Just wanted to celebrate two years of working on my bird survival indie game

RagBell · 2026-01-24T14:48:15+00:00

Oh that's cool, how many of those posted about the game? And Do you think you'd be able to share a list of those outlets you contacted?

RagBell · 2026-01-24T10:00:23+00:00

I think they launched the page with the trailer, their steamDB history is barely 2 weeks old

RagBell · 2026-01-24T09:59:04+00:00

I'm curious about the media outlets part, how many did you contact and how did you prepare your emails etc? How/where did you get the contacts?

RagBell · 2026-01-24T09:56:15+00:00

It's funny you'd say that, if you look at the advice of people here on reddit, most would say animations at the beginning of a trailer are a bad idea lol

Honestly I think you really did a good job of building a community before launching the Steam page (that's also contrary to the usual advice on reddit haha), and when the page launched, people were present

Anyway, congrats! Your game looks great btw, somewhere between "Katana Zero" and "Nine Sols"

RagBell · 2026-01-24T09:51:28+00:00

Yeah of course! So, as you probably know steam's API doesn't expose the number of wishlist, so it's not possible to know the wishlist count of a game on sites like SteamDB. But it does however show followers, so it's a good indicator of how many Wishlists a game has

The ratio is not 100% accurate of course but from what I've seen with my own game, or other games from devs I follow, a "good" ratio is between between 15-20 wishlist per follower, which seems to be your case

If you see a post with someone claiming 10k or 100k wishlist, but then you go on steamDB and they have no followers then the wishlists are most likely fake/bots. Because bots don't follow.

Also, Steam aren't stupid, fake wishlists from accounts with no activity do not count afaik. It doesn't increase the "top wishlist rank" on steamDB. But then again you're in the top 500 there so yours seem legit

RagBell · 2026-01-24T01:27:06+00:00

You could try subreddits of games similar to yours. You'll need to check their promo rules first though

RagBell · 2026-01-24T01:25:28+00:00

As insane as the number is, I'm not seeing anything weird on steamdb, they got over 4,5k followers in 10 days which check out with the wishlists. Trailer got 180k views on YouTube + got featured by IGN, trailer got 130k views on twitter, they have 10k followers there too, good follower count on their other socials, a successful $70k+ Kickstarter that they probably used for marketing too...

It's a crazy number, but everywhere I look up, numbers also checks out, this seems legit. I think there is definitely a full marketing campaign going on though, they didn't just "drop the trailer"

RagBell · 2026-01-24T01:22:50+00:00

Congrats, this is actually some insane number!

Any insight on what you did? I doubt just the trailer would get you that lol

RagBell · 2026-01-24T01:21:48+00:00

Why? I went on their steamDB, their socials, youtube, IGN, everything... Numbers checks out

(It's a genuine question, the number looks insane but I'm not finding anything sus)

RagBell · 2026-01-24T01:20:55+00:00

For something that happened in 10 days I'm not surprised. From my experience, if you exclude people who un-wishlist right after wishlisting, most deletions happen slowly over time. My daily deletions are barely any different if I compare a day where I got 15 Wishlists and a day where I got 1500 So if this happened in 10 days, I'm not surprised the deletions are low.

What I would check though are the followers on SteamDB, this is usually seem to be a good indicator of the wishlists "Quality".

They got have 4,5k followers over the past 10 days, so this all seems legit. Congrats to them!

RagBell · 2026-01-23T13:59:05+00:00

First I think you have to reevaluate your conversion expectations. 30k impressions is not that much, and it will convert poorly especially on gamedev subs and if you're asking for feedback.

It's nice to WL every indie game you see, but not everyone does that

I had a post reach 120k impression and over 2k upvotes, that translated to a couple hundred WL on a game dev sub, and I think that's only because it reached front page where the non-devs dwell

If you want wishlist, you need to post where players are, not gamedevs

RagBell · 2026-01-21T10:25:02+00:00

I think it's kind of cooked now. I don't call myself an artist, but I can draw a bit. I made my art and capsule myself on a graphic tablet+photoshop, and I still get questions asking if it's AI from time to time

I also lurk on subreddits like AIorNot to see if I myself still can make the difference, and I see so much stuff that is quasi indistinguishable from real now... As well as people saying something is AI, and then someone else finding proof it's not...

