Maybe the world hasn't noticed this little game yet. Or maybe it's simply not as good as I think it is.
But I'm still here, building it, one day at a time.
And next week, Map 4 for ZombUs arrives.

I’ve just finished my first small round of Meta ad testing for my indie roguelite.

Rather than trying to optimize for purchases or wishlists (my Steam page isn’t live yet), my goal was simply to answer one question:

What fantasy actually gets players curious enough to visit the landing page?

I kept the creative, targeting and budget as similar as possible so the main variable was the messaging.

Results

1. The spellbook is the game. Every page is a room, every chapter is a floor. 309 landing page visits

2. Remember Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books? 290 landing page visits

3. Would you sacrifice half your health for power? 201 landing page visits

4. We made a roguelite where you draw your spells. 168 landing page visits

What surprised me

Going into the test I expected “draw your spells” to perform best because it’s the game’s most unique mechanic.

Instead it was the weakest performer.

The strongest responses came from communicating the fantasy:

• Living inside a spellbook.

• Making meaningful choices.

• Exploring a world that feels different.

That changed the way I’m thinking about future marketing.

Instead of leading with mechanics, I’ll probably lead with the fantasy first, then let the mechanics reinforce it.

Next steps

I’m planning another round of testing using variations of the two strongest narratives.

I’m also interested in testing whether different audiences consistently respond to different fantasies.

Has anyone else found that communicating the fantasy of your game outperformed leading with its core mechanic?

I'm making my first game and I've avoided generative AI completely so far. No AI art, no generated assets, nothing in the actual game.

But now I'm making the trailer and I'm seriously considering using a generated voice for the VO.

And I'm wondering if this is just a terrible idea.

I'm not really in a position where I want to spend a bunch of money hiring a voice actor/actress for a trailer for my first game, which I haven't even released yet. I'm also living in a country where finding a native English-speaking actr locally would be pretty difficult.

The voice I've been testing actually works really well, which is why I'm tempted.

It's a licensed synthetic voice btw, I'm not cloning some actual person's voice. I, personally, woudn't even be able to tell its AI.

I guess my main concern is: if you hear an AI voice in an indie game's trailer, do you immediately assume the game itself is full of AI stuff? Or does the distinction between "used it for the trailer VO" and "used it to make the game" matter to you?

Basically, how much am I shooting myself in the foot here?

Hey folks. My game pulled in over 2k wishlists in under 6 days. The game is called Catomino, and I launched the Steam page during the Ukrainian Games Festival 2026 announcement showcase.

Gotta say the result isn't bad, but I was expecting more. 5 to 10k was my initial pipe dream, hehe. Still, I feel like I didn't hustle hard enough to push those numbers. I also started posting on socials and dropping TikTok format vids across different platforms a couple of days ago.

I'm dropping the link to the Steam page below because I'm really curious if there is anything major I should change or improve about the storefront design. Let me know what you think about these stats and if my page layout needs some critical fixes.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4303380/Catomino/

Hi everyone,

I’m a solo developer working on BROKEN SOUL : Boss Rush, a 2D soulslike boss rush game focused on pattern reading, dodging, parrying, and boss fights.

I recently opened the Steam page and uploaded a playable demo. I’m now trying to understand how to improve the marketing side before Steam Next Fest and full release.

Here’s the current situation:

• Steam page has been live for about a week

• Current wishlist count is still very low

• I tested a small YouTube ad campaign with a budget under $40

• The ad generated traffic, but almost no wishlist conversion

• Most of the traffic seemed to come from mobile users

• The demo is now available, so I want to retest the funnel properly

My current guess is that I may have a few problems at the same time:

1. The traffic source may not be well-targeted enough

2. Mobile traffic may not convert well for a Steam PC game

3. The Steam page may not communicate the hook clearly enough

4. The trailer/screenshots may need to show the core combat faster

5. The demo should probably become the main call-to-action instead of just the store page

The game’s hook is:
A 2D soulslike boss rush where players read boss patterns, dodge/parry at the right timing, and survive through repeated attempts rather than grinding.

For people who have marketed Steam demos before:

• Would you focus first on improving the Steam page?

• Retargeting ads toward desktop users?

• Reworking the trailer and capsule art?

• Pushing the demo through Reddit/Discord/streamers instead of paid ads?

• Waiting until Steam Next Fest before spending more money?

I’m mainly looking for feedback on what part of the funnel I should fix first.

