LogInBlack Tabby Games' Tony Howard-Arias explained how the studio's upcoming title managed to earn over 25,000 wishlists and shared tips on how to build an audience for an indie title.
Slay the Princess, an upcoming Psychological Horror Visual Novel which is currently in development at Black Tabby Games, the studio which is best known as the creators of Scarlet Hollow, managed to earn over 25,000 wishlists in just two weeks after the announcement which is a pretty impressive result for a small indie studio.
According to one of the two Black Tabby's developers, Tony Howard-Arias, this result wasn't just a miracle – instead, it was a mix of well-thought-out marketing and high-quality content as well as years of building a dedicated audience.
In an article written for GamesIndustry.biz, Howard-Arias explained that, first of all, the developers had to build hype around the game. This is why they decided not to announce the title during some game showcase event but chose a specific date which would be relatively free of major industry announcements – that would allow Slay the Princess to dominate for at least one whole day on social media.
Additionally, Howard-Arias shared that the announcement date the studio chose also gave a week of lead-up before Slay the Princess got to be a part of Tiny Teams, a festival that features live streams of various indie games, which the developers used to give patrons and select influencers exclusive opportunity to play the demo.
Other factors like a good trailer and demo, eye-catching capsule images on Steam as well as promoting the game via a mailing list with over 8,000 recipients and to a 40,000 audience on Abby Howard's (another Black Tabby's developer) Twitter account were crucial, too.
Apart from that, Howard-Arias noted that the audience that Black Tabby already gained with its previous title, Scarlet Hollow, had a significant impact on promoting the game as the Scarlet Hollow Discord community with over 1,500 members and the game's Steam page with more than 3,300 followers amplified Slay the Princess' announcement.
The developer explained that having an already engaged audience from Scarlet Hollow allowed the studio to let players, who'd like to see new content, know about the new studio's game. He added that he and Howard also added the information about Scarlet Hollow at the end of Slay the Princess demo, and this cross-promotion showed great results with Scarlet Hollow’s sales and wishlist numbers significantly increasing and the studio's Discord server growing substantially.
You can learn more about all the factors that led Slay the Princess to earn over 25,000 wishlists by reading the full article here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.