tl;dr at the bottom. Figured I'd share out the results of posting about my game on reddit for the first time for about one week, in case it helps others. I've done 0 marketing previously and started the week at ~35 wishlists, and have now gotten to 86 wishlists.

The Game

Not posting a link here to avoid getting removed for promotion, but you can definitely find it from digging through my previous posts. This is the third game I've made, but the first that I've attempted to finish and sell. I'm working on this game solo and part time next to a full time software engineering job.

My game is an incremental survivors game with a terminal/hacking theme. I have a demo available (more below on the playtime stats for this), commissioned capsule art, a trailer, and screenshots on my steam page.

The Posts

I posted on all of the relevant subreddits that allow it- incremental games, survivors likes, roguelites, steam deck, etc. If you dig through my post history, you can find each of them. It involved messaging mods for a couple subreddits, but I found that they were very nice in all cases.

My posts succeeded by far the most on the genre-specific subreddits, resulting in the most upvotes and comments on the game. Untargeted subreddits (steam deck, indiegaming) fell flat with just a few upvotes

Qualitative Vs Quantitative Feedback

Qualitative: The written feedback I received in comments was overwhelmingly positive (mostly on the genre specific subreddits). I had no idea how my game would be received from players interested in the genre, and received many comments stating they loved the look, the art, etc. I also received a few bug reports and positive words about experiences playing the game. I did not receive any negative written feedback

Quantitative: This is where I'm left with a bit of confusion. My demo's median playtime is 10 minutes, with 60 players, and it's not clear why its on the short end. I haven't really received any written feedback from a player who quit early explaining why. This is quite hard to interpret on its own- I pushed up a change to make early upgrades stronger to hook people faster, but haven't seen many data points since then. My game does feature short runs that take 3-4 minutes, but even accounting for that I'd hope the core loop would keep players around for longer

Conclusion

Going into this, I only had feedback from friends, which is really difficult to gauge. I had no idea how players would react to the game- genuinely felt it could be anywhere from negative reactions, to lots of interest. I'd say I landed far better off than I expected and I'm so, so happy to see a positive reaction from players in my target audience.

TL;DR

• Posts on genre-specific subreddits succeeded the most by far
• Players really appreciate art styles that they like to look at, based on comments I received
• It's hard to get clear, written feedback on gameplay from players via Reddit posts
• Gained ~50 wishlists across ~7 posts in various subreddits
• Validated that my target audience responds positively to my marketing assets, unclear on the actual experience from playing the game

Just finished a trailer and would love feedback from other developers before I attempt promoting my game. I feel like I am experiencing tunnel vision on the trailer and the game itself and would appreciate another perspective. Thanks