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Last week was Steam Puzzle Fest and for the games that participated they got a ton of sales and wishlists.
Here is puzzle and solitaire game guru Grey Alien Games reporting their success.
The festival also showcases upcoming games and I also got to see some wishlist data
| Game | Wishlists earned during the fest |
|---|---|
| Shapez 2 | 10,569 |
| Escape From Mystwood Mansion | 3308 |
| The Enjenir | 2,152 |
| ARTIFICIAL | 1363 |
| Captain Contraptions Chocolate Factory | 570 |
| Paint Over | 148 |
What to expect with themed fests
Shapez 2 was the most featured game in the festival. It was at the top of “Most Wishlisted” and “Popular Upcoming.” So it is pretty safe to assume that the ceiling for success on a festival is around ~10,000 wishlists.
I didn’t get access to enough game’s wishlists numbers to make conclusive median earnings, but as you can see many games got into the thousands of wishlists for the week.
How to be a top earning game?
I asked a few of the developers of the top earning games what they thought the reasons:
We posted three TikToks in the 2 weeks leading up to the Festival (we hadn’t posted in a couple of months) which got 570k, 430k, and 1.3M views (in chronological order) – our content tends to do well on Tiktok! 👀
Fuzzywobs, one of the two developers behind The Enjenir (2152 wishlists)
I think part of the reason [of the success] was a marketing push we did (starting 1.5 weeks before puzzle fest). It grew our wishlists from ~300 to ~600. In percentages, it was a huge increase. Our wishlist additions when comparing with the previous 1 week/2 weeks were also crazy high (percentage-wise) right before the fest. I think this impacted the Steam algorithm and put us the popular upcoming list in Puzzle Fest.
From there, we climbed a few position during the week in the list. I think the reason was that the theme of the fest was a perfect fit for our game, the capsule looks professional, and the game’s store page is good.
Creator of Escape From Mystwood Mansion (3308 wishlists)
How to get into Steam themed events
Themed Steam events are a bit different than Steam Next Fest (which runs 3-times annually)
Unlike Steam Next Fest, themed sales and events are open to coming soon, and released games. Also themed events don’t have the same “one time only” rule for Steam Next Fest. The down side is that themed events are somewhat invite only and open only to games that fit that theme. Valve programs in some criteria and then scans the thousands of games on Steam and marks the games that it thinks fit the criteria as “Eligible.” About 2 months before the start of the festival you typically get an email that says “X games eligible for X festival, do you want to opt in?”
Your store page must be published in order to be considered for these fests. So if you look ahead and see a fest that might fit your genre, publish your page ASAP so you can opt in. Also if you recently published a page and you are eligible for an upcoming festival, try to opt in now since you missed the initial announcement.
You can also see if you are eligible in Steamworks.
Also, In their latest announcement for Steam Sports Fest, you can click a button and it will show you which of your games are eligible for the festival.
They also list the eligibility of what they define as a game in that genre within the Steamworks documentation of that fest.
For instance for Stealth Fest, Valve says your game
Participating games must have stealth as the primary game mechanic and typically feature additional mechanics and/or elements including:
- A reported ‘stat’ related to sneaking or stealth
- Positioning your character(s) behind the enemy or object or out of line of sight
Examples of games that may not include stealth (as described above) as the primary game mechanic and thus may not be eligible include games in which:
- Sneaking is only available for a subset of missions within the game
- Sneaking is not a primary way to play the game (e.g. PUBG)
- The only gameplay option is to hide from enemies (without an option to engage enemies)
- Avoiding enemies is prioritized over sneaking up close to enemies
What events are upcoming in 2023?
Valve has published the full list of 2023 fests here
Mystery Fest: February 20 – 27
Spring Sale: March 16 – 23 (major seasonal sale)
Puzzle Fest: April 24 – May 1
Visual Novel Fest: August 7 – 14
Strategy Fest: August 28 – September 4
SHMUP Fest: September 25 – October 2
What if Valve thinks my game isn’t eligible?
These tips came from Tony at Black Tabby Games who successfully negotiated 3 games into festivals despite them being erroneously rejected. (To clarify, the games totally should have been in the festival but were for whatever reason were initially left out).
The algorithm for the genre fests checks mostly tags and probably long and short descriptions. While it is pretty good at picking the genres, it isn’t perfect.
If you think your game is eligible for one of the upcoming fests this year, make sure your top 5 tags align with that genre. Make sure the short and long description mention keywords that are typical for that genre. You want to make sure your game gets picked up in the scan. Now don’t lie. Don’t try to make your FPS look like a Visual Novel; it wouldn’t be helpful anyway because the audience wouldn’t want it.
Once your page is looking good and the appropriate anchors are visible, go to Steamworks, click the link for the festival registration page (here is the page for Sports Fest) and pick your game, then look for this button.
Then you will be presented with a field to explain why it should be included. NICELY ask for a reconsideration. Explain key mechanics of your game and why you think it should be part of that fest. Again, DO NOT ACT LIKE A JERK. Be nice, friendly, don’t blame, just be a human for god’s sake.
Hopefully a Valve representative will mark your game eligible.
Summary of final tips
- Online, front page featured events and festivals are the best way to get wishlists. My community tracks them and reports when new ones are coming up. Track them by joining my newsletter and joining the official HTMAG discord (See #event-reminders channel).
- If you think your game is a good fit for an official steam genre festival (don’t lie) and you didn’t get accepted, fix up your page to really emphasize those genre anchors, then open a support ticket to appeal the decision. Be courteous, friendly , and NICE, there are real people reading your ticket and they have the power to get you into the land of wishlists and honey.
- The success of the festival will depend on the placement you get in the festival. Usually games with more wishlists and more velocity will put you in special featuring widgets.
- To increase velocity, a couple weeks before the festival do big promotions just before festivals such as trying a big push on TikTok, reaching out to streamers, or posting on reddit.
- (PS these festivals are why sticking to well worn genres is so powerful. If your game is so out there you can’t even classify it in one of these upcoming fests, that isn’t a good thing)
- Be patient. Every year valve comes up with a new list of festivals for different genres. If you have a classic genre and it isn’t in the list I posted above, it could get its turn next year.