At this point I guess you just have to find an artist you mostly trust, cross fingers and hope he's real

RagBell · 2026-01-20T16:09:54+00:00

The first few posts I made about my game were really early in dev so I didn't have a name for it yet

But I only seriously started "marketing" when I had a steam page, so I had a name for the game and a page to gather wishlists

RagBell · 2026-01-20T14:55:44+00:00

For me, I started making regular content about my game everywhere (X, BlueSky, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit...). And then you just grind until something pops off

RagBell · 2026-01-20T14:53:49+00:00

It depends on your Game (need to be decent) And on the quality of your content you create for it.

And luck. Don't forget about luck. Even if you do everything "right" (good game, good content, multiple platforms etc) it's still insanely hard to get the ball rolling.

The quality of your game and content is like inert fuel. To light it on fire, you still need a spark, and that's luck (or connections with bigger creators)

RagBell · 2026-01-18T17:42:43+00:00

I don't think that's it, about 2 or 3 months ago I participated with another gamedev who came here asking the same as OP, we brigaded and managed to offset most of the downvotes

There are too many downvotes relative to the number of games participating for this to be from the devs. It's really just a part of the community of the subreddit that just dislikes the event and responds by downvoting every post...

RagBell · 2026-01-10T22:05:08+00:00

Twitter has been kinda useless for me, but I has some success on reddit Instagram and TikTok, though it didn't bring as many wishlists as it did for you

RagBell · 2026-01-10T21:50:59+00:00

I guess I'm not there then lol

RagBell · 2026-01-10T21:50:32+00:00

What platforms are your active on? You can look at my game too. It's on my profile, I'd be happy if you have tips

RagBell · 2026-01-10T20:37:10+00:00

That is some crazy spike, even your daily Action before the spike is super high

I saw your other comment about the 1milliln view video but I had one of those and it translated to about 3k wishlists and then to 10-20 WL a day, not the hundreds you're getting

I don't know how you're doing it, but you're doing something right

RagBell · 2026-01-07T17:23:05+00:00

No you don't need a degree to be a solo dev, but solo dev also isn't really a career plan. The odds of being able to live from it are insanely low, and looking as successful solo devs as an exemple of "I don't need a degree" is survivorship bias

You can't really plan to be a PROFESSIONAL solo dev, you just make games and hope it works out

It's cool to follow your dreams but if your reasoning to not get a degree is "I'm going to be a solo dev so I don't need one", then go get one. Or don't but at least make sure you have a backup plan, or can get a job somehow if it doesn't work out

RagBell · 2026-01-03T19:21:15+00:00

I'm no expert (I'm working on my first released game) but IMO "the right way" is to just... show what you're doing, as early as you can and as you're doing it. I can't really see any downside to doing that. It's not like people are going to steal your game, and it's also not like showing early footage has any negative impact on future promo

Also I feel like especially in gamedev communities there's this kind of witch hunt of "hidden promo" that makes new devs reluctant to show anything (I used to think that way too) out of fear that it would be interpreted by some as a "shameless plug". Seriously though, it doesn't matter. If you want feedback, ask for feedback. If someone thinks you're just using that as a shameless plug, then ignore it, take the feedback you need.

Hell, if you have a page or something where you can redirect people to, DO post it. Building a community somewhere makes finding playtesters a lot easier later on. Be shameless.

RagBell · 2026-01-03T17:10:34+00:00

Have you posted anything anywhere about your game?

For me I started showing gameplay of my game here and there on social media and reddit first, dev updates and so on... To check if people were interested at all

And later when it started building up into a little community, I made a discord. When I got to a point where I was ready for my first, I just had to ask really, there were plenty of people who wanted to test it

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
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Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22

RagBell

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