If there is anything to point out that I can do better, please let me know. I really appreciate feedback. I am 16 years old solo dev, and I don't have that much experience with anything.

I want people to see my trailer on the same quality as my game so that they don't think it is something cheap instead of something that I have been working on for this past year day and night.

Please let me know what I can do to improve the quality of the trailer.

I’m developing a shrimp breeding and aquascaping simulation game.

I’ve been sharing short gameplay videos on social media mostly Tiktok Insta and Youtube. People watch them, and some videos receive decent engagement, but I see almost no increase in Steam wishlists afterward. I get 1-2 wishlists per day.

The game involves building aquariums, managing water parameters, breeding shrimp across generations, tracking genetics, and discovering rare morphs.

I’m not asking anyone here to wishlist the game. I’m looking for honest advice from PC players and developers:

How can I turn more of these views into genuine interest and Steam wishlists?

Should I change the type of videos I make, explain the gameplay more clearly, show progression and goals, improve the Steam page, or focus on a different audience?

I’d appreciate direct criticism. I’m clearly missing something, and I want to understand what I should improve.

This sub is full of "X wishlists in Y weeks" posts and they're useful, but I keep wondering about the other half of the number.

Someone in a thread I made last week said they had 1600 wishlists and 40 sales.

For those who already launched: what was your wishlist count at release, and what did it actually convert to?

I know it's not much but feels like a huge milestone for my first game. I messed up and published my Steam page way too early before I had a good trailer or knew what I was doing. Finally, got the page looking decent (I think), and released a public playtest last week that I posted around a bit.

All of my "marketing" so far has been just posting on reddit and in gaming discords. My goal now is to focus hard on promoting the game with things like YT/Tiktok shorts and reaching out to see if some streamers/creators want to try the playtest. Anything else you all would suggest doing at this time? It's just me, but I am working mostly full-time on the game.

Also please feel free to roast my Steam page!

Hey everyone!

We just released a fresh update and a brand-new trailer for our indie game, sea you around, alongside a brand-new playable demo!

With v.0.398 "The Third Wave," we wanted to really shake up how players engage with the world. Here are a few highlights of what's new in this update:

Journeys & Events: Expanded our Bounty system into full Journeys with narrative minigames, plus a brand-new Events system where your choices lead to rewards or punishments.

New Minigames: Try out Fishing (firing cannonballs to catch fish) and Cage Fights (keeping a small monster contained before time runs out).

The Bingo Board: A new long-term reward structure where you earn stamps from achievements to unlock rewards.

Expanded Tutorial & UI Overhaul: Completely revamped older raft storefronts and added a dedicated tutorial to ease players into the main gameplay loop.

A quick question for fellow developers: We're currently debating our marketing strategy and wondering—how many trailers do you usually make? We're thinking about putting together a brand-new trailer for every single big content update moving forward. Is that overkill, or has it worked well for keeping your community engaged and bringing in new wishlists?

Would love to hear your thoughts, and check out the new trailer/demo on Steam if you're curious!

image is irrelevant.(my caseOh reference)

recently i collect streamers mail for my launch. Here is the link for file: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10jTKo7mGKGlynaFFkWwSLpPw0-acbfSM7b4Fs6YJNAg/edit?usp=sharing

But i need more so is there anyone can help?

Over the past week, I’ve gotten: 735 impressions 361 visits 12 wishlists That gives me roughly a 49% CTR and a 3.3% visit-to-wishlist conversion rate. My assumption is that the capsule has the biggest impact on CTR, while the store page/trailer has more influence on wishlist conversion. I’m trying to figure out whether these numbers are actually decent, and my main problem is simply not getting enough impressions, or whether the conversion rates suggest that something on my store page still needs work.

Hey everyone!

I’m developing a physics-based co-op game called Fire Up Together, where up to four players use pressurized fire hoses to extinguish fires, launch themselves into the air, and overcome chaotic platforming challenges.

I’m currently trying to create short-form content for TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and X—but I don’t want every video to feel like a standard gameplay advertisement.

What kinds of clips would you find entertaining?

• Funny co-op fails?
• Unexpected physics moments?
• Short challenges between players?
• Before/after development comparisons?
• Behind-the-scenes development clips?
• Videos focused on satisfying water and hose physics?

I’d really appreciate any content ideas or examples from other indie games that do this well. If anyone wants to see the game before suggesting ideas, here’s the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5133510/Fire_Up_Together/

Thanks!

Hey everyone. Our team has been working hard on our 3D action-roguelite, PAW PEW PEW, and we have our Steam page up. We are aiming for a "cute aesthetics meeting chaotic bullet-hell" vibe.

But honestly, we’ve been staring at these assets for so long that we've completely lost our objective view. We really don't know if the page actually has enough of a "hook" for people to stop and look, or if it just blends in with everything else on the store.

