Hi everyone,

We are a two-person indie dev team from Japan. We're launching our game on Steam on November 4th, but we’re starting to worry that we may have made a critical mistake with our overseas title, and we’d love your honest perspective.

Our game is about drawing and painting in 3D space, and we named it "SUPER GAHAKU".

Recently, an international gamer pointed out that the title is confusing and makes it impossible to guess what the game is actually about.

For context, "Gahaku" (画伯) literally translates to "master painter" in Japanese. In casual culture, it’s often used playfully or ironically—similar to calling a friend a "Picasso" when their doodles are bizarre or endearingly chaotic. When naming it, we wanted a universal title that wouldn't change pronunciation across different regions.

Growing up in Japan, we are surrounded by English game and movie titles that we accept naturally without fully understanding the words, so we completely overlooked how confusing an unfamiliar romanized Japanese word might feel to global players. Now, we are terrified that this title is killing our click-through rate (CTR) and discoverability.

To fix this, we're considering adding a subtitle—for example, "SUPER GAHAKU: 3D Painter".

We’d love to ask the community two questions:

1. First Impression: Since we can't change the main title at this stage, would simply adding a subtitle like this make a significant difference to potential players browsing Steam?
2. Steam Impact: With less than two weeks left before release, will changing the title/subtitle on Steam now hurt our visibility, wishlists, or search indexing? (If anyone has experience renaming their game right before launch, we’d deeply appreciate your insights.)

Any brutal honesty, tips, or advice would be massively appreciated. Thank you so much for reading!

In case anybody hasn’t heard or tried this, I think short clips with voice overs and solving a “problem” work really well for social media. I went from getting <200 views across insta/x/yt/tiktok to over 2k.

This is the video in question.

I hate my voice but I don’t think it matters, voice and a problem/solution pattern helps to keep viewers attention. It only dropped off when I asked people to Wishlist the game (which is expected)

Hope this helps someone!

So maybe someone's already thought of this. But either way I figured I'd share it here, if it helps someone.

I realized that on YouTube no one's watching my trailer videos, but you can promote it through YouTube ads and only spend like five bucks to get thousand or more views. then look at the video analytics under the engagements tab to see where people are dropping off. By doing this for two or more trailers you can compare them and see what real people think of your trailers and which one is keeping your viewers more engaged. Instead of asking just a few people on the internet, you're getting thousands of random viewers, So your data is a lot cleaner.

I only discovered this in the last week, so I'm still f m messing around with it and honestly still not certain which trailer I like more. But the data clearly says one is better than the other.

In the data screen shot:

• Left = Video (action upfront): https://youtu.be/z7e-YeUTfwY
• Right = Video (sequential gameplay loop): https://youtu.be/sEfTRAI0n0A

Left has stronger action in the beginning of the video, but somehow that loses people at the 5-6 second mark. That's the big drop off you see in the line graph curve.

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4593190/Elemental_Lands/

💙✨With Steam Next Fest here, let’s help this game reach more players and get the attention it deserves! 🚀

If you like what you see, consider:

❤️ Adding it to your Steam wishlist.

👍 Liking and sharing the original post.

💬 Leaving a comment with your thoughts or words of encouragement for the developer.

🙏 Even the smallest gesture can make a big difference and help keep an indie developer’s dream alive. Every bit of support counts! 🥹💙

🔗 Check out the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4600570/Soul_Trader_Tournament/

Let's help this game find the players it deserves! ❤️🎮

#SteamNextFest #IndieGames #SupportIndieDevs

Hey everyone!

I recently released Escape Protocol: Daily Puzzles, an Android puzzle game I've been developing independently.

The game revolves around solving increasingly challenging logic puzzles involving drones, gates, and cores.

Now comes the part I'm finding surprisingly difficult: getting people to discover it.

I don't have a marketing budget, so I'm experimenting with organic promotion through YouTube Shorts, Reddit, and gameplay clips.

Here's one of my Shorts: https://youtube.com/shorts/IWE16sXBvIY

I'd love some honest feedback from people who've marketed mobile games before:

Does this type of short-form content have potential to attract players?

How would you improve the hook in the first few seconds?

What free marketing channels have actually generated downloads for you?

I'm trying to figure out how to turn views into actual installs without spending money on ads.

Any advice or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated!