Sustainable marketing for narrative game. Looking for ideas and feedback
So, we announced the game we’ve been working on for about a year, and got around 70 wishlists. I think it might crawl to 100 and then probably stop there. Almost all of them came from one Reddit thread and Steam itself. Press ignored us, indie bloggers ignored us, basically my cold outreach resulted in zero clicks. The game is a narrative 3D RPG, somewhere between Dragon Age: Origins and Gothic, with a new take on some dialogue and morality mechanics.
Our strengths: we have good concept art, detailed and original lore, interesting characters, and a story that will probably have to be cut down.
What sucks: the graphics are bad. The animations are even worse. And it turns out expectations for this genre are way higher than I expected. We probably should’ve made it 2.5D, but here we are.
So, to summarize: the game has terrible potential for short gameplay clips. And now we’re in a position where it feels almost impossible to sell the game’s strengths because of how content distribution works right now. But I still want to create some kind of steady traffic flow to the Steam page so the visibility doesn’t completely die.
Current plan is:
-Run a TikTok with short pieces about the world’s history and the conflict that leads into the game’s story. I still haven’t decided what to do with voiceover, but I think this format can work.
-Run an X/Twitter account where we talk about the mechanics we’re rethinking, introduce characters, and post gameplay gifs, even though they probably won’t be very impressive.
-Maybe start a Substack with actual lore drops. Stuff like cultures, religions, personalities and post some of that to r/worldbuilding as well. Someone will actually reach out Steam page.
I’d really appreciate feedback on this plan. Also curious if anyone has been in a similar situation, or has any other ideas for getting traffic to a Steam page when the game’s strengths are mostly writing, lore, and characters rather than visuals.