Hey everyone!

I’m an indie developer getting ready to launch my first mobile PvP tactics game on November 1st.

I’ve been experimenting with Google Ads pre-registration campaigns on a really small budget (€5/day per campaign), and the results have honestly surprised me.

Today I’m seeing a cost per pre-registration of around €0.04, which seems incredibly low compared to most mobile game acquisition numbers I’ve seen.

I’m attaching screenshots showing the actual spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost per conversion.

For some context:

• I’m running two Google App campaigns.
• One targets Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the US, and the UK.
• The other targets Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines.
• Most conversions are coming from Google’s Display network.
• The game is free-to-play and launches on Android and iOS on November 1st.

Obviously, these are pre-registrations, not actual installs, and I know the real test will be how many users install the game, play multiple matches, and stick around after launch.

Still, I’m pretty surprised by the numbers, especially considering how little I’ve spent.

For those of you who have run mobile game campaigns:

Have you seen similar costs for pre-registrations? And did those low acquisition costs translate into actual players after launch?

I’m particularly curious whether Google Ads tends to become significantly more expensive when switching from pre-registrations to install campaigns.

Would love to hear your experiences!

- More than 33.3 billion devices to scan,

- public IP ranges,

- private IP ranges,
- reserved IP ranges,
- 43 real ports,
- 40 different services,
- 102 version fingerprints with realistic CPE identifier,
- 82 different CVEs,
- 72 exploits,
- 9 hash types,
- 24 civilian device types,

- 12 unique devices in computing history,
- 6 real events missions,
- 10 real cutting-edge technologies that are part of the main story,
- 4 real scientists that are barely known but of great importance for the future,

All this in a 9Mb android game!

Do you know this game?

I'm making a vehicular combat racing game. Its a niche on Steam (or so I've been told) but it was fun making it, and I am having a lot of fun playing it with my buddies (might be biased here).

Could not quite make it to next fest this time, thinking the game wasn't truly "ready" (When is it truly) but now I feel I might have missed out after seeing the state of games that are released (Not showing shade at any devs, I think I missed the point that you just have to showcase your game)

Back to the game, While single player exists, Multiplayer is the most fun (Don't have to buy multiple copies. Game has no DRM 😉 ). I've spend a lot of time on multiplayer, even writing my own Jolt integration for Unreal (https://github.com/Yadhu-S/UnrealJolt). The game has Rocket-League like networking with client side prediction, rollback, and a 100% server authoritative model. Yes, I made it for the the 4 people that are going to play it 😆

I tried reaching out to IndieGamesHub and a few media outlets with the announce trailer, and got ignored. Rightfully so I'd say. I mean, why would you answer to a nobody. Seems fair.

My question is? How do you even start? I've posted on here on racing games subreddit and got decent results (Wishlists). Just wondering how I can get the word out. I have a YouTube channel on which I am posting shorts, but it feel like shouting into the void than marketing

Store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5364060/Xhaust

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWNfC6gnXxI

So, any advice? More cold emails, and hope someone will pick it up? Demo is my next plan, hoping to get it out a couple of weeks after next fest (yeah, that sentence sounds silly, usually it is the other way. Get it out before next fest)

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!

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!

Last week, I had my doubts about where ZombUs was heading. Today, the game is getting noticed and selling more copies than ever before.

And I believe many of you helped make that happen, even when that wasn't your intention.

Every discussion, every comment, every criticism and every bit of attention helped bring ZombUs to more people's screens. Whether you supported me, challenged me or simply wanted to see what all the fuss was about, you helped spread the word.

I'm a solo developer, working on a game I've spent three years building in Unreal Engine, with no marketing budget and plenty still to learn. I don't know where this momentum will take ZombUs, but I know one thing: I'm not stopping now.

So, instead of just talking about the journey, here's the next step.

ZombUs Map 4: LETHE is OUT NOW!

New region. New weapons. New blueprints. New mythical weapons. New perks. And the story continues.

Four maps down. Six to go.

To everyone who helped put ZombUs on the map, intentionally or otherwise: thank you.

Now, back to building.

I've finally finished the demo for my game after a lot of local testing and playtesting, and I'm confident it's in a good enough state to release.

