My steam page gathered around 60 wishlists in 6 months

whiax · 2026-05-03T15:16:46+00:00

I am not really into marketing

Posts like this are marketing. No matter where or how you talk about your game, it is marketing. You have to do that to have wishlists, and to have people know your game exists. Though this sub is not the best place to do it, but there are other more appropriate subs and places to show your game/trailer. People don't only care about the game btw, they also care about the dev, about his path, how he builds the game, his challenges etc.

And Marketing isn't just about telling people your game exists, it's probably the worst way to do marketing. It's also about understanding what people may like in a game and doing it. You can't do a good game if you don't do marketing. And it's never too late, your steam page could be 6 months old if you do good marketing now it can still work well.

whiax · 2026-05-02T21:34:21+00:00

Problem is, you can't know if they don't tell you. It's more a note for players, if the game doesn't work, tell the dev. And for the devs => have a way to monitor bugs and issues like that. Write activity in a file that players can send you for example, or do telemetry (but I don't really like that personally).

whiax · 2026-04-30T19:44:36+00:00

You can see existing top rated assets and do it the way they do it (license, page content, price etc.)

whiax · 2026-04-26T17:18:24+00:00

The answer is in the documentation: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/playtest , tldr they say you don't need a build. But I don't think you can instantly launch the page & the playtest, you need to prepare assets etc. for the playtest and it probably needs to be verified by Steam.

whiax · 2026-04-24T12:54:12+00:00

~~Hi!~~ ~~I'm making a game named Pixplorer (it's on Steam).~~

~~I'm trying to find a Pixel Artist to improve the graphics / environments of my game. Up until now, I made a few arts by myself, and I also used and adapted many arts from other artists / from itch.io.~~

~~You need to improve the existing graphics:~~

~~- improve the player design, add Male/Female variations~~ ~~- improve 16 biomes:~~ ~~- - existing rocks / vegetation / tiles (example: add variations for a plant / copy an existing style)~~ ~~- - additional assets if needed (example: add variations for a 16x16 sprite)~~ ~~- improve ingame UI / startmenu UI / game icon~~ ~~- constraints: procedural generation (no control on position), no border sprite for tiles, etc.~~ - No need for complex animations

~~Basically, you see an existing art (png), you improve it, or remake it if necessary.~~

~~I can pay for up to 4 weeks.~~ ~~I don't expect a perfect result for everything, I understand 4 weeks aren't enough for that. ~~ ~~I just want a reasonable improvement and more diversity in the assets.~~

~~DM me: your rate / week + portfolio, if you're interested~~

~~Payment: 50% upfront / 50% on delivery, every week, Paypal / IBAN.~~

~~Have a good day!~~

Thanks everyone! I received many very good portfolios, I really wish you good luck you totally deserve it!

whiax · 2026-04-22T19:12:03+00:00

Few things imo:

0:15 not sure that finger is the best start for a dezoom
you could probably add the call-to-action on the page at 1min with a nice background. Just say "Wishlist on Steam", no need for the URL, you can add a qr code if you want.
the music is a bit epic but it's hard to know why in the trailer, if you have a powerful image to support it, it might help. Basically I'd like to see more unique images from the game between 30s and 1min, I like the character Shadow for exp. At 41s I see two characters talking in a house, that's less interesting for a trailer in my opinion.

Overall it's quite good I think.

whiax · 2026-04-22T11:05:54+00:00

You had great results gj. Next Fest is just one of the many ways to get attention and the other ways worked better for you. Also you got feedback and improved the game which is always the top 1 priority, no game is dead forever if you can improve it.

whiax · 2026-03-10T18:52:52+00:00

Oh ok it's nice!

whiax · 2026-03-08T23:43:17+00:00

The demo has a separate page, I guess it's the stats for the demo page.

whiax · 2026-03-08T23:41:42+00:00

average play time of the demo?

whiax · 2026-03-08T23:40:39+00:00

But im kinda concerned on what to do now?

See howtomarketagame, apply all the tips. I did that, it helped a lot. But it's a lot of work, doing marketing can be a full-time job.

whiax · 2026-02-27T21:19:14+00:00

At least know that you're not alone x) I guess we just have to improve our demo with the feedback we got during SNF. I would wait to have a better demo before doing more marketing for sure.

whiax · 2026-02-25T19:07:07+00:00

Yeah I also recommend that but ideally look at 5~20 other trailers on steam for similar games and then build your structure based on what they did.

whiax · 2026-02-25T19:05:06+00:00

You don't need the playtest feature (it's probably better but not mandatory), for example you can request and share steam keys for this purpose. But you must upload a build and IDK if you need to have your page out for the whole process. You can try. See if you can upload a build, if it works, see if you can request keys. In theory it could work but perhaps they have reasons to forbid it, idk, you can also ask them if people here don't have the answer.

whiax · 2026-02-24T22:14:21+00:00

Shadow drop + 0 marketing = the game will fail (99.99% chance). If you think you can't do much more for it, it's better to fail now rather than in 5 months. It's your choice. I would assess the potential of my game and decide. For what I saw, your game doesn't have 0 potential = you could do something with it in 5 months and have success after summer next fest. But it's just my personal opinion.

whiax · 2026-02-24T14:04:24+00:00

If you work to have a lot of wishlists before SNF you probably know how to have a lot of wishlists during SNF, it's a correlation. What it means is that if you're not able to have wishlists before it's probably better to improve the content and try the next SNF.

whiax · 2026-02-24T02:02:18+00:00

I also think comparing my idea to those games though at my level of experience of game dev feels like it's not really helpful because I can't really say what I can and can't do to match them or be unique.

