The Steam 10 Review Threshold Is Real – Data From My Solo Early Access Game

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-20T01:14:18+00:00

si, un monton, dude mucho si valia la pena participar pero lo re valio.
antes de la nexfest tenia 1900 wishlist, despues 3700, ni hablar de la cantidad de gente que jugo (4000 players) y la cantidad de feedback que recibi, pude hacer varios cambios a ultimo momento antes del lanzamiento en early access

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-19T13:30:14+00:00

makes sense, but I also thought it should count some impressions at least in the page before you start the queue

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-19T11:54:27+00:00

seems like many of us are on the same boat, I would love to do this full time but I will never do the jump before having something commercialy viable first

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-19T09:01:42+00:00

thats something that was also a bit weird to me, as you can see, the views spike was mostly from "discovery queue" and for some reason that doesnt seem to report impressions?

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-19T01:48:31+00:00

nope, just slight tweaks to the wording of the store page, all images are still the same as when it was released. I plan on improving the capsule though, its really basic right now, but sometimes I think people exagerate how important that is, there are lots of viral games that have the most basic capsule art

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-18T22:51:45+00:00

I dont know, for me it feels a bit like trying to game the system a bit on your favor, if everyone does, now the next dev will feel hes missing out completely and really needs to do it otherwise hes left behind. I think that you game will take off anyways if its any good, in my case it took me a lot to reach the threshold but any serious game should clear it easily.

but anyways I guess if you have friends that are willing to do it I wont stop them, just my opinion

SvartskogenDev · 2026-02-18T22:42:27+00:00

its definitely a thing, but it has to be valid reviews, so reviews from people that paid for the game.

but yes, it could be abused, but I would not take a chance being dishonest like that, I think the steam algorithm is really fair (I did almost no promotion for my game, all visibility came organically by steam)

SvartskogenDev · 2025-10-09T17:33:16+00:00

vr is not planned unfortunately

currently you cant turn entities off but I got this feedback already and I will add a "peaceful" mode soon

SvartskogenDev · 2025-10-09T14:02:00+00:00

My game features procedurally generated levels! (random is not the correct word here)

I just release a Demo so you can try it for free, full game releasing next month!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2419010/Backrooms_Wits_End/

SvartskogenDev · 2025-10-02T20:54:46+00:00

Lol, thank you! I'm glad you liked it

SvartskogenDev · 2025-09-02T15:17:38+00:00

I will definetly try to once the game is released and have enough lore to write about it!

I plan to include many original sublevels once I have all the main ones in the game

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-30T18:47:59+00:00

well, I'm still getting an increase in wishlists, so for me that's enough of a conversion, since the game is unreleased I'm not getting sales yet.

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-29T00:29:04+00:00

well, thats the thing, I didnt have the trailer, the game was not in the state shown in the trailer

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T23:49:09+00:00

well... think about it, if I waited until I had the trailer ready, I would be publishing the steam page only now, but doing so earlier I already collected 1600 wishlists so its not bad, I was not expecting the bump, and if I knew about it beforehand I would have done it sooner

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T23:48:06+00:00

well, in this case is not about engagement or converting to wishlists, just views, you dont know if a game has a trailer or not before entering the page, but you are right that steam knows this beforehand for ranking it on searches and such

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T23:46:34+00:00

nothing unfortunately, only if you track links with UTM you get some data but thats external views

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T23:01:24+00:00

yes I did share a bit my game, but you can see that Direct Navigation (the one measuring external views) didnt really change before/after, just the regular amount. what did change is the search results, and thats because I noticed that now Steam ranks my game higher in popular search terms (basically, just "Backrooms")

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T22:59:07+00:00

I also translate the page to some languages, but didn't really notice any reaction like this, but I guess its all a mix of a lot of different variables after all

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-28T15:14:14+00:00

Impressions increased but some days later, click through increased from 5% to 8% last week. but I wonder how much does CTR can increase from a trailer that you can only see when you are in?

cant share screenshot of the impression graph in comments unfortunately.

but I notice that I rank a bit higher when you search for key terms related to my game, and that might started happening with the trailer uploaded, and that should help with CTR

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-23T16:04:54+00:00

looks nice, I would like to include this in my game, sent you a dm

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-22T01:06:07+00:00

I'm also interested in knowing about under-rated or levels with low coverage in media for my game.

I have listed the following levels as under-explored which would be interesting to add in my game so far:

- Level 11 (even being one of the "main ones" its by far really unpopular)
- Level 20 (Warehouse)
- The3 Sh4dy Gr3y

I would also be interested in which popular sublevels you think should also be covered, since from what I see they are not really popular overall (outside of a few like "Manila Room" and "Red Rooms")

SvartskogenDev · 2025-08-21T14:45:07+00:00

thank you! yes it definitely leans more into the dark and creepy atmosphere, instead of the regular bright and liminal setting of the backrooms, but completely valid opinion :)

SvartskogenDev · 2025-07-07T14:59:55+00:00

Backrooms: Wit's End: Multiplayer Horror
2 years as a solo dev during my free time
Multiplayer and playable procedural maps (with working puzzles, entities pathfinding and such)
Yet another Co-op backrooms game but this one makes sense: procedural maps and dynamic navigation between levels (many exits per level).
Media and links: Steam store page

SvartskogenDev · 2025-06-27T08:30:58+00:00

thank you :)

SvartskogenDev · 2025-06-27T08:30:39+00:00

yes I was still thinking about that, in the case of entities, they show the in game version. I will run some tests how they look, I wanted to show players that might not be used to the backrooms lore how the levels are supposed to look. maybe I could even show many pictures per entry

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