u/LittleLimpGames

First game, first Steam page, solo dev with a producer/partner, working around a full-time job in Perth, Australia. Cozy creature-sanctuary game. I'll put my actual numbers up first:

Where I'm sitting:

• 411 wishlists total
• ~190 of those came from roughly everything else I've done: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Reddit, X, 2 months of it
• 220 came from a single AUTOMATON article
• No demo yet. Page has been up for 2 months. 12 languages localised on the steam page.

So, one Japanese outlet outperformed my entire cross-platform social campaign. That reframed a lot for me and it's why I'm asking rather than guessing.

What I'm trying to decide: target release is April 2027, ~4 months of dev left. But an April launch puts Wholesome Direct (June), the June Next Fest, Wholesome Games Celebration (Aug) and PAX Aus (Oct) all after release. I'm weighing pushing to Sept/Oct 2027 purely to stack those events, without adding scope.

The questions I actually want answered - real numbers if you can:

1. Japanese press. If you got covered by Denfaminicogamer, 4Gamer, Game*Spark, or Indie Freaks - what did it return in wishlists? Did JP streamers follow on their own afterwards, and how long was the lag? Did you pitch in Japanese or English?
2. Wholesome Direct / Wholesome Games Celebration. What did an appearance actually deliver? I keep hearing it's the biggest cozy beat available and I have no idea whether that means 2,000 wishlists or 20,000. Also - how competitive is selection, and how finished did your build need to be?
3. Demo launch. What was your daily wishlist rate in the month before your demo went live, and in the month after? I'm trying to build a realistic model instead of extrapolating off Parcel Simulator's outlier numbers.
4. Next Fest timing. Anyone regret using theirs too early? Specifically: did anyone do Next Fest, launch 2 months later, and wish they'd waited to stack it with a bigger beat?
5. PAX Aus / Aus Indie Showcase. Any Australian devs got numbers on what a booth or Showcase selection returned? $25 entry for a free booth looks like the best ROI in the country on paper, which usually means I'm missing something.
6. The general shape of it. Has anyone deliberately delayed a launch 4–6 months for marketing calendar reasons and regretted it? I'm aware "just a bit more time" is how first games die.

Finally, I'll put up my steam page as reference for what media outlets would be best to approach for me game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813510/Sanctuary_of_Small_Things/

The main menu journey so far:

Version 1 was blocky default UI covering the whole screen.

Version 2 was a static screenshot with text on top.

Version 3 became a real scene from the game with drifting pollen and a gently breathing camera.

Version 4 is this: I let the creatures themselves visit. Every half a minute or so one wanders in pops out of the grass for a look around, sprints through like it's late for something, or strolls past and stares at you then the scene sits quiet until the next one.

Most players will never sit on a menu long enough to see them, but the game is about these small creatures (you find sick ones, heal them, earn their trust, and grow a sanctuary full of them).

Feedback welcome especially on whether the golden-hour grade reads warm or just dim, and whether the text needs more backing.

It's called Sanctuary of Small Things, and if it looks like your kind of game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813510/Sanctuary_of_Small_Things/

Not a brag post, the totals are small. I'm putting the numbers up because the ratio surprised me and I'd like to know how typical it is.

Background: Sanctuary of Small Things, cozy creature game, first commercial project for our studio, currently in public playtesting on itch. Over about two months I put out roughly 50 short form videos across tik tok, insta and youtube, kept the steam page updated, and posted on X, threads and reddit. That produced a very flat 2-3 wishlists a day. No spikes, nothing that correlated with any individual video doing well.

Then AUTOMATON wrote about the game without me pitching them 最大4人協力・モンスター“救助”シム『Sanctuary of Small Things』正式発表、プレイテスト実施中。生き物たちの病気を癒す、魔法とやさしさのスローライフ - AUTOMATON, and the next day I woke up to see 150 wishlists!

The part I've been chewing on since is that I can't repeat it. I didn't pitch it, I didn't know it was coming, and I only found out by going to check why the graph looked broken. So the only piece of that spike that was actually mine was what those people found once they arrived: a steam page with current screenshots and a trailer, 50 videos of the game to scroll through, and a small community that already had conversations in it.

Which has reframed those two flat months for me. Measured as a wishlist channel, 50 videos for 2-3 a day is a bad return and I'd been treating it as one. Measured as preparation for an event I had no way to schedule, it was the entire job.

Two things I'd like other people's read on:

1. Has anyone turned one of these into a second one? Curious whether coverage compounds at all or whether each spike is unrelated to the last.
2. Is 2-3 a day roughly the floor for an unreleased game at this stage, or is that low enough that I should read it as the hook not working?

Happy to share more numbers if anyone wants them.

Also, any feedback on the steam page much appreciated: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813510/Sanctuary_of_Small_Things/

I've been working on Sanctuary of Small Things for about 8 months and we're at the private playtesting stage on itch.io right now: Sanctuary of Small Things by Little Limp Games. In that time, I've put out around 50 videos across tik tok, insta and youtube, mostly short form with some longer stuff, plus posting on X, threads and more recently reddit.

For two months all of that got me 2-3 wishlists a day. Which is fine, it adds up, but you do start quietly wondering whether any of it is landing anywhere.

Then this happened...

Quick preface before the interesting part: I'm not a veteran dev. This is my first proper build going up on steam. I've made small games in Unity before but it's the first time I'm trying to take something commercial and grow an actual studio out of it, so I had no frame of reference for what a normal wishlist curve is even supposed to look like.

When I saw the spike, I genuinely had no idea where it came from. I went looking and eventually found it on X, where AUTOMATON had posted about the game to their audience and created a news article about our game!

最大4人協力・モンスター“救助”シム『Sanctuary of Small Things』正式発表、プレイテスト実施中。生き物たちの病気を癒す、魔法とやさしさのスローライフ - AUTOMATON

https://preview.redd.it/x974nvf9t1kh1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b25787d02500fa120bfb29a837e301b2ad4dc4c

That was the whole explanation. One post I had nothing to do with did more in a day than I'd managed in two months.

The easy read is that it was luck, and some of it was. But the part I keep coming back to is what those people found after they clicked. A steam page that had been updated consistently, a tik tok and youtube with 50 videos sitting on them, and a small cozy community that was already talking to each other. If the same spike had hit two months earlier, they'd have landed on a half-finished store page and bounced straight back out.

So, the moral, if there is one, is don't stare too hard at the daily number. 2-3 wishlists a day feels like nothing, but that's not really what those two months were doing. You're building the thing that catches the spike whenever it decides to show up.

Thanks for reading! Has anyone else had one of these come out of nowhere? Would love to hear where yours came from.

The workshop is broken, the garden beds

are bare, and there are small things in the grass who are not well.

You learn four spells: call wood down from a tree, draw stone up from the

earth, rain over your garden, and a gentle mist that carries a small thing

safely into your satchel. Then you grow what a cure needs, brew it, and go

and find someone who needs it. When they are well again they stay, and

wander around the place like they live there. Because they do.

This is the opening of the game and it is close to demo ready. Free,

Windows and Mac, no launcher or account.

If you play it I would love to know who you saved, what you loved, and

anything you would change.

Sanctuary of Small Things by Little Limp Games