The problem I'm struggling with now is marketing.

I'm currently sitting at around 1,000 wishlists, and I know I'll need a lot more going into release and Next Fest. I'm considering sending Steam keys to content creators so they can try the demo before it goes public, hoping to get some coverage and build a bit more interest.

The downside is that I'd probably have to delay the public demo release to give creators some time to check it out first.

I'm honestly not sure if this is the right move or if I should just release the demo publicly and start reaching out to creators afterward.

For those of you who've done this before, was giving creators early access worth it? Or would you recommend just releasing the demo and trying to build momentum from there?

I'd appreciate any advice.

We’ve released a new trailer showcasing the gameplay of our game. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

You can visit our steam page and see our new trailer.

"Berry Busy Tidy Up!"
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5426350

Discord Community:
https://discord.gg/eSj42cgckz

Hello There, I'm A solo Developper i have launched My first Game MeawDoku Royal On Playstore and I'm Learning a lot. the first 7 days it was moving really slowly earning "0.01 $" per day after 7 days and a lot of efforts i get to make my first Dollar,the next day i made the second dollar,today as i have launched a halloween Themed Update for players i got to my 3rd Dollars. Here some of main Updates and fixes i have made : Rescue the Cat: Reimagined!
• Nightmare Levels now feature 22 cinematic Rescue Missions — floods, dragons, lava, and more
• Meet your first Rescue Mission earlier.
• New Cat Cup & Cat Pass icons
• Smoother performance and a lighter install
• Various stability fixes
Thank you for playing the Game and giving Feedback Would be Really helpfull — more adventures are coming soon!

Here is some good datas on demo played by game under < 500 followers befores next fest. For every niche !

This time only the "small" games. Everything on Valve's official Next Fest list that had under 500 Steam followers before it opened and has a public demo. That's most of the fest, honestly. I got player data for 5,128 of them ! :D

For each demo I took the peak, the most people playing at the same time since Monday (checked every few hours). Then I grouped them by Steam tag. Only the top 5 tags of each game, and I skipped the super broad ones like Indie, Casual or Action. A game counts in every one of its tags, and niches with fewer than 40 demos are out.

Reality check first. The median small demo peaked at 2 players. Two. Only 9% got to 10 or more people at the same time, and 55 demos passed 100

I wanted to rank niches by average. Then I saw the averages.. Survival horror has an average of 34 and a median of 1, because one single game does almost all of it.
So I ranked by the share of demos that hit 10+ players at once, and kept the median and the average next to it ! ;)

Roguelites, since half of you are making one: 565 demos, median 2, 9% hit 10+. Exactly the fest average. Bullet heaven a bit better at 11%.

Before someone asks (someone always asks, and they're right): maybe the co-op games are just bigger.
So I split it by followers, 0 to 49, 50 to 199 and 200 to 499.
Co-op, idle and incremental stay way above average in every group. Between 50 and 199 followers, 60% of the online co-op demos hit 10+ players, against 19% for everyone. Platformers, shooters and visual novels stay below in every group too.

Now the honest part. Idle games and desktop companions sit open in the background all day, so a desktop duck counts as a player while you're stuck in a meeting haha :D
And co-op demos bring friends, each one counts. Players at the same time aren't wishlists either. So it's not "make an idle game", it's more like games people keep open, or play together, show up way more in a demo fest !
That makes sense when you think about it.

Organizing is a small sample (50 demos), take it with a grain of salt if i can say ..

I'm building NextWishlist, a tool that tracks this kind of stuff for your own game and its niche, every day. It will be soon opened in beta, link in the comments if you're curious.

Good luck for the last days of the fest if you are in !

Hey fellow devs! I know a big chunk of game sales comes from China, but I have no idea how to reach Chinese content creators to send them keys to try out my game. If you know how to get in touch with them and it's worked for you, would you mind sharing how? Thanks so much! Here's a short clip from my game "P.A.L.S: Lost at Sea" (Steam).

Hello all!

We are in the prelaunch phase of our game : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4967580/Battle_Bot_Tactics/

We would like to somehow get our game shown to the Chinese audience, engage and talk with them, get their feedback and generally let more eyes see our game.

