IndieGameJoe is the only person I know who can actually make twitter work. Nobody else can tweet once and earn a game thousands of wishlists. 4 Years ago I talked to him about going Viral on Twitter for his own game Hypercharge: Unboxed. Lately Joe has been tweeting about random indie games and generating THOUSANDS of wishlists for them.
Here are some indies sharing what IndieGameJoe’s tweets did for them:
Link to Joe’s tweet that triggered this
Link to Joe’s tweet that triggered this
Link to joe’s tweet that triggered this
I wanted to know how Joe does this so that MAYBE you could also trigger your own tweets to go viral like this.
Format
At the time of writing this Joe has 45.6K Followers.
Joe is not doing this for money, just his general love of indie games.
He has been doing these pro-bono tweets since early March of 2026 (Here is his first one sharing another game)
He tweets these game pitches once or twice a day but reply to comments.
Joes starts with the game’s trailer and re-edits it into a 1-ish minute trailer. Then pairs it with an almost boiler-plate text
[Well Edited Video from Trailer]
This indie team is making a <genre> where you <hook>
<unique feature 1>
<unique feature 2>
<unique feature 3>
It’s called <game name>. Would you play this?
Then a quick followup tweet with the link
<Quote from steam page description>
<Joe’s personal from the heart reaction to the game>
<Link to steam page> and be sure to follow the talented devs <link to their twitter account>
Analysis
I sampled 20 of his tweets and recorded the number of video views and likes. Some of the tweets I picked were because indie devs shared how many wishlists their game got so I could see how it correlated to the Public Twitter Metrics. I also sample a bunch of tweets that didn’t do well just so we don’t fall prey to SURVIVORSHIP BIAS.
View counts over time with game name and date of tweet
Couple thoughts
- Many people might assume his tweets are doing well because he has a big audience. But his best performing tweets were back in March when his audience was smaller. As his notoriety and following has grown the views per tweet haven’t become better.
- It is spiky data! No easy to see trends. Sometimes a game does great! Then another will whiff.
- The winning tweets dwarf all other tweets. In fact his tweet about Retro Rewind (13,700,000) earned more views than all subsequent tweets combined (11,615,500)
How many wishlists
I found 8 developers who reported how many wishlists they earned from a Joe tweet and I cross referenced it to the number of views the tweet got.
| Game | Views | Likes | Wishlists | WL / 1K views | WL / like | Like rate |
| DREADMOOR (tweet) | 1.2 Million | 13,000 | 25,424 | 21.2 | 1.96 | 1.08% |
| Game Quest (Tweet) | 2.9 Million | 27,000 | 9,800 | 3.4 | 0.36 | 0.93% |
| Bridgebourn (tweet) | 1 Million | 17,000 | 18,200 | 18.2 | 1.07 | 1.70% |
| An Eggstremely Hard Game (tweet) | 945K | 7,300 | 6,387 | 6.8 | 0.87 | 0.77% |
| Capy Castaway (tweet) | 560K | 13,000 | 5,561 | 9.9 | 0.43 | 2.32% |
| Together: Moon Escape (tweet) | 162K | 1,800 | 3,000 | 18.5 | 1.67 | 1.11% |
| Fallgrade (tweet) | 109K | 1,400 | 600 | 5.5 | 0.43 | 1.28% |
| Leafborn (tweet) | 121K | 1,400 | 300 | 2.5 | 0.21 | 1.16% |
I know. I know. Small sample size and the way people cut off how many wishlists they earned because of the tweet is shaky. But in general the correlation between WL earned and views has a Spearman r=0.95 VERY high correlation. Likes vs wishlists is solid at r=0.86 but not as strong of a correlation as views.
The Median ratio of wishlists / view is 7.15.
So for every 1000 views a tweet gets, you can expect 7 wishlists.
Let’s dig in and see why some games did better than others
Retro Rewind
This is Joe’s biggest tweet
Retro Rewind did very well on Steam: 4,914 reviews in just over 1 month. When an idea is huge, it just takes off.
