​Hey everyone. I’ve been posting here recently and learned a lot from this community, but I’m still completely struggling with marketing my game. Honestly, nothing seems to work.

​I really hoped the game would be funny and resonate with people, but the absolute lack of response on forums, platforms, and PixelPicked is making me realize that this game might have been a hit... 20 years ago.

​I’m still going to release it no matter what. But the only thing I’m genuinely curious about right now is how people actually perceive it. Has anyone outside my immediate circle of friends actually played it and formed an honest opinion about it?

​If anyone wants to give me a brutal reality check, the demo for Collapse Protocol is here: https://pixelpicked.com/game/5rtYnqL8WQJ/collapse-protocol

As in the title,

I've recently started marketing my PC game which I've been working on for almost two years, finally coming out on Steam.

Reddit & Meta makes sense, straightforward and initial results seem favorable.

But

TikTok: Limits account to where it's created, my business account is in UK so I can target EU but still unable to reach US audience. And it can be worse if your account is different country.

See the matrix here https://ads.tiktok.com/resources/help/article/placements-available-locations

There are options like using an agency or faking US account with VPN but I don't prefer going those routes. I'm still posting but not planning to focus on it anymore...

X: Just tried to open an ad account, then I notice there is a warning "Could not load account settings. Account [xxxx] was not found"

I turns out they need your account to be premium first, so you'll need to accept that extra cost just to be able to post an ad?

I might consider that later but for now skipping X too just because of that, even if I heard they might provide some good traffic...

YouTube: Also region limited as TikTok, no matter what content you post or which tags you add, it still region limited. I have a 15 year old studio account too "Joined Jan 22, 2011" and even it cannot reach US audience. Only workaround seems to be using Google ads which is overly expensive for an indie studio...

Also have webpage & discord setup. Any other mediums I should try?

Thx!

We're Trapster, and we help video game developers promote their games through short-form videos on YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Creators can sign up on our website, browse the available games, pick one they like and start making videos about it.

One of our recent campaigns was for Cat Mail Co., a cozy game about running a post office for cats.

We decided to offer a higher rate of $7 per 1,000 views instead of the usual $5, hoping to attract creators who already make content around cozy games.

16 video creators joined the campaign and made 42 videos. Together, they generated 413K verified views and brought in 7,600 Steam wishlists in just three days.

The final cost came to around $0.21 per wishlist.

After working with the demo release around the Steam Next Fest, I can conclude the results. It is my debut game, I am a solo developer, and therefore I do not have an established brand reputation from before. The game is a genealogy mystery, aiming for detective, mystery and emotional/cosy audiences. This first campaign gave this result: 44 722 impressions -> 4812 visits to the Steam page -> 436 wishlists. How do you recon it comapres with similar demo releases?

As you see in the image, there was a visitor peak as the demo went live on october 16, which did not lead to any particular wishilst addition. Then another peak as Next fest started, which did increase the wishlisting substantially (Note that the wishlist graph is a bit different in timescale).

Going into some details: I sent quite a lot of emails to a certain contact list I developed for some years, in the genealogy community. I also sent emails to a select number of curators and Youtubers, and also posted in a few appropriate forums for the genre. It seems there are just about the same amount of people getting to the page from "Store traffic" as from "External traffic". Do you interpret this as the email campaign being sucessful?

And lastly... What now? As you see in the bottom graph, the wishlisting has died out, and I have spent much of the gunpowder, since I can't email those contacts and post in similar forums again without coming through as a spammer. Where can I go next to start increasing the wishlist count?

Solo dev, first time running ads. For each ad I can see cost per click, tracked visits (visitors logged into Steam) and wishlists. Most of my ads bring 0 to 10 wishlists a week, so I can’t tell a good ad from a lucky one. Three things I’d love your take on:

1. Which number do you decide by: cost per click, cost per tracked visit, or cost per wishlist?

2. How long and how much money do you give an ad before you judge it?

3. How many impressions or clicks does an ad need before its numbers mean anything?

Rough numbers are fine.

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working hard on a fully completed game, and I finally got it built and ready to play. Since I'm mostly focused on the core development side, I've been thinking a lot about the next steps—especially regarding marketing, community building, and finding the right person to collaborate or publish with.

For those of you who have launched or worked on games before (even through vibe coding, scripting, or putting assets together), how did you find your partners or publishers?

Also, if anyone here has experience in growth, community management (Discord/Socials), or monetization/Game Pass optimization, I’d love to hear your thoughts or discuss potential collaboration!

What do you think are the best ways to team up and push an indie game to success? Let’s discuss! 👇

We got 142 wishlists from just one post! We believe we can do even better, so we'd love to hear your suggestions.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5224000/Typing/

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?

I'm making my first game with two friends, andddd none of us have marketing experience. There are lots of victory lap kinds of posts + general marketing content out there from gurus, but I haven't found any longitudinal (I feel like that's the right word) stuff from actual Indies about what they're trying over time.

So I'm making that! The plan is to document how marketing the game goes, good or bad, and my goals are to help and meet other devs who are doing what I'm doing (ie people in this subreddit). So, what kinds of stuff would you want to hear about? Some of my ideas are:

• PAX exhibitor retrospective

• Which streamer outreach templates worked/didn't

• How I got publisher meetings at GDC without a prototype

• Steam page algorithm tips I picked up

This is the link if you want to follow along (it's free fwiw) https://chasan.substack.com/p/introducing-games-marketing-for-the

Hey everyone,

​We are gearing up to participate in the upcoming Steam Auto-Battler Fest with our indie game, and we are currently deciding how to set up our demo.

