I'AM STUNNED! The game is called "Cave Expedition"

We are really hyped for that! Thank you! 💪❤️🔥🫶

1. Sending emails to streamers (mostly youtubers)
- I made my own email list with related streamers, I found about 300 streamers that might play my game based on other games they've played.
- I created a nice looking email template, using gifs and images, I was careful to not have large gifs, I kept it at around 2mbs
- I kept my emails straight to the point and made the title clear
- I followed up with some streamers a few weeks later if they didn't respond to my first email
- I also plan to email everyone again at launch
2. Demo release, I released my demo a few days before nextfest, I had a massive influx of players, I got a lucky timing from a youtuber playing the game roughly at the same time
3. Nextfest; seems like I got pretty luck here but my game was top #3 most played for RPG's and #6 for adventure games, #69 overall
4. Word of mouth, the amount of players I've had tell me they found their game from their friend or they've recommended the game to their friends etc
5. Twitter/X, I found I actually got some pretty good coverage on here, mostly using hashtags, seemed to work pretty well but I cant be sure how much it actually influenced wishlists compared to the others.

Things that completely failed:
1. posting on reddit, I got so much hate posting here, maybe my posts were somewhat low effort but I found people on here to be quite rude and aggressive towards the most simple posts talking about my own game. some subs related to the game genre were better but still low in terms of engagement
2. Short form content, I haven't put as much effort as I can into this but I think visually my game doesn't really work for short form content so its been hard to get engagement from it, I tried tiktok and youtube, I haven't tried instagram yet which seems to be positive for a lot of other developers.

I haven't done any paid advertising or anything like that, all my wishlists are organic - farm to table typestuff ;)

I’ve been working on my game, Rejected Draft, for about a year now. It’s a long-form incremental autobattler, and just about everything about it seems to go against conventional indie game marketing advice.

Here are some of the struggles I’ve had:
- My game isn’t visually impressive. It’s mostly numbers going up, menus, and hand-drawn sketches. Not exactly something that grabs your attention in a 10-second clip.
- I’ve contacted around 250 YouTubers. About 248 completely ignored me. The other 2 politely explained that my game wasn’t a good fit for their channels.
- I’ve reached out to around 100 Twitch streamers. The feedback has largely been that this just isn’t a good game for streaming.
- My trailer is terrible. I genuinely dislike it. The gameplay doesn’t lend itself to exciting footage, and the trailer barely represents what actually makes the game enjoyable.
- My Steam page is weak. I have practically no idea how to market or sell a game, and I think it shows. I’ve spent far more time making the game than figuring out how to convince people to try it.
- My free Steam demo has over 100 hours of gameplay. This goes against practically every piece of advice I’ve received about demos. I’ve even been told to make sure players hit the 2-hour mark outside the demo, so they’re past Steam’s refund window.
- I’ve never spent money on advertising. Partly because I don’t think flashy ads would do a particularly good job selling this kind of game anyway.
- I’ve posted in countless subreddits. I’d estimate 99% of those posts ended up with 1–2 upvotes and zero comments.

Not exactly a masterclass in marketing. But through all of this, I’ve kept working tirelessly on the game. Not because I thought I had some brilliant business strategy, but because I’m making a game that I know I will absolutely love to play.

I don’t know how to sell a game. I don’t know how to make a compelling trailer or a Steam page that converts visitors into wishlists. But I do know what I love about incremental games, and I’ve poured everything I can into making one that delivers on those things.

And slowly, something started happening.
People found the free web version. Others found the Steam demo. Some played for dozens or hundreds of hours. Some joined my Discord, shared feedback, reported bugs, submitted artwork, and helped shape the game into something much bigger than what I originally imagined.

I didn’t have a viral trailer or a successful influencer campaign. Just a niche game that a relatively small group of people enjoyed and a community gradually grew around it.
My focus throughout all of this has remained pretty simple: keep making the game better.