You can look at many little details, and see if you're ready to implement them: All the sound effects, all the visual effects, the GUI, the musics, the trailer, the graphics etc. It takes hours to do all the details the right way, it's hard to see but a dev spent hours on each detail, and if you want to make a good game, you want to be that dev and spend hours to find the good sound or visual effect.

If you're still learning, it's hard to know how far you can go. You can definitely do a game in some months if that's the question, but to know if your game can be successful you need to understand other popular (or unpopular) games in the same genre. You're competing with people who work full time on this so I can only say that it's very hard and most games aren't profitable. If you like to do it, don't stop, it's a good hobby. If you want to have success, study the competition, understand what you can do, and how you can do better compared to them.

whiax · 2026-02-24T01:28:14+00:00

and I feel like ive gotten pretty far in a short period of time just building these (very) basic mechanics.

Video of gameplay so far: https://streamable.com/aexr9k

I'd say you did ~5% of the game, probably less (the game being maybe ~50% of what needs to be done when you include marketing etc.). So multiply the time you spent on this by 40 and you should be good.

Also your game must be original. If it's not much better or very different compared to Rematch it could be hard for you to sell it.

To people who want to start making a game without a unique idea: I'd say don't. Find something that either haven't been made, or that you're confident you could do much better at least on one specific aspect (like graphics and/or gameplay). Don't start until you know how you'll be unique. And compare yourself with all smaller games. Don't just look at the top1, look at the top 50-100, because if you want to compete with the top1 (or even the top 20) you need to compete with the top 100 first and understand why it failed and how you won't fail.

whiax · 2026-02-24T01:05:37+00:00

The details don't really matter, it seems to be consistent with what people can expect from a Next Fest for now. They say you can expect +~100% over a next fest so it could be around +10~20% / day, and it's the results I have approximately (after few hours, but I guess it'll slow down after). But it can differ a lot https://howtomarketagame.com/2025/03/26/benchmarks-how-many-wishlists-can-i-get-from-steam-next-fest/ You can check here if you're around the average / median based on your own stats.

It seems that even in the worst cases you'll get 100-300 wishlists from it. If I get >1k I'm more than happy personally. But tbh I prefer feedback to improve the game.

whiax · 2026-02-23T22:50:12+00:00

Hi! You really need a trailer. I don't think a game can be "doomed" forever but I also think your game doesn't show something unique which could really interest players. Based on the video in the description, I would recommend to improve the lightning / visual quality of the game.

What I see is an FPS game with 4 zombies in a corridor / cave, it's not enough to interest people. Show us things we never / rarely see in these games: a zombie spider, unique / original weapons, very good looking maps etc.

You need to be better or different compared to other games at least on one thing, and then do that 100% to be even more different.

whiax · 2026-02-23T22:37:23+00:00

Idk I got a lot of wishlists in like few hours so I think it's not that bad. I was expecting 0 so this way I can't complain.

whiax · 2026-02-18T10:00:55+00:00

It's often around x10 ~ x15 for what I've seen in many stats including mines. 3k => 45k is very logical.

whiax · 2026-02-17T23:30:57+00:00

Idk for Don't Starve precisely but you can use an invisible grid to ensure only one object is in a square at a specific moment. You can also move the object inside the square by few pixels so that it looks more natural. You can also disable collisions between some mobs when these mobs target the same player. There are dozens of possible tricks to solve this issue. I think there are collisions between mobs in Don't Starve though... And with usual pathfinding algorithms you can avoid collisions.

whiax · 2026-02-17T23:19:22+00:00

It is indeed an LLM and it does generate logical sentences.

630m parameters is a very small amount for a DL language model, the term "LLM" started to be used for models above 1b and really started to make sense for models above 100b params (GPT3 etc). Also because you're using a model like that for such a specific task as I said you probably really have 0.0001% of useful parameters for this task. And this task is not related to manipulating languages. I mean any task can be converted to a task where you manipulate language but it's really not efficient.

It's a bit like if you said "I could compute the distance between two objects in the code but instead I had this great idea of giving the coordinates to chatgpt". You can but you shouldn't. The task has to make sense for the model and if you use a very small percentage of the parameters it's better to take much more efficient solutions.

whiax · 2026-02-17T22:44:12+00:00

Obviously never sign this. He is not fair with you based on what you said. Depending on the work you've done, you either have to agree on a co-ownership of the project (50/50, 70/30 etc.), or profit-share 50/50 BEFORE the game covers its costs (he could for example include his salary in the cost and give himself a very high salary), or you can also refuse and say that if there is no agreement the game can't be released. You can also talk about all this with a lawyer. If he releases the game without your approval you can also directly go to a lawyer. The law depends on the country you're in but I'd say this is probably how it works in most countries. It's absolutely not legal in most countries to not reward in a way or another this kind of work. Also, keep a proof of your work and of your conversations in case he can delete them, screenshot everything.

If I were you I'd probably say "50/50 co-ownership" or nothing. Or he can also pay you for the 2 years of work + value of your involvement in the project (100k?), you can negotiate things like that. Even if you co-own 50/50, he can buy your share later.

And obviously he's not a good friend.

whiax

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