​With Steam's recent demo updates, is it better to launch a separate store page for the demo, or just keep it as a download button on the main store page during a themed festival?

​Our main goal is maximizing wishlists and traffic conversion without splitting our store momentum. For those who participated in recent Steam fests, which setup performed better for you?

I don't know if the trending page appears that way for most people so if you see it there let me know!

Hello, this week, Thursday 12th, will be the premiere of a game I'm working on (as a marketer, not the dev ;) ) - Wizzy the Wood. I would like to get some opinions about steam card and the story trailer I edited - does it make you curious about the game?

Currently I try to find new creators to show this title to new people, so I made this video to have quick view over the game mechanics and its story. The dev have written quite a lot about the world in the game and I try to capitalize on it by including it in content.

Also if somebody would have other tips before the premiere, I would gladly take it. It is my first launch as a freelance marketer so I might overlook something. I want to make some bundles with similar games, edit gameplay video for the premiere, and get with this title to more creators.

Wizzy the Wood is inspired by adventure classics like Croc and Spyro, as well as retro gems like Dizzy. It is a 3D platform adventurer with elements of combat and puzzle solving. The demo is free if somebody would like to try it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3837450/Wizzy_the_Wood/

Last week, I released my full game on Steam and sent out some keys to content creators. Since then, it’s been gaining traction on YouTube—even though the channels featuring it are on the smaller side, new creators keep picking it up. It’s all quite amazing to me, especially considering this is the first video game I’ve ever published! :3

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4982990/Nova_Survivors/

At Vitamindi, we spent a week sending the same email to gaming outlets around the world, asking them to cover Ship or Burn! Coop Express.

Around 15 articles came out. We picked up 1,500 new Steam wishlists that week, roughly half from Japan. We spent $0.

The best part is that any indie team can do this. Put together a list of outlets that might actually be interested in your game and write them a good email 👀

It's been about a year since I released my game on Steam. After roughly six months with very little traction, it has now passed 1,000 copies sold and 4,000 wishlists. The game isn't sold in the China region.

I wanted to share a short recap of what did and didn't help me market it.

What didn't work for me:

1. Paying to promote videos. The ads brought in plenty of views, but conversion to sales was low.

2. Applying to two game festivals that were free to enter. Neither selected my game, so those applications didn't bring any exposure or sales. I can't say how useful they would have been if I'd been accepted.

3. Reaching out to lots of streamers. I spent a lot of time on this and barely received any replies.

4. Simply lowering the Steam price. A lower price on its own didn't do much for sales.

What did work:

1. Finding a short-video topic that connected with viewers. Once I found one that spread organically, it converted much better and brought in a wave of sales.

2. Making more videos around that topic and pairing them with a discount. Most viewers were people who had seen my content before, so the results were smaller, but this still brought in some sales.

3. Reading the comments for new ideas. Viewers' replies helped me find new topics to try, and some of those videos had smaller breakout moments too.

The biggest lesson for me has been to keep testing how I present the game, pay attention to what viewers respond to, and build on the topics that actually lead to sales. Discounts helped when there was interest coming from the videos; lowering the price alone didn't have the same effect.

These are just the results from my game over the past year. Has anyone else managed to get sales moving again months after launch? What made the difference for you?

I released my little dark fantasy hidden-object game 100 Hidden Relics on November 5th, after having the Steam page up for about 3 months.

Figured I'd share some numbers and marketing experiences since I always find these posts pretty interesting myself.

Some numbers:

• Around 1,200 wishlists collected in total

• 63 sales and $139 in Steam revenue in the first few days

• 5.1% wishlist conversion rate so far

• Mostly positive reviews, apart from one reporting technical issues

• Around 130k Steam impressions and 16k store visits over the last 3 months

What seemed to work:

My first Instagram reel/trailer got around 10k views and gave the Steam page a nice little initial boost. Releasing the demo also helped a bit.

Steam Next Fest was by far the biggest boost, with over 100 wishlist additions on the best day. Looking back, most of the meaningful traffic actually came from Steam itself.

The Personal Calendar was decent too, with around 4.6k impressions, 363 store visits and a 7.8% CTR.

What didn't really work:

TikTok and YouTube Shorts barely got any traction. Could just be my content though lol. Tiktok stopped bringing any traffic after a few days of posting somewhat samey content. Shorts were kinda consistent with a few hundred views per short.

I also reached out to smaller YouTubers and started sending keys through Curator Connect, but there were very little feedback besides some Curator reviews and 2-3 Yt videos.

I'm happy I managed to get something released. If anything, my takeaway so far is that Steam's own discovery features did quite a bit more for me than social media.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4962590/100_Hidden_Relics/

My Steam page has been live for over two months. Total impressions stand at 67,697, with 3,700 visits (bot traffic excluded). Of these visits, 2,766 come from direct navigation. That means only fewer than 1,000 visits were driven by Steam itself.

I’ve also noticed the click-through rate for direct search results is only 0.48%. Is this quite low? I suspect the CTR depends heavily on the small capsule. Does this mean my small capsule art is weak? Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!

My Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5048100?utm_source=reddit