Twitter still works in Japan

Strangely, Japan still loves Twitter. They also love reading blogs about games! I love Japan. If you look at stats you will see Japan is the #2 user of the site. If you do the math that means the number of accounts is about 50% of the population (I doubt this is 1×1 since some people have multiple) vs about 30% of the USA. They also still think Twitter is cool and click the links. (Source of this table) (Another article about twitter and Japan)


Recently a bunch of developers have been sharing evidence that after getting covered by some totally unknown-to-the-West Japanese blogs their wishlists and view counts have skyrocketed. 

These developers are literally big in Japan (Also Big in Japan)

In today’s post I am going to look at some of the games that have been covered by Japanese sites, and their effect on wishlists and traffic. 

You will also see a list of potential sites you can reach out to so that you too can reach out to them and hopefully get coverage. 

Glyphica: Typing Survival

Xuanming Zhou is the lead dev behind the typing action roguelike Glyphica: Typing Survival which was covered by Japanese gaming blog named denfaminicogamer.jp and also mentioned in a subsequent tweet.

The coverage arrived in the middle of Steam Next Fest so it is a bit hard to figure out the exact impact. However, most traffic from Steam Next Fest arrives day 1. As you can see in the following chart, their highest spike came days after the start of the festival which means most of the traffic came from the denfamicico gamer post. In a single day the coverage brought in almost 3000 wishlists. 

As a result of the coverage, Japanese streamers started to play it too. This video brought in almost 1,500 wishlists.

And this one did well too:

“Interestingly, they [denfaminicogamer.jp] weren’t even the first Japanese outlet to organically promote us. The first one was way back in March, by an outlet called Indie Freaks” Read the article from Indie Freaks

Xuanming Zhou

One interesting point is that the blog author grabbed all new screenshots to show off the Japanese language support. Translating your game is important!

Side note, aren’t the logos for Japanese gaming blogs adorable?

Mystopia

Last Minute Studios are the developers of Mystopia,, a potion crafting sandbox game. They launched their Steam page in June of 2024. Within fifteen minutes of the page going live Indie Freaks was already tweeting about it. a potion crafting sandbox game.

As a result of the tweet the team earned over 500 wishlists in their first two weeks. A great start. 

Most of the traffic came from Japan

Note Mystopia also had a translated Steam page!

3D Hand Poser

Ige Olwen is the solo developer behind 3D Hand Poser and found a niche with a bunch of other virtual posing games / tools on Steam.

3D Hand Poser launched on June 3rd and Japanese blog gamespark.jp wrote about it on launch day and tweeted this:

Here is what Ige said about the experience:

[The tweet] gave a great boost in sales and wishlist as well, this also helped a lot of my other apps with sales and WL. The craze somehow did not really leave Asia though.

Ige Olwen

Here is the wishlist chart around the period where the tweet hit

As you can see the traffic to their steam page overwhelmingly came from Japan.

Steam page translated? Yes!

Adorable mascot? Yes!

Manly Mines

Levi Murray is the solo developer behind Manly Mines a co-op survival horror game. In May Levi posted his trailer on youtube

Manly Mines | Announcement Trailer

A few days later the Japanese gaming blog Automaton covered the game and tweeted about it here. 

This is the result. 3,166 wishlists in a 1 week period.

The first mini spike appears to be directly related to the trailer on Youtube. 

The second spike occurs in the day following the Automation article. Strangely it looks like Russia and Ukraine also brought in significant traffic.

What’s with the Eastern European traffic? It looks like a site called coop-land wrote something about it. Of course when I try to access it from the USA I am blocked. 

Thanks to Benjamin (my contact with special insights on Russia) sent me this writeup of the article. It is mainly a description of the trailer.

Players need to pump up their muscles to successfully complete the tests and fight monsters from the dungeons.

