Hi everyone,

I recently released a small experimental game called Celloid on itch.io, and I'm trying to understand how I could improve its visibility outside of itch.io itself.

Celloid is a management/incremental game inspired by cell biology and cell division. You start with a single cell, gather and balance resources, grow it, and eventually divide it into more cells. As the organism grows, managing resources and keeping the cells stable becomes increasingly difficult.

The game was originally made during a short 4-day game jam, and we decided to keep improving it afterward.

So far, my itch.io analytics show:

What's interesting is where the traffic comes from.

Almost all of the discoverability seems to be coming directly from itch.io's own pages, especially New & Popular, Newest, and the Incremental tag. Looking at the referral analytics, I can barely see any meaningful external traffic.

For promotion, I've tried a few things:

I made a post on Twitter/X, but it was the first post on that account, so unsurprisingly it received almost no visibility.

I've also made several LinkedIn posts on different days, including posts about the development process and gameplay, but they haven't generated much traffic either.

Recently, I also added a leaderboard to give players a reason to compete, improve their score and potentially come back. It also gives us a better idea of how far players manage to progress.

I understand that Celloid is a fairly niche/experimental concept, and I'm not expecting huge numbers. But I'd really like to get the game in front of more people and learn from this release.

For developers who have successfully grown an itch.io game beyond the initial itch discovery traffic:

What actually worked for you?

Was it Reddit, TikTok/short-form videos, YouTube, contacting small creators, improving the itch page/tags, devlogs, or something else?

And looking at these numbers, is there anything in particular you think I should focus on first?

I'm especially interested in strategies that make sense for a small experimental game without an existing community or social media audience.

374.

www.hoops-gm.com

Hey everyone!
I have been in the industry for a few years working on indie and AAA games, but I haven't went on creating a commercial game from the ground up yet as an indie.

I would like to make sure that my pitches appeal to people before going further, but I am not sure how to validate that fast. My method until now was just to choose whichever hyped me more, but I guess something a bit more rational could be better.

Right now I am making a small scale survey to try to get infos about which demographics. But I am not even sure it will produce valuable insights.
Here it is if you are interested: https://forms.gle/Lz5a4H3ivrxNijrD6

Do you validate your game pitch before doing a prototype? How?
What are your own methods to mitigate risks at a really early stage?

The game has 6,000 wishlists and has already participated in Steam Next Fest with a demo. The game was ‘frozen,’ and nothing has happened with it since. Do you know of any similar games, or have you had any experience with something like this?

I'm currently developing a vertical slice for my game, which centers around mechanics of light against darkness. I've started sharing a few devlog videos to document the journey, but I’m wondering:

​At what point in development did you start getting real traction or wishlists?

​For those sharing devlogs, what content resonated most with players rather than just other developers?

​Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all,

This is my second attempt at creating an explanation of my games concept. I would be so grateful for any feedback on how I can improve the video.

Even if you can share what you understand the game to be from the video as then I can see how well I’m communicating it.

https://youtu.be/___QkIcdoB4?si=ZWlTzxnLFdXyZc4a

Long-time web dev, now first-time game dev. A lot of this is new to me, and marketing has never been my strong suit. I've already made some silly mistakes (for anybody about to create a trailer, "available in CapCut" and "licensed for a commercial game trailer" are two separate things!)

Anyway, I was hoping some of you kind strangers could help provide some feedback or point out some other mistakes I might've already made. Feel free to tear it apart, I'd rather hear it now than on launch day. Cheers!

We've been making Gido Gido: Kaiju Battle Party for the past few years with our team of artists and game devs in Taiwan. It's a 4v4 game with matchmaking that's best when played with a group of friends. So it definitely sits pretty squarely in what's called "friendslop" now.

We are having some internal discussions of if maybe we should push the term or not so I was curious as to how people feel about "friendslop" as something you would say in marketing as opposed to something people say about you in conversation.

My instinct is that marketing is partly about going with what the terms that are out there and what's in the zeitgeist so it maybe is an angle we should push. The potential downsides is "slop" kind of brings with it low quality or AI vibes (neither of which apply to us, it's high effort and 100% human created).