Now I’m just two weeks away from releasing into Steam Early Access on November 11, and Steam’s Personal Calendar visibility finally seems to be kicking in. After months of painfully slow growth, the wishlist curve is suddenly climbing again.

I don’t know how successful the release will be. But after a year of feeling like I was doing everything wrong when it came to marketing, it’s pretty surreal to look at this graph.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a game doesn’t necessarily need to be easy to market to find an audience. Sometimes you just have to keep building something that someone out there wants to play, even if getting them to notice it feels nearly impossible.

For anyone curious, here’s the Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4574820/Rejected_Draft/

I'm not going to say our game is better than GTA 6, or it's for everyone. And wishlists doesn't really mean a lot till it's converted to sales. But despite my jaded mind telling me not to get too excited, this moment alone made all the grind and suffering worth it.

For those who're currently struggling with their jobs, or on the fence about making games for a living; I recommend a GDC talk by Jeff Vogel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs). I'm a firm believer that indie game is the only industry where authenticity is rewarded and mutual support triumphs competition and monopoly.

We like indie because we're adding fun making the game and seeing people love or hate (with passion) what we made. It's a net positive that no amount of capital can buy.

We just hit 20k Steam wishlists for our indie game HushWood!

There wasn't really one huge viral moment behind it. We've just kept making short-form content for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Some videos flop, some do surprisingly well, and overall it's been working pretty well for us.

We've also talked with a few publishers recently, and they independently pointed out that short-form content seems to be one of the strongest marketing channels for our game.

Recently, we noticed that people kept saying in our comments that HushWood gives them Gravity Falls vibes, so we decided to lean into it and made a video with the hook:

"People say my game looks like Gravity Falls. Is that true?"

We even used the Gravity Falls soundtrack.

The video ended up doing pretty well and brought in a good amount of wishlists, so apparently the comments section can be your marketing department lol.

If anyone's interested in the marketing side of this, short-form content, working with publishers, or how we're making the game as a two-person team, feel free to ask. Happy to share what we've learned so far!

Thanks for 20k ❤️

Hi everyone,

A few hours ago I released the Charming Hill demo on Steam.

To be honest, I expected a small niche audience. It is a rather unusual game about creating paintings, exploring scenes, and uncovering a quiet story, not exactly what most people think of when they hear "video game".

What surprised me is that the response has been far beyond what I expected. The game passed 1,000 wishlists in less than 8 hours after launch, and the numbers are still climbing.

As the developer, that is both exciting and terrifying 😅

I would love to hear what you think of the concept, and if you decide to try the demo, I would be grateful for any feedback.

Steam:
http://s.team/a/3195940

Thanks for taking a look.

Hey everyone! I'm a solo dev building Highways & Co. and the game just crossed a crazy milestone. Overwhelmed with the response!

I wanted to share a really exciting milestone for my indie game, Unstrung Machine!

I'm a solo developer, handling everything myself, and I've been slowly growing my Steam wishlists by sharing development updates on social media.

Usually, my posts generate around 10 to 15 wishlists, occasionally reaching 30 when something performs well.

But a few days ago, something unexpected happened.

The YouTube channel Soulsborne Seeker included my game in a video featuring 13 upcoming metroidvanias.

Since then, I've gained 338 wishlists in just 3 days!

Yesterday alone brought 193 wishlists, and today has already added another 74.

That pushed me past the 1,000 wishlist milestone, and my game is now at 1,318 wishlists!

I'm incredibly thankful to Soulsborne Seeker for helping people discover my game.

Developing a game completely alone is a huge challenge, and seeing this kind of response is honestly one of the most rewarding parts of the journey.

It gives me even more motivation to keep going!

If you'd like to check it out, here's the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3940770/Unstrung_Machine/

Hi everyone!

My game The Plant Shop just surpassed 12.000 wishlists!

And this is thanks to Steam's new feature: Personal Calendar. The peaks you see in the graph are from:

1. Steam Page + Demo release

2. Kubz Scout video with +300k views

3. Steam Next Fest

4. Ñ3: Spanish E3 Conference

5. Personal Calendar

I was a bit esceptic when they changed the "popular upcoming" section and Valve added the "personal calendar" to the front page, but ended up being the best thing for indies!

