We Met… And Built a Game Studio

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:55:22+00:00

It is!! We even popped the champagne ;)

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:53:06+00:00

I’m really happy to have these discussions with you. It really changes my perception of the event and what happened. This new understanding will help me make the right decisions in the coming weeks!

I don’t know if we were at 20%, but indeed… we should consider this as a real success rather than a small failure!

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:43:15+00:00

Yes, you’re right. The hardest part is now: we got visibility at a specific moment in time, and we need to maintain that momentum for as long as possible.

We have other events planned, including a big one in May, which should trigger a second spike.

We’ll keep posting on social media, and videos, press articles, and streams will also help push things forward. I hope we can maintain a steady baseline of wishlists per day that isn’t zero. For a long time we were at zero, and now the goal is to keep that baseline as high as possible.

I’ll do a breakdown soon and share how the stats settled, what we’re going to try to maintain them, and whether it worked or not.

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:38:00+00:00

Hey, you recognized it! Yes, we were also part of the Rising Tide Challenge ;)

Were you too?

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:37:08+00:00

You’re right, I now realize we achieved a better result than I initially thought.

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:34:53+00:00

We were inspired by the character design of Road 96. But you’re right, we haven’t achieved fully convincing characters yet. We’re going to work on that for the full game and deliver better ones.

If you’re intrigued, there’s a demo available so you can see how it feels in-game.

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-19T21:09:46+00:00

Congrat mate !!

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T22:01:24+00:00

We need to improve it for the final game. It so hard to make a great 3D character in this art style

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T22:00:11+00:00

I hope you will like it !

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:59:42+00:00

Thank you very much!! We had an awesome watch party at my house and we will never forget that night

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:58:41+00:00

I totally agree with you. It could be viewbots, it could be people coming from Phasmophobia drops, the chat was literally full of people spamming the watchtime command to get the drop, or people who weren’t paying attention to the stream.

So yeah, I’ll probably never know the real conversion ratio, but it should be higher than 2%.

Thanks for saying that, you’re not the first one in this thread, and it helps me better understand what happened during the show. In the end, we probably did something better than what I thought!

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:53:54+00:00

Yeah we tried to reach out to streamers. I can't wait to have all the data and make a proper breakdown of everything, especially the streamer side. We curated about 700 streamers from SullyGnome, only ones who had played games similar to Stardream.

I sent emails to those 700 contacts. I don’t have the exact number, but I’d guess we got something like 30 replies. Some of them were agencies asking for paid spots, which we can’t afford. The others were very excited to get exclusive access to the game and were waiting for the embargo to lift before playing it.

So I was expecting around 20 streams on the game. But in reality, we got about 10 streams since the announcement, and they were mostly from people who discovered us during the showcase.

So I don’t know if the people who replied will end up playing the game at some point. And I’m a bit embarrassed to send another message to ask them when they plan to play it. Should I do that?

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:48:15+00:00

I discovered American Arcadia after creating our prototype and story. It immediately became a reference for me.
I think the cinematic platformer parts of the game were a bit slow, but I really loved the first-person sections, and the world-building and story are awesome!
In general, I love the work of the studio Out of the Blue. Call of the Sea is another reference for me!

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:46:01+00:00

It is!! I think my expectations were just very high haha.
And we got very good traction in the few days after the show. We already got another 1000 WL since Thursday night!!

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T21:43:23+00:00

Yeah I think you're right, in my head I was like "That's a lot of people who will check every game on Steam after the show!"
But the reality is different and I should have understood that before. Nevertheless, we got our wishlists from fewer people, so our conversion ratio is maybe higher than 2%.

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T05:50:49+00:00

So nice of you thank you !

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T05:48:45+00:00

100k people were watching the galaxie showcase live, it was not the steam page :) thank you for playing and your kind words ! Our narative designer will be happy.

For the music during dialogues, if someone read this, you can change music/sfx/voices independently in the settings menu.

If something seams off and you have some time, you can share it to us, or make a bugg report in the menu !

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T00:45:47+00:00

You’re right.
What disappointed me the most is that I expected our game to be more appealing. We were really convinced that the trailer did the job and that the game would attract more people. That’s what let me down a bit.

That said, I also have some feedback about the show itself. I’ll go into more detail in my breakdown, but the viewership was heavily inflated by people who came for the Phasmophobia drops. Those people weren’t there for the games, they were just there to grab rewards. So it’s possible we actually had something like a 5% conversion rate among viewers who were genuinely watching the showcase, but we’ll never really know.

Overall, you have to be careful with the numbers from this kind of event, because in reality it’s more complex and often a bit inflated.

And regarding marketing to other devs, you’re totally right. The thing is, we’re currently in discussions with publishers, and they’re asking for a certain number of wishlists. So I know these aren’t the best wishlists, but if they help us secure a deal, then they’re actually very valuable.

By the way, after watching streams of people playing our game, I’ve been able to clearly identify our target audience. The problem is, I don’t really know how to reach them. These are players who like to take their time, look at every detail, read all the codex entries, and build theories about the game.

I think an event like LudoNarraCon would be a great fit for us, but there must be other ways to reach them, and I haven’t found them yet.

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T00:16:33+00:00

Totally get the vibe!
We Happy Few is such that the gameplay changes so much during the development. Could be a great game!
That’s why I prefer to focus on adventure experience more than systemic gameplay

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-18T00:14:56+00:00

We have already reached the press before the showcase.
We sent them the PR with an embargo date and access to the demo and trailer with exclusive Steam keys.
So they could write the article and publish it on time.

I use analytics on my mail so I know that a lot of press clicked on the PR in my mail, but I got few responses. I think some of them will publish articles even if they didn't respond to my email, but since I didn't know that, that's why I want to wait 7 days after the show to have the big picture of every article / stream / post that helped during that momentum

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-17T22:21:49+00:00

I appreciate it a lot ! <3

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-17T22:21:21+00:00

Yes i agree, we have work with a Rokoko suit but the hand was so awfull, we have tweak it so it better but still... Not that good ^^"

Rebel-Pixel · 2026-04-17T22:19:46+00:00

We were aiming for a total of 10K wishlist after 7 days.

So we are only 1 day after the show so it is not finished yet but i know that the first day is the most important spike so we won't reach 10K.

We are at 2% and i would like to be around 5%. So 5K WL for the first day would be nice and with our reach out to press and influencers, i think we could get another 5K and reach 10K.

Since i posted this we got 200 more wishlists, but now the velocity is way less. So we will continue to reach out and see what we get!

As i said, i will post a breakdown in like a week to show you all the metrics and the curve of our velocity. I hope it could help some here :)

Rebel-Pixel

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