IMPORTANT: The Prologue Trick is probably going away soon due to Steam’s changes to the Demo algorithms. You can read about the 2024 changes to the Steam demo algorithm in this blog post. I am leaving this post on the Prologue Trick up for posterity. Don’t expect that Valve will allow you to do this any more.
What is the prologue trick?
Here’s how it works
- Create a small slice of your main game. It should be a 30-45 minute core experience that shows off the best of your game.
- Embed a very clear call to action in this prologue build of the game that says “Wishlist our main game here: [BUTTON]”
- Pay for a new Steam Product fee ($100) that is in addition to your main game. This is the “prologue.”
- Set the price of this prologue to free and put up its coming soon page (but don’t launch it)
- In addition to your main game, market the prologue to earn it 7000-ish wishlists. For more info on why you need 7000 wishlists and how popular upcoming works, see this article here
- Release it so it shows up on popular upcoming
- Then hopefully get enough concurrent players on your prologue to move it up new and trending.
- Enjoy hundreds of thousands of wishlists (hopefully)
This trick has worked for several other games. Soulstone Survivors used this trick to get an estimated 130,000 wishlists ust from launching the prologue before launch. Here is a chart of their wishlist chart over time.
You can see that the Prologue earned them more wishlists than Steam Next Fest and they were in the featured position of the festival!
Other games that have used this include 20 Minutes Till Dawn (which I wrote about here). They created a prologue named 10 Minutes Till Down. Side note the developer said the naming convention was confusing and would recommend against doing that again. It would have been better to do something like Prologue: 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Lesson: Don’t get too cute and pun-y. Just be clear and help shoppers find your game.
Also the game Backbone used prologues and I wrote about it here.
Why does it work?
Basically you are using the prologue to scoop up the free visibility that Steam provides to all new (popular) games. You are double dipping in the visibility. You are getting your game up on the front page of Steam for a couple days (maybe even weeks) and then funneling that visibility to your main game.
How is a Prologue different from a demo?
A demo is a feature built into Steam where you upload an executable and assign it to your main game. Steam will add a nice little button like this:
This is the demo button for the game Jupiter Moons: Mecha
Most festivals that you apply for (including Steam Next Fest) expect you to have this demo uploaded and the button added to the Steam page. This is the standard.
A prologue is a hack.
A free separate game isn’t exactly what Valve had in mind when they set up Steam. It isn’t illegal or frowned upon (yet) and Valve hasn’t issued any opinion whatsoever on Prologues. I have never heard them rejecting a prologue or pulling one down. So at this point don’t worry about running afoul of Steam. But a prologue is still kind of a “one weird trick.” I think Valve doesn’t mind because when done right, it generates a ton of traffic for a game and therefore sells more copies which is why Steam exists for Valve.
Theoretically a prologue and a demo could be the exact same executable uploaded to Steam in 2 different ways.
Should I do a demo or a prologue?
Possibly do both.
You should definitely do a demo because that opts you into the two biggest visibility channels: Streamers and Festivals. For more on how demos work for your marketing, read this blog post.
If your game and demo is very very popular (we are talking like earning 40-100+ wishlists a day) then you should consider doing a prologue. A prologue is a bonus trick you can do if your game is getting some good attention. It most likely will not reverse your fortunes if your game is not getting any attention.
Sounds too good to be true, is there a risk to the prologue?
Kind of. Mostly it is just a waste of resources.
If you cannot marshall your community to wishlist and play your prologue and therefore doesn’t appear on the Popular Upcoming and New And Trending lists, then it was kind of a waste. You won’t get many wishlists out of it.
You wasted the time crafting unique Prologue content, you wasted time trying to get your community to go wishlist this free game, and you wasted $100 on the Steam product fee for the prologue.
This is why I only recommend doing this strategy when your game is already popular.
Risk: Prologue Confusion
The other big risk associated with Prologues is that it’s confusing. You are using one game to market another game. Your fans can get really confused. They might wishlist the Prologue instead of your main game!
Look at 20 Minutes Till Dawn and 10 Minutes Till Dawn. It was confusing.
To mitigate this make sure the Prologue Steam page explains what is going on and link back to the main game. Your Prologue title screen should also clearly state what is going on and that you need them to wishlist the main game.
If I do both, when should I launch my prologue?
Always get your demo up first and get it up early. You need feedback on your demo. A demo also usually gets you your first burst of visibility and starts to build a community. It is very hard to build visibility and community with just screenshots and a trailer.
After you have built a bigger following, have a community, have followers, improved your demo so it is super fun, no bugs, no UX issues, or difficulty spikes that turn players away it is probably time to launch your Prologue.
The community must come first because you need lots of followers who will go on to wishlist your Prologue to get it on “Popular Upcoming.” You also need a bunch of people playing your Prologue when you launch it to move you up the “New And Trending” chart. If you haven’t tested your demo first, you might have some big glaring bugs or UX issues that could harm your prologue launch.
Can the demo and prologue be the same slice of gameplay?
It could be, but it is easier to market if they are different. If you use the demo first to launch your community and build up followers, they have already been satisfied. You need their support and excitement to go wishlist and play your prologue. This is why the prologue needs to be different: you need to give them a reason to chase your prologue.
If the prologue is the same as your demo they are just going to ask ask “why should I be excited for this prologue, I just played the hell out of the demo?” You must give them something novel.
Requirement: Your game must be exciting to people
One very important requirement is that your game must already have some “energy” behind it. People need to be excited about your game because you need to gather up enough people to push this separate prologue up to 7000 wishlists first. If you can’t even get your main game to 7000 you are going to have trouble getting this prologue up there.
A prologue probably won’t fix poor visibility on your game. Instead, if you are lucky enough to have a ton of attention, you can essentially multiply that using a prologue.
Requirement: Prologues good engineering
To launch and maintain a prologue, you need to be maintaining several builds simultaneously such as a demo, a prologue, and your full game. You need to be able to change just a few parameters and be able to output a working build that has radically different content.
The smart developers separate content (characters, levels, items) from their engine (rending, shaders, rules, physics, events etc). If you fix a bug in your main game, you should be able to flip a few parameters and output a build with the bug also fixed in the demo and prologue.
I have worked with games that had engineered their game in a way that adding just a new character would require them to completely re-architect their whole game. Build resilient software. This is why separating content from code is so important.