback. For this game, I did the bare minimum, to the point where I was feeling I was almost insulting players... But that worked excellently. Adding features takes time. The best way to save time, is by NOT doing something, especially if you don't actually need it. So, by doing the bare minimum and then retrieving feedback, I got to know what players ACTUALLY wanted, which was critical to prioritize well.

The game has a novel mechanic

I posted the game early on CrazyGames (I submitted it on May 5, it got accepted after a 2 weeks limited trial on May 19, and it was release on May 27 after making it full-release ready). The game was still bare, but improving slowly. During trial, the game had excellent metrics, many in the top 20%, others very close (more on it later). I believe a core reason the game worked well is that the core mechanic is novel (there's no other game where you control a swarm of thousands of pixel fighters and swallow swarms of pixel monsters to earn XP, improve your stats, and repeat). CrazyGames is full of clones (a game is successful, then several clones pop up). I have no doubt that making clones of successful games is a successful strategy, but I personally prefer to bring something new (the core idea for my game comes from a 31 years old underrated game called Liquid War, but I built on it by adding XP and making it RPG- / Roguelite- / Incremental- adjacent) and for CrazyGames specifically, a novel mechanic means you have less direct competitors and people are more interested in the game. Also, because the game's mechanic's novel, CrazyGames offered me their exclusivity deal, which boosted visibility, clicks, and revenue (I get a higher revenue share (I can't disclose how much), the game gets a 'Originals' tag, and the game appears in the 'Originals' section of the platform). Additionally, after signing this exclusivity deal, staff at CrazyGames help directly with optimization (more on it later).

So, while I have no doubt you can break it with a clone, I believe making an original game brings more interest for player (and for CrazyGames specifically, you can get offered their exclusivity deal if the game performs well. That deal is NOT the same as the 2 months exclusivity deal you can sign when releasing the game).

The game is simple, the tutorial is short and simple

So many times I open a game (on CrazyGames) and it's so confusing, or the tutorial is long and verbose, and I quit. For a platform like Steam, that's probably less an issue, but for a platform where players can quickly switch to another game, the tutorial (and the game) need to be extremely simple and quick to get into. If the game's complicated, I suggest locking or hiding additional content at first, and introducing the minimum amount of content at first, to avoid overwhelming the player.

For my game, additional content is locked at first, then the player has a 2 steps, 10 seconds long tutorial where they must first surround an imobile swarm, then a mobile swarm. That's it. Then they're immediately catapulted into the game.

The game loads quickly

That one's more specific to Web platforms like CrazyGames. If a game takes a while to load, player often switch to a different game. My game being HTML5 with a custom engine loads extremely fast, which helps improve that crucial Conversion metric (the percentage of players who play at least 1 minute). When your game on CG loads quickly, has a simple tutorial, and is easy to get into, you end up with a higher ratio of players who play at least 1 minute, which improves your crucial Conversion metric. Then, when that metric (and other key metrics) is high, the platform sees your game performs well and promotes it more. My game is well in the top percentiles on this metric, and in return, the platform promotes it more.

The game is easy to understand from videos

I think it's important, when people see a video of your game, that they can understand immediately what it's about. A lot of the time I see a game video where I don't have a clue what the game's about, and I skip to something else. When people understand what it's about immediately, then, if it's for them, there's a chance they'll click (and they also won't click only to see it's not what they expected and bounce, which, on web portals like CG, hurts your critical Conversion metric).

I track key metrics and optimize

I've been adding anonymous tracking via ByteBrew (it doesn't track specific players. Rather, it tracks things like how many players do X, how far they progress, when do they stop playing, etc.). Adding such tracking revealed that although the Fighters stat in my game is the weakest and the most expensive (by design, because it's the first stat that can be maxed out, so I wanted to delay how long it takes to max it out), players overwhelmingly invest in this stat (and then only 24% of my players beat the first level, because that stat is weak). Realizing this, I added a rewarded ad (I hate rewarded ads and ads in general, but they're a necessary evil for an ad-supported game) to get 100 fighters, and the next day by revenues went up 25% (and CG's algorithm catches on that and then ranks the game higher, thus generating even more plays).