Funnily enough, the ones that go really viral usually have one thing in common, and that is they make people feel something very quickly! That went absolutely huge, and yes, you could say it is because of nostalgia, but that is exactly the point, because nostalgia is a feeling. It made people think about a time long gone and gave them a way to relive it, so the hook was not just “here is a game.” It was more like, “remember how this felt?” and that is powerful.
But the game’s idea isn’t enough when going viral on Twitter.
Look at the official reveal trailer tweet put out by the development team:
It only has 129 views. That is the power of Indie Game Joe. Do this: Put Joes tweet in one browser and then put the Reveal trailer in a browser right next to it. Push play on both. Compare what is cut out and what is left in.
Joe’s video starts with showing VHS TAPES. This is a game about VHS tapes so you should show them right away! He shows putting them in a rewind machine. A retro hook that only people who understand how VHS works would get. The reveal trailer on the other hand does a lot of establishing shots, a bit of dialogue. Joe’s video has ZERO Dialog windows! It is PURE CINEMA.
Chris Z thoughts:
Building a game off internet memes and talking points is a very powerful force that a game can build off of:
- It worked for Choo-Choo Charles which was based on a popular meme
- Backrooms games are based on the internet creepy-pasta Backrooms series
Similarly I see so much content about how wonderful video stores were back in the day. (Even though you were fined if you forgot to rewind, were often out of stock of the most popular movies, and you had to worry about late fees.)
I really think Retro Rewind went viral because Video Store content goes viral.
My theory is that 2D pixelart platformers basically have to invent a new visual style to connect on social media. The flowing surging pixelart wave is novel. It looks so neat. It reminds me of NOITA.
Horror games!
If you look at the genres Joe tweets about and cross reference them with genre, the top performers are Horror.
Perceptum got 1.5 Million Views
DREADMOOR got 1.2 Million Views
I asked Joe about it
Yes. And like… Indie devs should make more horror games. Seriously.
I know it is more nuanced than that, but horror is such a strong genre for indies, and I think it always will be. It is one of the easiest genres to communicate quickly because the feeling is so clear. Fear, tension, curiosity, dread, panic, mystery. These are emotions people understand instantly.
Joe’s team over at Digital Cybercherries also made Horror game Don’t Scream and is working on Paranormal Tales
Not all horror games were blow out hits like these two.
Joe’s Tweet for the The Void only earned 11,300 views. (CZ thought here: It looks good but has a slow, no gameplay intro).
Forbidden Solitaire
Jake Birkette of 11 years without a hit, finally has a hit with Forbidden Solitaire. The game is great, it sold well. It also has a good genre: horror. Has a good hook: haunted solitaire game from the 90s. But in twitter form, it was the worst of Joe’s tweets. The video in the tweet only got 11,000 views. I estimate only about 77 wishlists earned.
I asked Joe why.
“I remember sitting there and debating whether to show the cool live action intro with the real actors, or whether to cut straight to the gameplay. I ended up going with the intro because I could see how much effort had gone into it, and as someone who helps to make games, I really appreciated that production value.
But looking back, I think that might have been the problem. This goes back to what I said before about thinking like a viewer, not just like a developer. As a developer or marketer, you might look at that intro and think, “wow, they put a lot of effort into this.” But the average person scrolling is not always thinking that. They are usually thinking, “is this gameplay fun”.
So, my theory is that it might have done better if I had cut straight to the gameplay or got to the core horror hook faster. The intro was cool, but it may have asked for too much patience before showing people why the game was interesting to play.”
Cute creatures running through a forest as platformers
Woodland creatures do very well on Twitter.
Here is Joes tweet about a Panda-focused game named Trash Day (1.5 Million Views)
Here is Joes tweet about a Capybara-focused game named Capy Castaway (560,000 Views)
Not one of Joe’s tweets, but 3D platformer Lil Gator also did very well on twitter
Of course not all do as well.
Adorable Adventure is about a baby bore and it did a more modest 11,000 views.
So, maybe if you are making a 3D platformer that isn’t getting any attention, consider changing the main character to be a woodland creature and get Joe to tweet about it.
