Tiny Glade
In December of 2022, Anastasia Opara and Tomasz Stachowiak launched the Steam page for their beautiful castle building sandbox game Tiny Glade and earned 10,000 wishlists within 24 hours. Within 4 months, they earned even more and are now one of the top 50 wishlisted games on Steam with over 420,000 wishlists. This is an exciting result for a team of just two full-time and two part-time developers.
Ana purchased my Masterclass in May of 2022 and has been diligently applying the techniques I teach and had the best (and most flattering) way of explaining how my class helps students:
“A lighthouse in a sea of unknowns”
What a great way of putting it. In short, you bring a sea-worthy ship (your game), and I will guide you through the treacherous waters that is Steam.
Right game for the right audience
As the Tiny Glade steam page says, it is “a small relaxing game about doodling castles… There’s no management, combat, or wrong answers – just kick back and turn forgotten meadows into lovable dioramas.” Here is the trailer
It has the perfect vibes and the perfect design for the perfect audience. Chill building sandbox games are a very hot genre right now; just look at successful games like Townscaper and Flowscape.
It’s my theory that 90% of your success comes from your game and 10% comes from marketing. The Tiny Glade team deserves all credit for this. This game is so beautiful that there is no doubt as to why it is doing so well. I am just guiding them. Telling them where the currents are swiftest and what rocks to steer clear of.
Careful pre production
The Wishlist & Visibility Masterclass teaches you marketing for every stage of your development. It starts at pre production even before you have a name for your game.
But here is the contradiction! How do you market a game even before you have a name?
As I advise in the course, you don’t worry too much and start showing in progress early information about the game. Show vibes and core gameplay aspects. Short, interesting videos that show off gameplay. Leave out the name. Just put it out there. Ana did it perfectly. Here is an early gif. It isn’t even in color!
Here is another one
I’ll be honest, I can’t teach you to go viral on Social media. In my experience, not every game can get that type of visibility. It is usually only beautiful or cute games that can manage to do anything on Twitter or Tiktok. Tiny Glade is the perfect game to go viral here.
But going viral isn’t enough. You have to move those who are interested down the marketing funnel. And how do you do that? A mailing list (yes they still work).
Tiny Glade team did a great job getting people to sign up. Look at this mailing list subscriber history annotated with what social media platform went viral for them.
When it was time to announce their game, their mailing list had a 28% click through rate. Compare that to most social media which has a 1% or less click through rate. Mailing lists always work as a great way to hold on to the new fans until you have a Steam page to promote.
Coordinated blast
Then when it was time to launch their Steam page, the Tiny Glade team executed a perfect launch. Watch this teasing TikTok which shows how they tease the upcoming launch of their Coming Soon Page.
Tiny Glade leveraged their proven virality to participate in a festival that has the perfect audience match for them: Wholesome Snack: The Game Awards Edition.
They timed a new trailer (see below), published their steam page, and announced their name, during a festival. This is a perfectly orchestrated “surge” that can really bring the attention of the Steam algorithm, putting the game on the right foot going forward.
What do I mean by “right foot?” The Steam widgets like the “Discovery Queue” and “More Like This” and tag pages combine with the social media boost they have, and just ambient word of mouth can provide this long tail wishlist graph. Notice how it took months before it dipped below 1000 wishlists a day. Within 4 months they had gathered 257,387 wishlists.
Read more
If you want to read more, check out the original thread by Ana
Part 1:
Part 2:
Also check out this write up by Simon Carless.
Summary
As you can see, it is possible to market a game before you have a Steam page. It is all about testing messaging, seeing if their is interest (in this case there was a TON of it), and then funneling that interest into a platform that is best served to convert: A mailing list.
I know that you might be in any stage of your marketing journey when you find me, so I specifically designed the Steam Wishlist & Visibility Masterclass to be arranged chronologically so that you can learn what you should be doing at each phase of your marketing. Look forward to helping you in July with the launch of the Sale.