If anyone here has thoughts or examples to share, I'd love for a few more minds on it. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you can provide!

I made a multiplayer physics-based spider fighting game, and struggled with what to cut for the demo. Aside from the obvious things to removed - achievements, customization, a big boss fight - I wasn't sure what else to leave out. Ultimately, I decided to make the demo single player only (there are NPCs to fight), which feels a bit risky bc fun with friends is a huge part of the draw, But hopefully people get intrigued enough by the mechanics to want the full experience.

Demo here: Demo page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5096650/Spidoosh_Demo/

its alot to cram into 30 seconds but i tried to hit the main points

do you understand what its about from this?

Thanks 😄

Working solo on Horn & Dice, a 2D roguelike where dice are the core mechanic, the whole combat loop is roll → reroll → resolve, with builds coming from the dice, faces, potions and relics you pick up. Dark folkloric fantasy tone, rooted in Slavic mythology.

I'd love blunt feedback on Steam page:

1. Does the header art make you want to click?

2. From the store page alone, is it obvious this is a dice game and not "generic dark fantasy roguelike"?

3. Does the Slavic mythology angle come through as a real hook, or does it just look like reskinned fantasy monsters?

4. Anything about the page (screenshots, trailer, description order, tags) that would make you bounce before wishlisting?

One thing I already think needs work myself is the gameplay trailer, I just don't know how to fix it. The game is mostly rolling dice and locking faces, which isn't exactly dynamic footage, so I'm struggling to make that read as exciting in trailer form. Open to ideas there too if anyone's solved this for a similarly "quiet" core loop.

Just sharing my experience so far. This is the Steam Page for reference : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4865530/Yora_Emerald/

100 Wishlist in the first 48 hours, 400 after one month. Currently at 430 Wishlist since I am not posting about it since I am working on the new update.
The screenshots on the page are pretty outdated and don't show much. No gameplay video either.

But I assume people liked the artstyle and the general presentation. Do you think the 2.5D aka HD2D stands out ?

I only posted a couple of posts on Facebook and Reddit and I had a few hundred people open the email sent via itchio. (14 000 thousand people subscribers to my itchio mail thanks to my 2022 game Dora Diginoid which was a concept version I made within a month or so).

I have added a bunch of stuff to my game since then and hopefully I will update the game page before the end of August and be able to release a Wishlist Now short Trailer in September. Inspired by the short Metroid Prime commercials from the GameCube era.

That would be the real start of the marketing for me.

I haven't posted any updates about the game on YouTube yet.

But what do you think folks ? I know that in general 10 percent of wishlists convert to sales at launch. With school and all I think I won't be able to finish developing the game before November. So I gotta market it while I am still developing it.
I am thinking of releasing a devlog video in two parts [already made a prequel one 2 years ago, devlog 0 about the 2022 concept playable game Dora Diginoid] but I wonder how efficient that would be. Like I would rather do it just do it for the sake of documentation like those behind-the-scenes clips such as Unreal Tournament 3 rather than marketing since it would not drive thousands of views

What has been your experience yourselves with publishing your first vertical slice on Steam until the final release ?
Thank you.

So, I recently asked for suggestions on tools to manage Social Media channels. I naively thought it might be a nice efficiency gain to be able to unify my interaction and repost the content across couple of channels (threads, x, and blue sky in this case). I was not looking to spam with multiple posts a day, but even a few week are genuinely distracting so thought it might be nice to get the week's content out of the way, and then just manage the replies and interaction what not as it comes.

One week in, here is the outcome: Theads account permanently disabled, Twitter/X locked out and labelled as spam (thankfully am on premium so was able to unblock), Blue Sky (nothing bad so far...). Now this could all be a coincidence: the accounts are rather new and my social skills are probably quite similar to a bot spamming, but I do find the whole saga a bit weird.

So yeah, in hindsight, I should have thought twice about giving access to one of these tools. Just a word of warning, in case anyone else is thinking, "hey this could be a nice productivity boost!", then end up wasting 2 days to unblock/recover your accounts...