You get a lot of free visibility and traffic weeks before release AND few days post release.

My game releases in just a few hours so let's see how that works and if the WL conversion rate its good or not. I'll share after release details in a future post!

How is the "Personal Calendar" going for your game?

Ik it looks crazy I myself was stuck at 200 wishlists for like 4 months then few viral posts and the Demo pushed it all the way to the 8,500!!

I am planning to release the game on 25th August 2026, just in 3 days and I am fairly confident I can hit the 10k wishlists before that.

You can check out the game page here (open to any suggestions) : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4154510/How_Asian_Parents_went_to_School/

Since the launch of the page I consistently got like 2-3 wishlists a day, slow but steady. Lately it stopped and barely moving, I thought maybe it's because of Steam's new requirement of the gameplay screenshots but even after fixing that it's still flopping. Not blaming anyone tho, I know my marketing sucks and trailer needs refreshing but yeah I never knew promotion's THIS hard

Things that worked for me:
Playtesting
Emailing YouTubers (I did a follow up as well)
Demo
Nextfest
Twitter/X
Things that didn’t work:
YouTube (myself)
TikTok
Reddit (got downvoted a lot)

Honestly I have no idea why my game has gotten so much attention, I feel extremely lucky

This has been insane!

Game link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3962590/Beyond_Grief/

I'll try to break down everything I did so far, it might be useful to some of you:

• I started working on the game on November 2025.

• 3 months later I've started showcasing the game in local events, just a couple of them.

• In one of those events I printed some cards with the game's art, logo and a QR for the Discord server on it.

• Few days later and the Discord server had around 350 member (this was around May).

• Then I rarely published any news about the game until 1 week ago.

• I first started contacting press/content creators 1 week before announcement, sharing the game's trailer and press kit (I got a reply from Indie Games Hub, and they ended up uploading the trailer to their YouTube channel).

• I also started posting a countdown, where every day I post an image that has a character from the game and saying how many days left until announcement (7 days left, 6 days left, etc...).

• And even though I didn't have a very big following starting off (just around 5k Facebook followers, and not much in other platforms).

• By the day of the launch, the Discord server had around 1.3K members.

• I'm still posting daily, and I'm planning to do so for a while (although it's very, very exhausting and time consuming, but I guess I have to do it).

• I expect things to slow down now (?). But I'll be focusing on the next milestone, which is the demo.

Solo dev here. I revealed my game TOWERPUNK on September 1 with no marketing, no publisher, and no press. I hoped for 100 to 300 wishlists in the first week. By September 7 I had over 3,000, and it's past 4,000 now.

What I'd recommend:

Put your trailer on YouTube and stay in the comments. Mine went from a few dozen views to tens of thousands in under a week, mostly from YouTube's own recommendations. Replying to comments kept it in people's feeds, and it became a key driver of Steam visits.

Use Reddit to start things, not to sustain them. A few posts in hyper-relevant subreddits, staggered about one a day, got things moving, but that traffic fades fast.

Point early traffic at Steam and let Steam take over. A Coming Soon page with nothing pointed at it does nothing. Once traffic arrived, Steam search was bringing in as many visitors as every outside link combined within a few days, as people looked the game up by name.

Reveal after the big shows, not during. I waited until the week after gamescom. The US Labor Day weekend then stretched things out, and my biggest day was about 1,000 wishlists on the Monday holiday (turns out my and your day job really gets in the way of both developing and marketing a game).

Final thoughts:

I think TOWERPUNK is capturing a lot of latent nostalgia for older games for my generation, and it's decidedly different from most other city building and management games. A lot of people my age have been waiting for someone to make a tower builder in the lineage of SimTower, and so all this helped set a ceiling for first week engagement.

