Indie game development is hard and at times it seems like nothing works or everything that used to work no longer does any more. 

In today’s post I wanted to show off 3 games and 3 marketing campaigns that achieved huge successes in terms of wishlists or sales. Best of all, these are all games from small teams with modest track records. 

I know, I know “survivorship bias.” But sometimes you just need to feel good about something working and someone who is doing well. Give yourself a treat and soak in the good news. Also, I just want to show these as examples of how developers are doing things that are actually breaking through to the game-playing-public. Think of these as lighthouses shining through the fog and rain telling you where to navigate your ship. Instead of screaming “survivorship bias” at the lighthouses, follow them, look closely at what they are doing and see if there is anything you can adopt for your own marketing.

Does Instagram actually work now?

In most cases, marketing your game on Instagram is a waste of time. The audience just doesn’t seem to engage with gaming content. There doesn’t seem to be a gaming audience there. However, I have heard from several developers recently that Instagram Reels (a Meta take on the TikTok formula) has actually gone viral and produced a significant spike in Wishlists. 

The developer of horror game Infinitum: The Backrooms Story has been posting Instagram Reels since March of 2023, but recently had a post go viral. The video above got 1.2 million views and over 160,000 likes. 

This resulted in over 8,000 wishlists in the week that followed. They figure 330k Instagram reel views equal around 1000 wishlists. The reel spike is circled. As you can see, it has had a long tail effect. 

That first spike from June 18th was from their Steam Page launch. To announce their page they used their existing instagram following (50,000), their discord (3000 followers), and a little bit of Reddit. 

Here is an enhanced view of the Viral spike.

BTW here are some Instagram stats that the developer was able to access that describe who checks Instagram. 

As amazing as this all sounds, earlier this year, Sabito had a 3.8 Million view post, but unfortunately, they didn’t have a Steam page live at the time so they couldn’t collect wishlists from it. They estimate that post would have earned them 15,000 wishlists.

A couple tips from Sabito:

  • Viral videos all have a “formula.” To find that formula, watch a bunch of other videos from creators that have similar games that have blown up and try to mimic that structure. 
  • The formula for the 1.2M viewed video is: music that is reverbed and slowed down, and adding a caption that invites interaction such as “tag your friend” or “Games are getting too real.”
  • Once you find a formula that works (they had one that earned 500K views) keep iterating on it. For instance they try a bunch of other songs to see which fits best.
  • When a video goes viral, respond to comments and interact with that new community.

Additional thoughts from Chris Zukowski:

As good as Sabito is at making these viral videos, you must consider that it might not be applicable to all genres. The horror genre has a particular advantage for going viral (especially in the coming two spooky months.) There is something about people wanting to share creepy things with their friends and that triggers a viral cascade. 

If you are a developer who is interested in making short, bespoke, linear, narrative, games, consider making a horror game. Even if you are a total chicken when it comes to scary stories, marketing a horror game is soooo much easier. Trust me. 

To read more on why I think Horror games are so awesome, check this post I wrote at the beginning of this year.

And if you worry that you are a sell-out-shill for compromising your artistic vision to make a quick buck on horror games, consider that Stanley Kubrick decided to make The Shining because his previous film flopped and he really wanted a hit and knew that horror films always do well. 

“After the box-office disappointment of his previous film, Barry Lyndon, Kubrick was sorely in need of a hit, and he chose The Shining in an attempt to make a more commercial film.” – Lee Torrance

The influential site you probably haven’t heard of

Tiny Glade is a very beautiful game that has done amazingly well using their mailing list and social media (I wrote about their success in this blog post)

Recently the team got a mysterious 4000+ wishlists spike. The team couldn’t locate the source exactly.

Then they discovered this post from GAMINGbible.

GAMINGbible is an aggregator of viral content that is games and nerd-culture related. Their content seems to skew a bit “gamer bro” but as this Tiny Glade example showed, a gentle casual game is appealing to their audience. GAMINGbible basically scours the web for videos that have gone viral in the past (like Tiny Galdes official trailer) and then they just repost it with new narration (the commentator in the video works for GAMINGbible.) That Facebook video has earned over 1.7M views and 26,000 likes on youtube. 

GAMINGbible also reposted the same video on TikTok earning 244,000 views and 150 comments

And reposted it on Instagram for 13,662 likes. 

