Hi everyone,

We recently passed 200,000 wishlists on Steam for our game, DREADMOOR, a dark-themed first-person fishing and survival adventure game set in a flooded post-apocalyptic world.

I know milestone posts can easily turn into pure self-promotion, so I wanted to make this more useful from a gamedev / marketing angle and share what seemed to help us reach this milestone.

This is not a "do these exact things and you will get 200k wishlists" post as every game is different, and a lot of this was specific to our game, DREADMOOR. 

That said, looking back, there are a few clear patterns in what helped, what surprised us, and what we learned, and some of these points may be useful to you, the reader.

The concept had to be instantly understandable

Everything needs a starting point, so with DREADMOOR the first thing that we set out to do was to compress the game into something very simply - like really simple - that anyone can understand. For us, this was:

Fishing, but the water is not safe.

Or, a slightly longer version:
A dark survival fishing game where the sea itself feels dangerous.

To many, it may seem over simplistic, but this was one of the biggest things that helped the game grow the wishlists as it was this emotional hook that did a lot of the work. 

Why? People could understand the fantasy almost immediately: a small fishing trawler, murky waters, mutant fish, giant creatures, and an overall sense of tension, especially when accompanied by a few visuals, but, just as importantly, the visuals are not really needed to get an idea of the game.

The main lesson here was that the audience needed to feel the idea of the game before they care about the systems. Detailed mechanics matter, of course, but most people did not first react to the upgrade tree, crafting, or progression. They reacted to the mood of the game.

Wishlist growth was not linear

Another thing that became obvious is that wishlist growth does not always happen smoothly.

For a while, it can feel like nothing is happening, then, suddenly, several things start working together and you get a spike. 

This is something that I'm sure many of you have come across already.

For us, there were a few clear moments where growth jumped, and looking at them has helped us to learn what worked well and why.

Playtests, many Playtests!

Probably one of the most important early moments for us was the first semi-closed playtest in January 2026.

When we first announced DREADMOOR, we received a surprising amount of backlash from people who assumed the game was fake, or that it was only a concept trailer and not a real project, the reaction was strange to us, but we also understood that players have become cautious - and honestly, rightly so as a lot of games are announced too early, and some projects never turn into something playable.

Instead of arguing with people, we decided to mostly stay quiet and let the game speak for itself once we had something playable, and ultimately, launching the playtest was the solution to that problem. This was an important point as, suddenly, that negative response we got could be very easily proven wrong, so the questions about the game were an opportunity for us to reach people directly.

It goes to show that when you are being unfairly criticized, often, the best course of action might be to be patient with the answers, and don’t rely on saying “xyz will come in the future”, say it once, but then just wait until you have the proof ready.

On the playtest side of things, we did very little to market it. It was mostly done via our own social media and a small amount of user acquisition. Even so, we gained around 4,000 wishlists in one week.

The more important result was trust. The playtest helped shift the conversation from "is this even real?" to "okay, people are actually playing this."

After that, we started running smaller focus tests through our Discord server. These were semi-open; players only had to join the Discord and tell us that they were interested. Then, whenever we reached a useful development milestone, usually every month or so, we the interested people to play the game over a weekend, focus on the features we've worked on, and give us their feedback.

What's more, each focus test had a clear purpose. We would tell players something like:

We worked on fishing, progression, night danger, or another specific system. Please test this part and tell us what you think.

This made the feedback much more useful, as players were not just playing randomly; they knew what we wanted them to focus on.

It had the added effect that it let people see the game changing from test to test, and feel like they were really contributing. So, when people outside the community still claimed that the game was not real, we often did not need to respond ourselves, as players who had actually tested DREADMOOR were quick to correct them (without us getting involved).

For us, that was one of the biggest benefits of playtesting: it did not just improve the game, it also created a group of people who understood the project and could speak about it honestly.

Events helped, but only because we supported them properly

In February 2026, we showed our first full gameplay trailer during IGN Fan Fest. At that point, the game still did not have a huge amount of content to show, so our goal was not to communicate the scale, instead, it was to communicate the atmosphere and vibe of the project as clearly as possible - again, leaning on the emotional front.

The trailer helped, but the important part is that the event itself was not the whole campaign.

Around the same time, we also:

• sent the trailer to vertical-content creators (TikTok, YTShorts etc).
• ran press outreach
• supported the trailer heavily across social media
• had one Reel reach nearly 300k views

Together, this created a snowball effect and resulted in more than 44,000 wishlists in one month.

Events work much better when you treat them as a starting point, not the whole plan. The showcase gives you a solid starting point / an excuse to share more, tell people more. However, you need to do that (sharing more) otherwise, you waste that opportunity.

Short clips did a lot of heavy lifting

Another important point is that a lot of our strongest visibility came from short-form content. 

In April, several of our videos started performing well across TikTok and Instagram Reels. There was no major news event behind this, no new trailer, no showcase, no big announcement, instead it came down to consistent content work, even when the results were - at first - almost nothing.

At that time, several videos started gaining traction, reaching close to a million combined views, and this led to around 13,000 wishlists in one week.

Some examples from our own channels:

• One TikTok reached around 400k views
• Some Instagram Reels reached 400k+ views and 250k+ views
• Several X posts also performed well for us

The clips that seemed to work best were the ones that showed a clear situation quickly:

• sailing through a dangerous swamp
• fishing in waters that feel unsafe
• a strange creature or tentacle appearing
• the trawler moving through the world
• a “what is going on here?” moment

The best clips were less about explaining the game and more about making people curious enough to check the Steam page (note the emotional hook again).

The lesson for us was that algorithms rarely reward you immediately, but if you post consistently, your chances of catching momentum increase. This might be common knowledge to many of you, but, it is still very often overlooked, so do keep it in mind!

Creator and media posts amplified the hook

Creator and media support also helped a lot, but I think it is important to frame this correctly. I wouldn’t say that these posts were the only reason we reached the milestone, it was more that they amplified something that was already working: the setting, the atmosphere, and the core idea.

The biggest example for us was IndieGameJoe.

We contacted him directly, showed him the project, he liked it, and we arranged several posts. This resulted in him featuring DREADMOOR on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and within the first 24 hours, those posts generated more than 2.5 million combined views.

That resulted in around:

• 10,000 wishlists in the first 24 hours
• 25,000+ wishlists within one week

That was one of the clearest moments where we saw how powerful a well-matched creator can be.

That said - I would not reduce the lesson to "find a big creator" as - yes, of course, having a big creator will give you a boost - but that boost is more of an amplification boost. Think of a content creator as a multiplier effect on your work (not an addition). If your side of things is strong, you get a much larger boost.

Other posts from creators and media pages helped as well, including Dexerto, Pirat Nation, Clemmy / Best Indie Games, Blue Thunder, Annemiloo, and a few more; some reached hundreds of thousands of people, and some even went much further.

Old content can become useful again later

One of the stranger things that happened was that an older announcement trailer suddenly started performing well again.

In May 2026, Indie Games Hub uploaded our old announcement trailer, and it unexpectedly went viral with more than 150,000 views, which was much higher than the channel’s usual performance, this led to around 17,000 wishlists in one week.

This was not planned by us, and it was probably the most chaotic spike out of all of them, however looking back, it makes some sense. By that point, the game already had more recognition, more people had seen it, creators had posted about it, our own short-form content was performing better, and the game had more context around it. What's more, the whole "is this a real game" question had been answered. So, the old trailer was suddenly more useful than it had been before.

The lesson for us was that content does not always fully "expire." If your game has gained recognition, older footage can suddenly travel further than it did the first time. I’ve seen some people recommend deleting old posts/hiding old content, but I fall heavily in the camp of never hiding your roots.

The biggest takeaway: the shareable idea matters a lot

If I had to summarize what we learned, it would be this:

A game needs more than good-looking clips. It needs a shareable idea and a strong emotional identity.

As I mentioned earlier, for DREADMOOR, that idea seems to be:

Fishing, but the water is not safe.
(yes very simplistic but that's why it's good, everyone can understand and picture it instantly)

That is simple enough for people to understand quickly, but broad enough that we can keep showing new versions of it through creatures, locations, systems, and survival mechanics.

I would say this is probably one of the biggest reasons the game has continued to gain traction.

A few things I would do again

• Focus on the emotional hook before explaining mechanics
• Keep short-form clips simple and readable
• Support events with outreach instead of relying on the event alone
• Run playtests not only for feedback, but also to build trust
• Give focus tests clear instructions so the feedback is more useful
• Keep posting even when it feels like the algorithm is ignoring you
• Work with creators who naturally fit the game, rather than chasing every large account

A few things I would be careful with

• Do not assume views automatically mean wishlists
• Do not over-explain the game too early in a clip
• Do not rely on one event or one trailer to carry everything
• Do not treat creator posts as a replacement for your own consistent content
• Do not ignore skepticism if people think the game is not real, but also do not waste too much energy arguing
• Do not confuse curiosity with long-term player understanding

Final thoughts

Looking back, I do not think DREADMOOR reached 200k+ wishlists because of one post, one trailer, one creator, or one event.

It was the combination of:

• a strong core hook
• a clear atmosphere
• consistent short-form content
• playable proof through tests
• event support
• creator and media amplification
• and several spikes that started reinforcing each other

We are still learning a lot, and I am sure there are many things we could have done better, but breaking 200k wishlists has been a useful moment to look back and see what actually moved the needle.

I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any to ask us!