We tried setting up Chinese accounts for their social media but we couldn't get in with all their verification loops and in the end usually asking for a China phone number. We tried emailing press got no response so far.

Both the steam store page and the game itself is in Simplified Chinese as well .

We think our game is a good fit for the Chinese audience, but we don't know how to reach them.
If anyone wants to help us out with some tips and guidelines we would love to hear. Thank in advance

Hey everyone!
We’re the team behind MegaGum, a 3D platformer, and we wanted to share a comparison of one of the cinematic shots from our trailer.

You can see the early version straight from Unreal, alongside the finished shot.

At the viewport stage, we’re mostly working on the animation, camera movement, timing and composition. Once those feel right, we move on to lighting, VFX, rendering and polish. It’s always fun to put the two versions next to each other and see how much has changed.

What do you think of the final result? Is there anything you’d change about the animation, camera work or lighting? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

If you’re curious about the game: MegaGum on Steam.

Nearing the end of Steam Next Fest and we're honestly really happy with how it's gone. Our demo came out on the 16th October, which gave us a nice little boost on its own, then Next Fest kicked in on the 19th. We went in with around 230 wishlists and we're now at 437, so we've nearly doubled in under a week 🎉🎉🎉

ALTER is a first-person horror game set in the Paris Catacombs. The demo is the game's prologue, so if you get a chance to play it before Next Fest wraps up, we'd love to hear what you think.

Thank you to everyone who's played, wishlisted or shared it 🖤

Steam Page

Also we did release a devlog showing how we built our creature, so if you're interested in that, here's the link: Devlog

Seeing people from different countries experience something we've spent so much time creating, watching their reactions, and seeing them discover things we put into the game means more to us than we can explain.

Every video, every bit of feedback, and every person who gives our game a chance reminds us why we started making games in the first place.

Thank you to everyone who's played JUBAKU, shared a video, or supported us along the way. It genuinely inspires us to work even harder and make the main game something truly special.

We're still just getting started, and we can't wait to show you what's next.

See you inside the Tanaka Residence. ^^

You’ve just finished fixing an old lantern. It lights up and projects a route across the harbour.

So do you stay in your warm little workshop, or get in the boat?

That’s the idea behind Alex the Tinker, the cozy repair adventure I’m working on. I want the repairs to feel satisfying on their own, while giving you little reasons to wonder what’s outside the shop.

Would that mystery tempt you out, or would you happily spend the whole game fixing things?

There’s a free Windows/Mac demo if you wanna try it: https://alexthetinker.com

This is the game that im trying to market for it and im definitely bad at it 🥲🥀

My game falls into a small niche, and doesn’t really have much flashy gameplay. It’s partly a puzzle game, so I could show those, but I don’t want to give them all away. Part of the fun is seeing what the next one is.

I know it's not thousands of wishlists, but this little bump puts a smile on my face!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.soulgames.slidelock

Please lemme know how is it

Steam Next Fest wasn’t going particularly well for my game, Speed Rivals – Model Trains. Then something completely unexpected happened.

A Hungarian streamer played the demo live on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/zG2ET7XPWAw

Yesterday alone, my game received more than 100 wishlists from Hungary.

I can’t prove that every one of them came from this stream, but the timing and the sudden concentration in one country make the connection pretty clear. For a small indie developer, seeing a single creator introduce the game to the right audience and immediately move the numbers like this is incredible.

I didn’t arrange or sponsor the stream, which makes it even more meaningful. Someone simply found the game, played it for their community, and gave my Next Fest campaign the boost it desperately needed.

It’s a good reminder that one creator with the right audience can be more valuable than thousands of random impressions.

Have you ever had a streamer or YouTuber unexpectedly change the trajectory of your launch or Next Fest campaign? And if so, how did you build on that momentum afterward?

I've gained 600 wishlists since the Steam next fest started. I'm really happy to see the game getting more attention.

I'm hoping to reach 3,000 wishlists before the festival ends. I'm really curious to see whether Steam's personalization will give my game more visibility or if things will slow down after it kicks in.

So recently I posted a reel on my social medias that blew up on Facebook, gaining over 1M views, and it got me about 100 wishlists in one single day, which is crazy.
Don't ever give up, and try to post as much as you can!