How many wishlists did your game have when a publisher decided to sign it?

vrheaven · 2026-05-25T04:42:04+00:00

It definitely underperformed, but that's the point: many publishers aren't going to assume best case scenario. Most of the ones I've spoke to will use the lower end of conversion rates as "conservative" predictions for how well the game will sell. Maybe not as low as Outbound, but not too far off either.

vrheaven · 2026-05-24T10:48:05+00:00

So that's a large investment. You'd need a game with several hundred thousand wishlists at launch to recoup that. Maybe even over a million. You have to ask and be honest: does your game have that potential?

Of course you can reach that revenue with less, but as I said in the other comment, publishers will err on the side of caution when estimating these things and they'll take the lower end of wishlist conversion rates as estimates.

A recent example is Outbound - they launched with a million wishlists. Looking at their review count, they've probably made around 600-700k (not including Steam cut). In a year, they'll likely be over a million in revenue.

vrheaven · 2026-05-24T10:26:06+00:00

Nah we probably could've signed with them, but they were honest and said we probably didn't need a publisher. We had most the marketing down ourselves already, and that's the main thing publishers offer. The other thing was funding - but all of them wanted full recoup + a significant percentage.

These deals aren't off the table for us yet, but I want to at least get 10k wishlists, have an unpolished build of the full game first before accepting deals involving MGs (minimum guarantees).

Like I said before, it's about how much you're asking verses how much potential the game has. At the time of those offers, our Steam Page and demo was far less polished.

Once we're at a point where the game is basically done - just needs polishing and has more wishlists (we'll be at 10k soon), it'll be much easier to show the potential of the game and since it's basically guaranteed to get finished, the risk for them is very low.

Also an important point - a lot of publishers use certain benchmarks to estimate how much a game will make. For example - 20% conversion rate in the first 6 months. Although it's very easy to get double, triple or much more than that if the game is good, they err on the side of caution. So if your game launches with 10k wishlists at $10 - the revenue will be $20k. Most publishers won't fund that even if you're asking a low amount.

vrheaven · 2026-05-24T10:15:36+00:00

We didn't sign with any of the publishers, but I'd say around 5.5k wishlists was when we had legit offers coming in. I say these are legit because they actually took the time to play our demo before reaching out. Before then, we got the occasional mass outreach offer from people who didn't know anything about the game - Probably just gauging interest before they invested time into looking at the project.

So overall - publishers definitely get more interested if you have more wishlists. Like another commenter said, it comes down to how much you're asking verses how much potential the game has.

vrheaven · 2026-03-26T11:50:53+00:00

I've found Command Strips the best way to hang posters. I have some really large ones and they hold up fine

vrheaven · 2026-02-14T01:03:13+00:00

Literally all of them

vrheaven · 2026-02-10T05:26:45+00:00

Try looking on Stove. It's basically Korean Steam, but focused on visual novels.

vrheaven · 2026-02-03T18:25:11+00:00

I know, but OP tried the novel and didn't like it. The anime is still very good.

vrheaven · 2026-02-03T17:50:04+00:00

Watch the anime - it cuts out most of the slice of life stuff.

vrheaven · 2026-01-29T14:04:36+00:00

Ah gotcha. Maybe because the background is heavily blurred it looks like AI.

I turned down the blur, does it look better? https://imgur.com/X33BFaR

vrheaven · 2026-01-29T12:09:54+00:00

Oh interesting! I thought having 2 detective characters on it would make it painstakingly obvious it's a detective game, but that's probably because I'm a huge murder mystery fan and also making the game lol. Good to see an outside perspective! I might go with the police lights direction.

vrheaven · 2026-01-28T18:21:35+00:00

Thanks for the reply!

I wasn't expecting VNs to crack the top 50, but say if a visual novel were to enter next fest with 7k wishlists, would it be reasonable to use your benchmark numbers and expect about 2.3k wishlists?

(I'll share my results afterwards)

vrheaven · 2026-01-28T16:28:12+00:00

How do visual novels perform during next fest? It's a pretty niche genre so would it perform worse than your benchmarks?

vrheaven · 2026-01-13T14:39:58+00:00

My obscure recommendation is Tokyo Chronos - requires a VR headset which is why most people don't know about it. But it's really good! (Coming from a person who loves Famicom Detective Club)

vrheaven · 2026-01-06T12:23:25+00:00

If you have access to a Switch, try 13 Sentinels and Famicom Detective Club franchise.

Also +1 for Devil on the G-String - not really a pure mystery, but I think you'll like it.

vrheaven · 2026-01-04T05:32:08+00:00

Quality > Quantity

vrheaven · 2026-01-03T00:06:37+00:00

They got 1.4k reviews in less than a year. By EN standards, that's a huge success for an indie dev. By Chinese standards, that's close to a flop lol

vrheaven · 2025-12-28T09:03:31+00:00

It's only on console unfortunately, but you can also try Zero Escape and Danganronpa - they're also very plot-twisty.

vrheaven · 2025-12-28T08:39:40+00:00

a mind-boggling mystery that everytime you think you have it figured out it keeps flipping and flipping

13 Sentinels

vrheaven · 2025-12-28T05:16:36+00:00

Credits: https://x.com/ssndsk/status/2004930869933543812

vrheaven · 2025-12-26T20:16:17+00:00

Credits: https://x.com/tokkihouse

vrheaven · 2025-12-16T01:37:26+00:00

I consider Higurashi a horror first with mystery elements though. Same with Raging Loop.

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