GAMINGbible has done a great job amassing a following of actual gamers. Sometimes aggregators like Can you pet the dog get a huge following but it is an audience that just likes to see cute animals and games, so it doesn’t cause a noticeable spike in wishlists. GAMINGbible is the real deal.

The funny thing is that GAMINGbible never contacted the Tiny Glade team; they just saw this mysterious rise in wishlists. 

I have written about GAMINGbible before for the Indie Game Joe’s amazing social media campaign for Hypercharge: Unboxed.

The effect is real.

Takeaway action:

  • Unfortunately, if you haven’t gone viral on social media with your game, this probably won’t work. It seems that the way GAMINGbible is able to grow their following is by poaching (in a nice way) content that has proven to have already gone viral.
  • So, if you have gone viral on TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, or Reddit, you should send your video that has proven to be a hit to GAMINGbible. They have a submission form on their website here. 
  • What is considered Viral enough for them? Who knows. But, based on my own experience, my ears perk up anytimes someone tells me they earned 1000 or more wishlists from a single post. 
  • I would also suggest following GAMINGBible on Facebook and TikTok just so you can get a feel of what kind of content is connecting to people. GAMINGbible is very good at collecting the stuff that goes big. It might inspire you to make the type of trailer that has the potential to go viral and get covered by GAMINGbible.

Dwarves: Glory, Death and Loot

There has been a bunch of chatter about wishlists becoming less potent (here is one example) with a declining conversion rate, but I am not fully convinced. There are still lots of games launching with very high conversion rates. For instance, see Dwarves: Glory, Death and Loot which is doing amazing numbers after launching with 30,000 wishlists and a 18.4% conversion rate. THAT’S HOT!

On twitter, the developer just announced they sold 30,000 copies of the game.

I chatted with the solo developer Rafael (Twitter) who is behind Dwarves’s amazing launch. Here was their marketing battle plan that they executed in the run up to the launch of their game:

Steam also started boosting it on other widgets like “More like this” you can see their impressions rise steadily here:

AUGUST 17, 2023: Early Access launch with 30,000 wishlists. That is 9,000 wishlists gained in the last week thanks to Streamer outreach, and popular upcoming boost. Here is their daily wishlist graph leading into and following launch.


“Overall, if I could point to any one thing that led to Rafael’s success it was having a public, playable alpha or beta from day 1. The demo was my main success point basically everything came from it, starting with SplatterCat covering it very early on” – Rafael

Here is the developer on his strategy of keeping the demo up early and up until release. Here is a link to his reference to my advice to keep your demo up forever.

Also helping is the game is in the right genre for Steam (Buildy-crafty-simmy-strategy games), and really fun. As I have reported in my benchmarks, median playtime is such a strong indicator of fan support. Look at this AMAZING median playtime of 2 hours for Dwarves’s DEMO, not even the full game.

So what is my theory as to the supposed declining potency of wishlists? 

  • First, I am not even sure it is a thing. I have not seen a broad based survey of the trend of wishlists conversion rates, so I can’t say if there definitely is a decline in wishlists. 
  • “Vibes” are not data. I think a number of Twitter-famous games have had softer launches and so it FEELS like every game is failing but really it is a couple examples of very public games. 
  • One theory is that we are getting better at collecting wishlists through improved sharing of information. We are now able to see, finally, what is actually working (eg festivals, and streamers). 
  • Because we are better at getting wishlists, games that have “softer” support are able to still earn wishlists and from the outside they look just as good as the games that gamers REALLY REALLY WANT. 
  • But games that *have the magic* like Dwarves are getting wishlists at the same rates as games that have “softer” support but it isn’t tell you launch that you find out if those are high-converting wishlists..
  • Therefore, Wishlists can have a range of conversion rates and they are not the only indicator that a game will be a winner.
  • I still think wishlists are a very good indicator of whether your game will do well, BUT, you should also look at secondary factors that can indicate whether the wishlists are going to convert well. For instance, demo median play time (Dwarves had a 2 hour median playtime demo), and streamer support (Splattercat played the tech alpha on Stream without the developer even reaching out to him).

My observations from Dwarves’s success: 

  • Get that demo up!
  • Itch is a good discovery mechanism for free games (like Demos)
  • Check your median playtime. Over 25 minutes is decent. But a median playtime of 2 hours is amazing.
  • Maybe g.round is a good way to test? Will have to do more reporting on this, email me if you have also used it. (chrisz ~AT~ howtomarketagame.com)