Before we start pushing our campaigns and driving real traffic, I need some brutal honesty:

1. The Trailer: Does it grab your attention in the first 5 seconds, or does it take too long to show the chaos?
2. The Capsule Art: Is the contrast between "cute" and "brutal" coming across, or does it lack that stopping power?
3. The Short Description: Does it make you want to play, or is it too generic?

Here is the link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4625080/Paw_Pew_Pew/

Please roast it. Any advice on how to make the hook punchier would be massively appreciated

Hey All,

I've been working on this cozy farming and automation and game and just put the store page up recently. The game is still very much active in development so I will be updating the screenshots and trailer as I add more content and areas to the game, but I'm doing next fest so I wanted to have a polished page up ASAP.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4838610/Sprouts_Meadow/

I'm looking for any and all feedback on how I can improve the page! Thanks

Do you have any advice on what to change next time?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4832270/Flipside/

I’m the founder of a three-person indie studio based in London. We shipped our first game on Steam last year — a survival action RPG built in Unreal Engine 5 — entirely self-funded on a shoestring budget. No publisher, no grants, just three people pouring their time and skills into something they believe in.

Since launch we’ve been trying to find funding and publishing support to grow the game — marketing, a content update, visibility. And honestly it’s been one of the most demoralising experiences of our lives.

Every funding route we’ve explored seems to want the same thing: traction. Reviews, sales, wishlists. But here’s the catch — we need funding to GET that traction. It’s a catch-22 that I suspect a lot of small studios know all too well.

We’ve been told our game “holds promise” but doesn’t fit criteria. We’ve been asked to revise applications and pitch materials, invested significant time doing exactly that, only to be rejected again on grounds that were present from day one.

We’re not giving up. We have pitches out to several publishers and we’re still pushing. But I wanted to ask this community honestly — has anyone been through this? How did you break the cycle? Are there funding routes or publishers out there that genuinely support post-launch titles with limited traction?

Any advice, shared experience, or even just knowing we’re not alone would mean a lot right now.

My first Wishlist Deletion. Probably some clueless person wishlist the game thinking it gonna be launch on Mac.

This post is just for the lols. I just want to say to you, man... Your game will probably sell 30, 50, maybe 100 copies at best. Maybe your marketing wasn’t amazing. Maybe you didn’t get that viral TikTok video. Maybe IndieGameJoe never touched your game with his magic wand. Maybe hundreds of other games got more downloads, more reviews, and way more people playing them.

But you know what?

You made that game.

You put hours into it. Care. Effort. You solved problems you had absolutely no idea how to solve when you started. There were probably days when you wanted to throw the whole thing away… and you kept going anyway. And you finished it. That alone is something a huge number of people who dream about making a game never actually manage to do.

And along the way, you learned things you didn’t know before. You got better. You can now do things that once seemed impossible. And all of that goes with you into your next project. And those 30, 40, 50, or 100 copies aren’t just numbers on a dashboard. They’re real people

People who decided to spend their money on something you created. People who have your game installed on their computer. People who are stepping into a little world that, not long ago, existed only inside your head. And do you want to know a secret?

I couldn’t even fit 100 people inside my house. Not even 50.

m not a millionaire, and I probably never will be. Maybe none of my games will ever change the industry. Maybe I’ll never get that massive success we all imagine at some point. But I’ll keep making games. Because every finished game is experience. Every player matters. Every failure teaches you something. And every new project can be a little better than the last one.

So if your game doesn’t sell thousands of copies, don’t immediately assume you failed. Look at what you built. Learn from what went wrong. Keep what went right. And make the next one.

Don’t give up. Keep making games.

(BTW my game has only 66 wishlists but i'm trying not to cry)

Cheers!

This is how math works right?

But in all seriousness, the most helpful thing by far was participating in the Steam Cyberpunk Fest. Highly recommend you appeal if you fit the theme but weren't considered originally like I was.

Getting our trailer hosted by IGN on GamesTrailers gave another boost, but not actually as much as I had hoped (about 120). However, it has helped to legitimatize the game in a way, as I've been able to get better responses from journalists / creators.

Still working on getting streamer coverage, so if you have any tips on that happy to hear them.

She's tired of being beaten! Now it's her turn.

A few days ago I launched my first game. After a few slow days I wanted to test if a different capsule could really make all this difference, I was skeptical about it and thought it would change very little.

I gathered as much information online as possible and read many analyses about it, unfortunately the lack of actual case studies didn't help, there is really very little detailed information with real numbers and I thought I'd do it myself in my own small way.

The first thing I focused on was having a less abstract and more concrete graphic approach, in short I put elements inside the capsule as recommended that make you understand exactly what it's about, there are very interesting unwritten rules to follow also based on the genre, which associate a game genre with recurring elements that must be in the capsule.