A cooperative mix of horror and action, Manly Mines parodies the concept of Lethal Company and invites players to collect resources in the form of food and sports supplements used for rapid muscle growth. This is a prerequisite for completing difficult levels in the form of abandoned mines, where something terrible has settled, attacking defenseless diggers from the darkness…

The main goal of the players is to descend to the very first horizon of the mine and safely climb back, and each new level will be distinguished by increasing difficulty. All obstacles must be removed with the help of brute male force, so dumbbells and heavy barbells for training are scattered around the location. For quick pumping, you will need proteins hidden in the darkest corners of the mine.

A joint passage of Manly Mines is designed for four players who are obliged to raise to the surface the amount of resources specified in the contract. If players consume the loot themselves or lose it as a result of death, their comrades will have to go down again and replenish their supplies. Unfortunately, our heroes do not have any weapons or tools, so an encounter with a monster can end badly.

Each level of the mine is inhabited by various creatures that turn on the aggression mode and attack uninvited guests. It is difficult to cope with such monsters, but players can try to pump up their muscles or strengthen their leg muscles for faster movement. Meeting monsters and regular deaths are an integral part of the gameplay and an incentive for teamwork.

Manly Mines is released in 2024 on Steam.

So Manly Mines benefitted from a Japanese and Eastern European influx of traffic.

Summary and Recommendations

Recommendation #1

So yes, Japanese twitter and gaming blogs are serious and can really drive wishlists. These articles seem to outperform the traffic generated by smaller Western gaming sites. I have noticed that it is really hard to get coverage in bigger sites like IGN and Gamespot. Even if you get covered by Kotaku it brings in around 500 wishlists. 

So my recommendation is, add these Japanese blogs (and any others you can find) to your list of press sites you reach out to when doing any big news beat like Steam page launch, Betas, Demo Launches, Date Announce Trailers, Game Launches.

Recommendation #2

Translate, translate, translate. Launch your page with translation. Yes you can use machine learning to do a rough translation but based on the traffic increase it would probably be better to pay for a professional human translation.

PS Don’t ask me what translation companies I recommend, the reputable ones change all the time. A better option is to find some indie devs who have translated their steam page recently and ask them who they used. These “who did you use” questions are a great ice breaker to start making friends with other indie developers. 

A couple of the developers I covered in this blog mentioned that they got coverage within hours of their page launching. I wonder if some of these blogs use tools like Steamdb to look for newly launched Steam pages. I figure they are more likely to cover you if the page is translated to Japanese at the start when they are doing their daily search. Also it seems many of these blogs love reporting on newly announced games.

Recommendation #3

If you do get some good press from Japan, immediately contact the big Western press outlets like IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and tell them “we just blew up in Japan, we are worth covering!” Last year I wrote about using this “trading up” technique in this blog post called “How to get covered by IGN”. In the article, look for the sub section titled “Step 5: Keep trading up.”

Why does trading up work? Many games journalists are pressured to get as many “clicks” as they can on their articles and tweets. Nobody, not even journalists, know exactly which game will go viral. So they rely on past performance of that game to judge whether it is worth their time to write about it. If it has viral in one social media platform, region, or language, it is more likely to go viral in another territory. So getting covered by a Japanese site shows that you are a less risky bet and you might be more likely to get Western coverage.

So tell those Western sites “We are big in Japan!”

Recommendation #4

You might notice that none of the games I featured in this article felt particularly “Japanese.” There were no RPGs or Anime art. Many indies come to me saying “we are making a game that has Anime art so should we contact Japanese press outlets?” Absolutely! But I think it is a bit of a stereotype that Japanese players only like games with traditionally Japanese art. So it doesn’t matter what your graphical style is, just share all your stuff with Japan.

Recommendation #5

So what sites should you contact? Personally, I don’t know what sites are most popular in Japan but here are the sites and twitter accounts featured in this article. If you are from Japan and have some recommendations of sites that cover indie games, let me know!

Note I don’t know who or what writers or editors you should contact. Instead, just search their site for a contact email address or specific writers. See if you can DM their twitter account.

Thanks to npckc for the additional site recommendations.