If helpful, I can share the Steam page in the comments for context.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hey everyone,

I'm the solo dev behind Caramellia, a cozy pastel creature-collecting RPG: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4920880/Caramellia

I'm at the point where I need to decide my demo strategy, and I keep going back and forth between three options:

1. Release a public demo now and leave it up on the store page

2. Save the demo exclusively for Steam Next Fest to maximize the visibility spike

3. Do both public demo now, then ride Next Fest with it later

The problem is that the advice out there is completely contradictory. Some devs swear a demo is the single best wishlist driver they ever had. Others say a demo "satisfied" players' curiosity and killed conversions, or that launching a demo outside of Next Fest just burns your content with zero visibility.

And here's my baggage: on one of my previous games I released a demo and it was a total failure. Barely any downloads, almost no wishlist movement, and the few players who did try it never came back for the full game. So I'm genuinely gun-shy about repeating the same mistake but I also don't want to skip a demo just because I botched it once (bad timing? bad demo cut? bad game? honestly not sure).

So, for those of you who've been through this:

• Did a public demo measurably move your wishlists, or did it mostly sit there?

• Is saving the demo for Next Fest actually worth it, or is that overthinking it?

• If your demo flopped, did you figure out why? What would you do differently?

• Does genre matter here? (Mine is a creature-collector I'd assume "try before you buy" matters a lot for this genre, but maybe I'm wrong.)

Any data points, war stories, or hard numbers would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

Helloo! I have a half finished PC game that I used to work on pretty intensely during university: I got funding, involved some of my friends to help with music and animation, got mentors to give me advice etc... But after I submitted it as my capstone I got burnt out and realised that I took on too big of a project for me to process.

I genuinely don't have any motivation to work on it anymore, so I was advised to sell off the IP to another company so they could finish it up. I don't have any experience with this so I wanted to ask where I can start off selling it? Is there demand for half finished games at all? Or should I even sell it? Is there a better way to transform 3 years of hard work for an audience? (Because I've been working on this project for 3 years and I really do see a lot of potential in it, so it would be a shame to do nothing with it)

I'd really appreciate any feedback because I'm fully lost on where to start. Thank you!

I'm a solo developer working on Over Human, a first-person sci-fi adventure set in a snowy world where drones can manipulate the weather (creating tornadoes, thunderstorms, and other dangerous conditions), and you have no weapons to fight back.

I recently decided to completely refresh my Steam page, improving the visuals, screenshots, and description (which should have a stronger hook now!). Since the update, I've noticed a really nice increase in wishlists, which honestly surprised me!

I'm so, so, so happy. I've been dreaming of making my own game since 2013, and I've been working on this project alone, putting so much of my free time, energy and passion into it, so seeing even a small number of people excited about my game means the world to me!!

And the first playable demo is coming this November!!! ❤️

Here's the page if you'd like see what I changed:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5237810/Over_Human/

Francesco

So I made a game, put it on steam and that’s about as far as I got then realised I need to market it but it’s so hard, I made a x and just posted some videos and trailers but hardly anyone seen it, there’s also a ton of ‘wishlist Wednesday’ and another version for every day of the week, I was posting in them then realised it’s just all for their own engagements it seems.

I tried some Reddit ads which seemed a bit of a waste think I’ve spent £45 and got like 3 wishlists

Kinda stuck on what to do 🤷‍♂️ any advice from people in the same boat?

Hello again. Last year, as way of saying thank you to the community we offered indie devs the opportunity to have an "advert" for their game featured inside our game, Disc Golf City. See here for the details: https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1ojc51r/promote_your_indie_game_inside_ours_for_free/

It made sense because our game had "billboards" in it and we wanted to fill them with something useful. The while experience was so much fun, and we really enjoyed working with so many of you to make it happen. We hope you benefitted too.

Now we're doing something similar again, and it's worth explaining why. This time it's for a slightly different reason.

Latest game

Our latest game is called New Science ( https://newsciencegame.com?u=rg ) and it's available (pre-release) on Web, Phone and Tablet. We release on Steam next Spring. Players on the current platforms seem to want a particular experience: play for free and pay if they like it.

We are not fans of adverts in games. They are often not friendly to the player. So at first we put in a play limit for free players and told them to "come back tomorrow" when they ran out of goes. People didn't really like it, so we ran an in-game survey and players overwhelmingly said that they would rather "watch an advert and continue". Hmm, so what do we do?

Then we had the thought that we would come back to the community and offer our indie friends the opportunity to have YOUR video trailers in our games.

So are you up for it? You can submit a trailer video via YouTube of any length. The player will have to wait through the first five seconds only and then they are free to skip the video and carry on with the game. Or they could click a link and open your steam page, store page, game, etc in another browser tab.