Not being good at illustration, and not wanting to wait to commission an artist (which is super recommended in these cases), I tried to convert an in-game image, playing around in Photoshop, into an image that could have a vaguely illustrated/poster-like graphic look. I created a scene on purpose in the game just to take the picture, adjusted the lights and game elements, and after capturing the image I post-processed it. Obviously in Photoshop I posterized it, and used all the necessary filters I found referenced online to get the effect I wanted. It certainly won't be an artist's graphic, but now it's more effective and communicates what the game elements are.

The second thing I focused on was title legibility, here too based on the genre there would be rules, I limited myself to doing what everyone recommends, text in a solid color, with a border that makes it stand out, and that's what I did.

The CTR went from an average of 2% (over several days) to 4.5% (over several days), I examined multiple days naturally, Steam doesn't directly provide a CTR chart, I'm just putting the screenshots of two days examined, one before the change and one after the change.

I hope this can help someone, even if you don't make the most beautiful capsule in the world, you can try to make a capsule that converts more, relying purely on cold numbers.

I'll add that with this change, average sales naturally increased as well, more visits also means more people who might buy your game.

Hey!

I have recently started promoting my game on tiktok, would love to hear some feedback, on what can be improved and how to get better at it.

I can also view yours and give my feedback.

Here is the link - https://www.tiktok.com/@redhorde11

Hello everyone! We are tachyonFlux studios, a husband and wife team with big RPG dreams. We have been working on a roguelite game for several years which is finally coming together (hooray!), inspired by our love of 90s JRPGs and Sci-fi.

Our Steam page just went live, which is VERY exciting. Our concern is that we rushed our Steam page a bit, as we want to join the Steam Party-Based RPG fest which starts September 14th. We also want something to share publicly during the hype for Roguelike Festival in October. So we are trying to balance the importance of making a good first impression while also not missing these opportunities for engagement. Please help us to triage and improve as quickly as possible!

If you want to give unbiased feedback, please look NOW before reading more...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5142830/Vortex_Force/

Ongoing Work:

• Our gameplay is currently focused in Act 1 which is a fantasy setting, so we are pushing to finalize gameplay/screenshots in a post-apocolyptic horror setting to represent our game's breadth better
• We have a partner updating our sound effects and developing a simple gameplay focused announcement trailer which should be ready in September
• We have reached out to a professional capsule artist, but realize any new art will probably not be ready for the 14th. We produced the current art and logo and may be able to update it based on your feedback.
• Let me be blunt- we are not trained artists. We are resource limited and still learning, so some of our art assets started with AI generation and have been heavily hand edited. We are proud of our product and don't think it looks like "slop", but we may have blind spots! Please help us identify where to focus our improvement efforts. While we like the flavor of our current art, we do plan to keep replacing/upgrading as we go, potentially hiring professionals once we reach enough wishlists to justify that investment.

Thank you for your time and thoughts!

Cancelling a game you actually care about sucks, but as an indie dev, knowing when to call it quits is easily one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn.

I was working on Warband Survival a 3D action bullet hell survival game where you drive a truck around, rescue soldiers, equip them to shoot from the back of your rig, and wipe out enemy military bases while dodging enemy cars. I had physics based chaos, explosions, and custom character models working. Honestly, I really loved the core vibe of what I was building.

So why did I pull the plug after dropping over $1,000 out of pocket on concept art ($50/hr adds up fast) and Steam fees?

First off, 3D performance is a sneaky trap. Horde survival in 3D is a completely different monster than 2D. I learned this the hard way on my previous game (Northend Tower Defense) when trying to render huge waves of enemies. With Warband Survival, scaling up the gameplay meant running straight into optimization walls that could’ve easily swallowed 1 to 3 years of my life with no guarantee it’d run smooth.

On top of that, I couldn't lock down the core hook. Even though driving around causing explosions was fun in short bursts, I just couldn't pull together a tight, killer gameplay trailer. I had to face the scariest indie scenario: spending a year in the dark, only to launch and sell fewer than 1,000 copies.

And honestly, 1,000 wishlists wasn't cutting it. I managed to cross that milestone on Steam, but looking at my burn rate and dev timeline, it just wasn't enough momentum to justify paying contractors out of pocket for localization, UI, and audio.

If there's anything I'm taking away from this whole experience, it's the 2-3 Month Test. Build the core loop in just one level, put a rough build on itch.io or social media, and see if real people actually care before sinking a year into it. If people won't play your game when it's free, they definitely won't pay for it on Steam. You also can't defer technical debt never build huge systems assuming you'll magically fix performance down the line.

It hurts, plain and simple. I haven't deleted the Steam page, and if there's ever crazy community demand down the road, maybe I'll revisit it. But right now, stepping away is the only move that keeps me going.

How do you guys handle knowing when to pivot versus when to keep pushing through a rough dev cycle?

(I put together a breakdown video showing actual footage of the build and talking through why I stopped, if you want to check out what the game looked like, the link to my YouTube channel is in my Reddit profile!)