I Am A Caterpillar
Ok so cute mammals and lizards work, but what about bugs?
Maybe
I Am A Caterpillar looks great and has a cute main character. But this tweet underperformed with only 18,900 views.
I felt the first three or four seconds were not strong enough. The game had a lot of the right ingredients… A cute caterpillar, nice art style, and plenty of other clips that could have worked well. But I went against my gut and did not lead with what I felt was the strongest moment. If I did that post again, I would choose different footage, rework the pacing, and make the start of the footage more “wow”
2D Pixelart games
I noticed that Joe’s tweets are mostly of 3D games. I asked him
Pixel art games have never really been something I naturally gravitate toward as a player. I am not massively into pixel games myself, and with Digital Cybercherries, it is not really a style of game we have made either. So I think there is probably some personal bias there, and maybe even a lack of confidence on my side when it comes to showcasing them, because I am not always as instantly connected to what makes that type of game appealing. But, I definitely do not think they are a lost cause.
Where I do think pixel games can struggle is when they look like “just another pixel game.” I know that sounds harsh, but because there are so many of them, I think they often need a stronger hook to stand out. If the game does not have a somewhat eye-catching aesthetic, a mechanic, a strong fantasy, or something that makes people instantly go “oh, that is cool,” it can be harder to cut through all that noise.
Here is his only 2D sidescrolling pixelart game. It earned about 124,700 views (estimated 872 wishlists earned)
More tips from Joe about making your tweets go viral
- “It took five years to make” can be interesting later, but the viewer first needs to care about what the game is.
- Stop thinking “how do I sell this?” and start thinking “how do I make someone feel something?”
- Don’t post trailers, post clips of trailers
- Hashtags don’t matter any more
- Nobody knows but Joe suspects adding links to a tweet hurts it with the algorithm so he always posts the link as a reply.
- Nostalgia, fear, humour, curiosity, satisfaction, or just some type of feeling your game can evoke
- Get straight to the gameplay or the strongest visual idea.
- If using captions or voiceovers, get to the point fast.
- Do not only post polished trailers. Raw gameplay can often feel more honest and engaging.
- Make sure the video quality is good. Render it properly, make sure it is not blurry, stuttery, or weirdly compressed, because if your game looks good but the footage looks bad, you are making the game fight uphill for no reason.
- Experiment with aspect ratios, openings, clip order, text hooks, and different types of footage.
- If a post fails, do not bin it straight away. Check the retention and learn where people dropped off. TikTok, Instagrame provide video retention numbers.
- Joe warns though: “Be careful not to get too obsessed with analytics. Yes, look at them. Yes, learn from them. Yes, check where people dropped off. But do not overthink every tiny dip or you will drive yourself mad. At least, I know I have sometimes gotten obsessed with this stuff, and it was not healthy! I see analytics more as a rough indicator. If everyone leaves after two seconds, something is probably wrong with the opening. If people stay until a certain point and then drop off, maybe the pacing changes or the clip loses its hook. Even if a video performs well, it is still worth checking retention because you might be able to make the next one even better.”
Can Joe make any game go viral?
I usually pass on games that look very unpolished, are too early in development, or are extremely difficult to understand from the trailer. If I cannot quickly understand what the game is trying to make me feel, or why someone would stop scrolling for it, I know there is a good chance the post will not do well. And honestly, I do not want that to be demotivating for the developer. In those cases, I would rather wait until the game has a stronger clip, clearer hook, or better presentation before putting it in front of people.
CZ Note:
I still think there are some games that just don’t do well on social media but find their audience via a demo. I find 2D games with deep deep strategic elements that only reveal themselves by playing the game are nearly impossible to go viral. So try your hardest to implement Joe’s tips, but understand that not every game can do this.
How do you get Joe to tweet about your game?
First make a good game that looks good, has a hook, evokes a clear emotion, has a trailer that is not confusing.
“The best place is probably my Discord because it is easier for me to check and keep track of things there. I’m trying my best, guys! haha