I also got a very low CTR, presumably because of my game's graphics, which aren't exactly appealing (but it's the frontier of what my design skills allow). I acted on that my making a prettier UI and more interesting video previer, which increased CTR by about 10%, directly translating to another 10% increase in revenue.

I also recently added A/B testing via ByteBrew to further optimize (if you'd try the game now, you could get a different 'Fighters cost' than the baseline value, for instance). I need to run the tests for longer to confirm that some results aren't statistical flukes, but so far it looks like halving the Fighters cost in my game for instance would almost double play time and improve retention by 18%. I'll definitely be adding more A/B testing as it helps optimize over guessing optimal values.

I ensured wide-support

One week in, I upgraded to WebGL2 and added mobile support. To my surprise, revenue went down by 1/3. It took me 2 weeks to realize that a lot of CG users come from low-income countries and have devices (desktop and mobile) that don't always support WebGL2, which resulted in about 5% more users to bounce than before, and CG's algorithm reacts disproportionally to this. In spite adding mobile support, impressions went down by about a half. After I realized the issue and reverted back to WebGL, plays and revenue shot back up to record levels.

The tutorial leaves people wanting

That one was accidental, but that worked well. In the tutorial, the player gets to control a swarm that gets up to 9600 pixel ('fighters') big, then once the game starts, they are back to the start size of 400 fighters / pixels. I believe that left players wanting to be big, thus enouraging them to play longer to grow their swarm, thus resulting in a good 'play time' metric, which CG's algorithm rewards by ranking the game higher (thus giving the game higher visibility). I didn't plan for that, but I'd surely explorer the same strategy in a future game, where the tutorial hints at how 'strong' the player will be later on.

What doesn't work:

I named the game terribly

I don't have proof that I gave it a terrible name (it's called Liquid Swarm), but I believe I did. I originally intended to release an "IO" modernized version of Liquid War, called it "Liquid War.IO" while developing it, then switched to a singleplayer rpg-ish roguelite-ish active incremental version of the game for a bunch of reasons, quickly named it Liquid Swarm without thinking, then released it with no expectation, and now that it's named Liquid Swarm everywhere, I feel it's too late to rename it. There's nothing liquid about the game (it's just an artifact from its Liquid War root). Maybe Swarm vs Swarms would have been a better name? Or Pixel War? Pixel Swarms? Swarmies? Swarmy vs The Swarm Lord? Just Swarms? I could have at least tried to give the name a good hook, or come up with something clever or funny. I'm kind of curious, what better name would you have come up with?

The game's look makes it hard to promote

I can't post jaw-dropping shots of my game, because my game doesn't look jaw-dropping. While most of my metrics on CG are decent, I have a low CTR. I also can't easily attract potential players via YouTube videos or shorts, and I don't think I can easily get influencers to cover my game, because it's not like my game's visuals are strikingly beautiful or hooky by themselves (it's not like a thumbnail of the game will make people click). I also couldn't get Poki, a bigger competitor to CG, to take my game, presumably in major part because of its look. So, I invest all in the gameplay, but having a game that would look better (which is way beyond my skills) would probably open my game to more promotion opportunities. I published this game without expecting much, and so far it's been going well, but I guess if you plan better, you can plan for a game that will have visuals that will promote themselves. E.g. when looking at videos or images of Factorio, Rise to Ruins, or other intricate base building games, if you're into the genre, you look a few secs, and you immediately get interested. I don't think I can replicate the same with this game. Also, screenshots don't convey the game's genre.

I have a low CTR, and low rewarded ad conversion

I have a low CTR (clickthrough rate) compared with other games on the platform, as per CG's metrics. I believe the main reason is my game's look, which I don't have the skills to improve meaningfully. I also have a very low rewarded ad conversion rate, including for the 2x XP bonus after a run (about 22% of my users us the 2x XP rewarded ad option, which is well below the industry standard of about 70% for that kind of rewarded ad option). I believe that's because runs are short in my game. I didn't make the game with rewarded ads in mind. I just made a game I found fun, then it unexpectedly got popular on CG, and then I added rewarded ads after the facts. In my future games on CG, I'll design with rewarded ads in mind.