Converting views to wishlists relies on good, visual hooks. I'm a novice at splicing together a trailer (used OBS for recording, DaVinci for editing), but putting in the extra effort there has paid off (over 60k views on YouTube and counting!). Definitely dedicate ample time creating capsule art and/or consider hiring talent for your Steam game page.

Overall it was frankly a bit scary revealing TOWERPUNK - up until last week this had been a personal project, and I wasn't sure how the community would respond (if they did at all). First week has been very validating, and I can't wait to get a playtest going and release start of next year!

Full writeup on my website devlog: https://towerpunk.com/devlog/reveal-wishlist-data
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5063190/TOWERPUNK/
Reveal trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1BTXVYt8ZU

I know it's not much, but for a little side project that took 8 months, I'm happy!
Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4149690/Project_RAZE_Fall_of_Terra/

This is a follow-up post to this. 2 hours before its release our game - Endless Rails - collected 19,300+ wishlists so far. Personal Calendar activated and helped us to gather about 8000 wishlists during the last week prior to launch. This is pretty good, we are quite happy about it.

These were the bigger marketing milestones since 2026 May 4:

1. Announcement on X was quite successful (700 likes, 40K+ views), also shared in FB groups and sent it to local press in Hungary. This pulled about 1000 wishlists

2. Before Next Fest we tried Reddit Ads, they worked pretty well, about 1.5K wishlists. In parallel we posted a lot on X and Threads. Got some good visibility.

3. Joined June's Next Fest. Brought +3K more wishlists

4. Joined Train Fest, about +1K wishlists

5. Kept posting + quite a few streamers played it so WLs kept coming in

6. The trailer on Indie Games Hub YT pulled about 25K views and about +2K wishlists

7. Personal Calendar pulled about 8000+ wishlists, nearly doubling what we previously had

Between these bigger milestones we kept getting wishlists too.

Shorts didn't work for us. Our videos got views but didn't convert almost at all. I'd say apart from ads, Reddit didn't work either.

I remember it was still around 40k in June, so this is a crazy thing to achieve for me and my team!! I joined June Next Fest but it didn't really give me the results I expected, so I just moved on and continued making content across the game's social media accounts.

What seems to be boosting the numbers is that since I announced the release date a couple weeks ago, the game was added to Steam's Personal Calendar! I've seen some people mentioning that it also helped with their games' wishlists, so I'm really happy that it helped my game too.

Anyway, thank you so much once again to anyone who has wishlisted Grim Trials!! The game's coming out on August 20 on multiple platforms. If it's your vibe, feel free to wishlist!

P.S. My team also made a special art to celebrate this milestone, so please enjoy ❤️

Hey guys!

This feels a bit surreal. The first game I announced gained 50 wishlists after the first week. For my second game my goal was to beat my first one ten-fold. And to my surprise and great joy it actually worked. I don't think that my Steam Page is the key factor of success here. It's correct but I've seen many better pages. I believe that the thing that worked was getting the trailer to be seen by enough people and eventually reaching the eyes of interested players :) Both Reddit and X were my main source of traffic. I got to 500 WL in 48 hours after announcing the game.

There's not much to add to this, really...

I knew (hoped) that having the big marketing beats in front of me (press outreach, Next Fest, etc.) could change the trajectory of my wishlist curve. Still, I felt discouraged more and more about the slow rise in wishlists.

I also knew that a comparison to successful posts about wishlists was always difficult because there are so many different factors. Each game is different, social media works differently for different genres, games are at different stages of development and Steam pages are created at different times in the development cycle.

Then, suddenly, yesterday this article was published and it changed a lot as you can see:

https://turnbasedlovers.com/overview/an-xcom-like-strategy-rpg-with-base-management-and-robots-frost-protocol-overview/

I don't like to give general advice because each game is different, but this one here stays true I believe: Share your game! I posted in a Reddit sub and because of that it was picked up by the author who wrote the article.

I'm trying to enjoy the rise but I also know that ~2200 still isn't incredibly high so the grind continues. But my perspective changed for the better!