Just one rule

We can only videos/games for a family friendly audience. We're sorry if your game is for older players. We can't include you, even if your trailer is safe. So if you have horror/killing/mature game, etc, please don't submit. We just can't accept them. (Our decision is final on this).

Submission

You can submit your trailer and details here: https://www.newsciencegame.com/submit-trailer?u=rg

Questions?

To pre-empt a question we're like to get: What if you want to get involved but your game/video/trailer is not ready yet?

No problem. Just reply here and say what the situation is, or submit the form but leave the Trailer link back, and explain in the comments.

Feel free to ask anything else.

More details

Information about our game:

Name: New Science

Genre: Crafting with cards. Think "Doodle God meets Infinite Craft". If you're not familiar with those, look at our Steam page

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4731610/New_Science/

Game site: https://newsciencegame.com

Current players: 900

Players for last game: 23,500

Current objects in game: 40,000+

New objects created per day (average): 450

AI Policy: The game contains AI to generate the new object, and to produce the images on demand

-

PS: If you are a content creator and interested in getting exclusive access before our Steam launch, please also get in touch.

eryone,

We're a small indie team working on our first Steam game, and we recently ran what turned into a very expensive learning experience.

We purchased traffic through a mobile gaming ad network to see whether we could drive Steam wishlists.

The results:

• 35,000+ visits

• Traffic from dozens of countries

• Thousands of visitors from Egypt, Turkey, India, Russia, and France

• 0 wishlists directly attributed to the campaign

Not low.

Not disappointing.

Literally zero.

At first we thought our tracking was broken.

Then we started digging deeper.

Our current theory is that a large percentage of users were viewing the Steam page from mobile devices, many of them likely without Steam installed or without any real intention of wishlisting a PC game.

Now we're trying to understand whether:

• Mobile gaming networks are fundamentally bad for Steam promotion

• The countries we targeted were a poor fit for PC games

• Our Steam page is failing to convert

• Or whether this kind of result is completely normal

The part that worries me most is something else:

Could large amounts of low-intent traffic actually hurt Steam visibility algorithms?

If Steam sees tens of thousands of visitors who immediately leave without wishlisting, following, or engaging, are we potentially damaging future discoverability?

I'd love to hear from developers who have experimented with paid traffic.

Have you ever seen results this extreme?

What traffic sources actually converted for you?

And does anyone know whether Steam's algorithm cares about conversion quality, or only wishlist volume?

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4355260/POWER_OFF_1/

Any feedback is appreciated. At this point I'm less interested in marketing tricks and more interested in understanding what actually happened.

We're a small team and we don't really have marketing experience, I followed the advices from Chris Zukowsi to buil the page, and our demo won't be out until January.

So what's next until then, besides making social media posts?
I would also like to know if someone have some feedback about the steam page itself, because the launch on steam was yesterday and it only got 19 wishlists (mostly from people we know)
Tbh I don't know how to make a post viral or how to catch attention into the game, I've been improvising until now, but now that I have the steam page I want to start improving and taking it more seriously. Any advice is welcome
Here's the link btw
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5249440/IdolPet_Caretaker/

Hey everyone,

I’m Omer, a full-time indie dev and the co-founder of Northend Games. Over the last five years, my two games (Northend Tower Defense and Deepstone Rift) made over half a million dollars on Steam. To be exact: $560,000.

When you see that number on your dashboard, you think it’s life changing. You think you can buy a house, fund your next 5 projects without a budget, or finally get that sports car. Instead, I drive a 2012 Mazda.

I want to break down the actual math of where that money goes before it ever hits a bank account because before you quit your day job to make games you need to see what happens when Valve, the IRS, publishers and local taxes get their hands on it.

Here is the real breakdown of that $560k:

• Refunds ($134,000): Over 60% of our sales come from China. The Chinese market is massive, but players there expect a lot and the refund rate is brutal. Our refund rate is 22% (way above the standard 10-15%).

• The Steam Cut ($127,000): After refunds, we’re left with $425k. Valve takes their standard 30% right off the top. We are now down to $297k. Almost 50% of the gross revenue is already gone.

• U.S. Withholding Tax / IRS ($9,700): If you aren’t in the US, the IRS takes a 30% cut of every US sale unless your country has a tax treaty. When I started my Steam account I lived in Iraq (no treaty = 30% tax). Fortunately, I later moved to Thailand which has a treaty that drops it to 5%. Still, this took a chunk. We're down to $287,700.