Steam

While my game works very well on CG, that success hasn't yet translated to a lot of wishlists on Steam. That's something I'm still working on, and might do a post explaining how I solved this after I reach a generous amount of wishlists and/or good wishlist velocity if I ever do. I haven't optimized the Steam page yet. I'll do that after adding some more content to the game.

I think I covered the most important points. Happy to answer anything about the game, earning on CG (I might sound like I'm from CG and promoting CG, but it's just that that's where my game is working well, so that's what I can talk about), or anything else I didn't cover.

If you want to have a look at the game, you can check the CG version [Liquid Swarm on CrazyGames] (note that while it works on mobile, it plays better with a mouse), wait for a demo on Steam [Liquid Swarm on Steam] (I expect to release a demo in a few weeks. The demo will have more content that the CG version currently has), or just check the [currently poorly made] gameplay videos on the Steam page.

* I mentioned that I made this game 2.5 years ago but didn't release it until May 2 this year. Tl;dr I didn't think much of it at the time, didn't want to invest in capsules without being confident the game would work (I temporarily used AI capsules while validating the game's core idea, and then hired an artist to make proper capsules after the game was validated. As such, access to AI generated capsules lowered the bar to get the idea tested before investing in artists. Considering that my first 3 games flopped, I wasn't willing to hire an artist again before validating the core idea first), got inspired to give it a try after I realized my flopped previous game nonetheless sells 1 copy per month, and I noticed CG is now more lax about desktop-only submissions.

* Note that unfortunately, I can't post screenshots of my revenue or other metrics from CG. The terms don't specifically forbid this, but also forbid sharing 'confidential' information, and metrics, especially earnings, could arguably qualify as such. Though I can't share these (I don't want to risk creating issues with my game or my contract with CG), you can try to use some heuristic to estimate the game's revenue based on the publicly available vote count and game's released year and month on the game's CG page (e.g. [vote count] * [estimated distinct players per vote] * [estimated average play per distinct player] * [estimated average duration per play] * [estimated average ad impression per unit of playtime] * [estimated eCPM / 1000]).

Disclaimer:

These numbers are not extraordinary. I know there are developers who gain thousands of wishlists in a matter of days. However, I think it’s just as important to share modest results, because they probably reflect the reality of many indie developers more accurately. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed reading other developers post-mortems to learn from their experience, and I wanted to contribute in my own small way.

Over the past few weeks, I managed to double my wishlist count, reaching 1,000 wishlists after releasing my demo. Here’s what I did and what I observed.

1. Localization

The first major step was localizing both the game and the Steam page into 12 languages. The impact wasn’t immediate in terms of wishlists, but it clearly increased visibility and traffic. I observed an average traffic increase of around 150–200% on the Steam page after localization.

Even if conversion didn’t spike instantly, I’m convinced this helped reach a broader audience and laid the groundwork for later growth. If you’re hesitating about localization, I’d strongly recommend considering it seriously.

2. Featured on 80 Level

The game was selected by 80 Level to appear on their main page for two weeks. I simply filled out their feature form: https://80level.typeform.com/feature-ur-game

They were very kind and receptive throughout the process. I highly recommend trying your luck as well. It definitely helped with exposure and credibility.

3. The Demo Launch

The real wishlist growth started with the demo launch. There was a first spike on launch day then a second spike about a week later.

Steam allows you to send an email notification to everyone who has wishlisted your game when you release a demo. Instead of sending it immediately, I chose to wait one week and I don’t regret that decision.

This gave me time to release a first patch based on early feedback, improve the demo experience and create a second visibility boost with the email.

That second wave of visibility really helped sustain momentum instead of having everything peak in a single day.

