r/gamemarketing

Hi, everyone! I'm a solo developer working on a surreal eerie puzzle game inspired by Rusty Lake. Checkout the Steam page and the demo (also on itch.io) if you are interested.

Rattle Spring is a surreal, eerie, point-and-click puzzle game inspired by Rusty Lake. When your cousin vanishes from her family’s desert health resort, you must adventure into unsettling spaces, cryptic characters, and generational trauma to solve the interconnected puzzles and uncover the truth.

I had two realizations this week :

• Marketing cannot rescue a game that fundamentally does not appeal to people.
• Good polish is often almost invisible.

I sometimes see posts from developers saying their game is not getting traction, even after they changed the trailer, rewrote the description, updated the screenshots, tried different tags, posted on Reddit, ran ads, and basically touched every marketing lever they could find. Then I look at the game and sometimes the real problem is immediately obvious: the art is inconsistent (or made by AI), the UI looks unfinished, the animations are rough, or the game simply does not have a strong visual hook. Marketing can expose a good game to more people, but it cannot manufacture demand for something people do not find appealing. I had a similar realization about polish after spending around six hours tweaking a single defeat screen. I was adjusting music timing, fade-ins, fade-outs, animation timing, and probably a dozen tiny variables. Before the changes, I showed it to someone and they immediately said it looked shabby. After the changes, I showed it to someone else and their reaction was basically, "Okay, it's a defeat screen. What do you want me to say?" At first that sounds disappointing, but I think that is actually what good polish looks like. Bad polish makes you stare at the feature because something feels wrong. Good polish lets you ignore it and stay focused on the game.

So I think the takeaway is pretty simple: polish your game before you worry about showing it to more people. Marketing is an amplifier. If the game looks great, more exposure gives more people the chance to discover something good. If the game looks unfinished, more exposure just means you are paying, posting, and hustling to make a larger number of people notice that it looks unfinished. Polish usually will not give you some dramatic "wow" reaction either. Most of the time, it just removes the reasons someone might immediately write your game off. Get the game to the point where people can stop noticing the rough edges, then worry about putting it in front of a million people.

Oh and please, be concise inside your game. People don't have time to read your novels. When you increase damage by 10%,

• Don't say: "Additive Damage Augmentation I Increases all outgoing damage dealt by the player by 10%, applying the bonus as a separate final damage modifier rather than adding it to existing additive damage bonuses, thereby ensuring that the resulting damage increase remains proportionally consistent regardless of previously acquired damage-enhancing effects. This effect was inspired by my wife's boyfriend."
• Instead say: +10% DMG

I almost didn't send the message because I thought I already knew the answer.

I'm Alex, the solo developer of Wildixir, a fantasy survivor roguelite. Most of my work on it happens in the evenings and on weekends. My demo was only ready in late September, sometime in the twenties. The official registration deadline for October's Steam Next Fest was August 31, 2026, at 11:59pm PDT, so I was already several weeks late.

To be clear, the demo didn't have to be ready by August 31: that was the registration deadline. Valve requires a publicly playable demo by the start of the festival. I had missed registration, not a requirement to release the demo in August.

I really wanted the game to be part of it. With a November 4 release planned, this felt like an important chance to put the demo in front of players before launch. I'd put so much of myself into the project that I decided to at least ask.

So I wrote to Valve explaining my situation, that the demo was available, and why participating in this edition mattered to me. An appeal, for lack of a better word. I knew I was late and that they could simply say no.

They sent me an invitation. I've now completed registration, and Wildixir is taking part in Steam Next Fest on October 19–26. That was a very good email to open :)

I wouldn't plan around getting an exception or assume this will work for everyone. Next time I'm putting the registration deadline in my calendar much earlier. But I'm glad I sent that one honest message instead of ruling myself out.

Now the challenge is making the most of the time left: polishing the demo, listening to feedback, and helping people find it.

For developers who've done Next Fest before: what would you prioritize in the final two weeks, and what turned out to be less useful than you expected?

Hello

my game is in closed playtest with not a lot of testers, but that's not the point here :)

I'm planning to contact some content creators on YT/Twitch and I'm wondering when is the best moment to do so : now while in playtest ? Or later, once the game is out.

I expect the game to be out next month (around 15th of November) if it matters...

Hey everyone!

I’m a solo indie developer working on Packsmith, a spatial-puzzle roguelike where you play as a medieval merchant. Customers come in with orders, and you have to pack their requested items into their inventories as efficiently as possible, kind of like a mix of inventory management and Tetris.

The game is still in development, and I’ve been trying to improve it week by week. My current plan is to release a small update or patch every week with new content, mechanics, balance changes, or general improvements.

The game already has a free playable demo on itch.io, and the Steam page is live as well

Steam: Packsmith on Steam

Demo: Packsmith by LuquitasDev

So far, I’ve mostly been trying to share the game across different communities and social media, but honestly, getting people to actually play the game and turn that into wishlists has been harder than I expected.

What has actually worked for you when marketing your game and getting wishlists?

I’m especially interested in things that worked for small/solo indie games without a huge budget. Social media, Reddit, TikTok, demos, festivals, influencers, Steam events, anything really.

I’d love to hear what worked for you, and what you wish you had started doing earlier!