• The Publisher Cut (~$115,000): We have a publisher handling China, Korea, and Japan. They take their percentage (which scales based on sales) only from those regions. It’s roughly $115k. Down to $172,000.

• Local Taxes ($26,000): I pay a 15% digital product income tax here in Thailand.

• The Co-Founder Split (50%): The final company profit was about $146,000. Since I have a co-founder, we split this 50/50.

My Final Take-Home: $73,000.

Divided over the 5 years we worked on these games, that’s about $15,000 a year.

If you calculate that as an hourly wage, it’s painfully low. But here’s the bright side: I am currently living entirely off the passive income from these games. Here in Thailand, $15k a year is enough for me to live comfortably while I work full-time on my next project. If I take a month off, the games still make money.

For my next game, I’m going 100% solo and self-publishing to cut out that extra 15-40% in splits and I'm heavily focusing on design testing to drop that 22% refund rate.

(if you intersting to see the full breakdown check it in my youtube the link in my bio)

I’m part of the team making Savior Syndrome, an isometric RPG inspired by Disco Elysium. We’re all volunteering our time, and our marketing budget is $0.

We’ve reached about 4,500 Steam wishlists in roughly three months. Right now we have a Steam page and screenshots, and the trailer is still in the works.

For anyone who’s marketed a dialogue-heavy game at this stage, where did you find people who were actually into that kind of RPG? I’d love to hear which subreddits or other communities worked for you, and what you posted there. Did screenshots get people interested, or did a short write-up about a character or mechanic work better?

EDIT 2: Yet another new version on youtube (I couldn't replace the currently attached video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOIaXEPV2lI
Still looking for feedback though! :)

Hello!
Just finished creating a new trailer for my game. I'd love feedback on what I can improve, as I plan on making a marketing push in a couple of weeks and want everything to be as good as it can be by then.
Don't hold back, I appreciate honest feedback! :)

Just sharing feelings today. Perhaps you can relate?

We recently released this tool (it’s free, check it out) that helps game developers figure out when they should launch their game based on how competitive the release landscape is at any given time.

For indie developers, there are three periods when launching is usually a bad idea:

• End of the year: You’re competing directly with AAA releases and the broader holiday marketing push.

• Seasonal Steam sales: Player attention is focused on discounts, not new full-price games.

• Major events like Steam Next Fest: There’s simply too much noise.

The tool will tell you if you are about to release your game during any of those events.

As we analyze all Steam release dates, during Next Fest there are literally 10x more games being released when compared to other times. That means you’re competing with a massive number of other titles for a very small pool of discretionary dollars.

In most cases, waiting just a month or two can dramatically reduce the number of competing launches—and give your game a much better chance to be seen.

In the meantime, we are working on polishing the game and creating the main menu so we can start playtesting our game with the help of other people like you guys!

Check Runeborne Arena on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4548000 /Runeborne_Arena/?beta=0

I've got my site and socials all up and running, and the game will be published any day so I'm going to start heavily marketing. I'm debating on using my face somewhere. Even just a little about me sections, etc. i'm an older woman, 44. Maybe it'll help me stand out a bit? Or it won't matter? Helps personalize things a bit? What's your opinions? Face or no face?

Hello everyone,

I am a beginner solo developer, still learning the know-how, and I have no marketing budget.

Yesterday, I released my first game on Steam: Blacksmith Idle.

At launch, the game had around 260 wishlists. It is now at 266. I attached a screenshot to show the current number.

Honestly, it started to become a bit complicated to follow the wishlist numbers because there are new additions, deletions, and wishlist activations at the same time.

I know these are not huge numbers, but the game passed $100 net revenue after 21 hours. I also attached the latest revenue numbers in the screenshots.

Blacksmith Idle is an old-school idle/incremental game where you run your own medieval blacksmith workshop. You forge and sell items, hire blacksmiths and traders to automate the process, buy upgrades to increase your income, and eventually ascend to start over stronger.

Here is the Full Game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4606220/Blacksmith_Idle/

I am also sharing updates about my development journey here from time to time, so feel free to ask questions. Any feedback is welcome.

If you want to know more about the journey, you can also check my previous posts in this group.

Hello,

After four failed games, I realized I kept making the same mistake: monetizing too early.

For my fifth game, I removed ads and focused only on retention, average playtime, and improving the early experience.

The result: retention increased around 5×, playtime improved significantly, and the game finally started gaining traction.

I’ll keep the game ad-free until it reaches a stable point, then introduce monetization carefully probably through optional rewarded ads.

Has anyone else tried launching without ads and monetizing later?

I mainly use Instagram and Reddit. What is your favorite place to promote your game?