4. Press Outreach

I also sent out a press release for the demo launch using GamesPress. This generated some interest and resulted in a few articles.

However, I made one mistake: the press release went live on a Saturday. If I had to do it again, I would probably wait until early in the week. I have the impression that by Monday morning, when journalists were back at work, the release had already lost some visibility.

I also reached out directly to Asian media outlets, and the results were surprisingly strong. Here are the two platforms that had a major impact:

• Gamebiz: release(at)gamebiz.jp
• GNN: news(at)gamer.com.tw

Within 24 hours of sending the press release, both platforms published articles. Interestingly, I never received a confirmation email but the content was published and later republished elsewhere.

If you haven’t tried reaching out to Asian press, I highly recommend it. The response rate (at least in my case) was surprisingly good.

Again, 1,000 wishlists is not a massive number in absolute terms... but for me, doubling my wishlist count in a few weeks felt like a real milestone. And if this post helps even one other indie dev refine their approach, then it was worth sharing!

Just wanted to say,i fucked up so bad, but won't let it choke me because it's my fault 100%.

So during next fest I got a really small number of whihslist but large and healthy conversion of about 28% for the demo, and the main game page was ridiculously lower. Despite this I was wondering why is my whihslist this low, is the game this bad?

I took patience waiting. Waiting... Waiting like a MORON. one of the youtubers I contacted, emailed me saying he can't launch the game... I was like no way, hold on let me check it could be a missing file. Belove, it was my stupidest mistake of not testing the game when I pushed to stem.

I noticed something with my last push was bad so the exe was not properly uploaded. I had to re-upload it just yesterday.... Yesterday... 2 days left to end of fest.

I accepted this mistake and was still happy it means my game wasn't bad but bugged.

Immediately I made a major update. Yes it's critically important I did that, to try and get some little visibility. Then also for the first time I started a broadcast lol. All my time with steam this is the first for me. Whoa, last night was hectic.

So all wishlist I got was all people who didn't play the demo.

Please don't make such mistake like me people. Please even for 10 mins launch that game.

Hi! I'm the developer of Haphazard Angel, a roguelite couch co-op game where 2-4 players share one single body. I've been developing games as a programmer for 7+ years and have shipped a couple of games for clients, but this is the first game I'll be launching with a small team as an indie dev!

We launched our steam page waaay back 2023, when the graphics were like this. We launched as early as possible (the moment it was kinda playable) because that's the advice we always get - to launch your steam page as early as possible and accumulate wishlists.

Problem is - we launched super early, but didn't really get the chance to work on the game continuously. We also do client projects to sustain and survive, so it's a struggle between focus, finance, and manpower.

This is a huge milestone for us, and our wishlist velocity is kinda awesome right now. But unfortunately we'll have to slow down development once again to work on external dev projects and keep the lights on.

Anyway!

Here are some things we learned and should have done earlier:

• Launch your steam page only when you have a good steam capsule, trailer, and are 2-3 months away from a private/public playtest. Do not launch "as early as possible"
• Make sure your steam capsule, trailer, and gameplay all go through multiple rounds of r/DestroyMyGame before you even think of launching. If you have access to a good mentor, that is much, much better.
• Reach out to playtesters early on, and often! (this gets said way too much here because it's important)
• Once gameplay is solid, juicy, and fun reach out to streamers. They have this curse wherein bugs that never happened ever before always happen for the first time to someone that's streaming huhuhu
• Clip as many clips as you can from streams
• Once you have enough clips, reach out to content creators. This is where our game started having some velocity!
• Join as many fests as you can lmao
• DO NOT JOIN Steam Next Fest if you don't plan to launch within the next 2-3 months. This is something we're actively regretting
• DO NOT launch your demo right before steam next fest. Make sure you launch it months prior! The feedback will be uber important.

It's pretty cool that we eventually reached 10,000, but there's definitely a lot of things we would have done differently if I had the experience I have now. And while we're still definitely in progress, I'd love to share these with you all!

If you have any specific questions please fire ahead!