How To Get Attention For Your Indie Game In A Crowded Market

Background & First Steps into Game Development

Vivian: We had no prior experience in game dev before starting our first project. I was a Communications and PR major.

George: As for me, I had experience in animation and a little bit of experience in coding, but not in straight-up game design. No matter what job I did, I always had something to do with design, I just love coming up with stuff. When I was a kid in elementary school, I would make board games and bring them to school, and we would play with the other kids. During COVID, we were at home all day and decided to take the leap because while I was learning to code, I learned a little bit of game design and enjoyed it a lot.

We knew we wanted to make games that make people smile and laugh, not necessarily super serious games with a lot of narrative. That's why our company is called Soy Boy Games, and our mascot is a Tofu Man, because we want people to laugh or think we're silly whenever they think of our company.

Early Projects

Vivian: Cowboy 3030 was our second project. Our first project was called Kung Fu Cowboy, and it's a sidescroller roguelike shooter. We worked on it for about a year. For the second game, we wanted to take game design and game dev more seriously. That's when we made Cowboy 3030.

George: Cowboy 3030 was our first 3D project.

Why Cowboys?

George: During the year that we were planning to make Cowboy 3030, the market was really saturated with tactical cover-based shooters in first person, and they would always have soldiers. Soldiers convey the image of cover-based tactical games, but we didn't want to make a tactical cover-based game because we were getting a little tired of them.

We wanted to make one where you dodge bullet hell effects from enemies, and you use platforming and dashing around in the open rather than cover.

Real cowboys didn't actually jump over bullets and dash around, but the image people have of cowboys from movies is that they jump around and roll. That's why we decided to go with cowboys, because we wanted a shooting game that's not about cover.

Technology Stack

George: We chose Unity. My main reason was that C# was my favorite programming language, and Unity works with C#. For the 3D meshes, we went with Blender. The reason I chose Blender is that there's so much information about how to use Blender online. It's easy to learn. It's also free.

Distribution Strategy & Self-Publishing

Vivian: We went with Steam because it's something that we both use to play games, so we understand it more than other platforms. We don't play a lot of mobile games, so we didn't want to make a mobile game.

For Cowboy 3030, we wanted to self-publish because we wanted more control over how the game is sold and distributed. We were approached by a few publishers, but we didn't go with them because their terms weren't really satisfactory.

We allocated some of our budget to marketing, and we had a small PR team, but then found out we produced better results marketing on our own because we know our game best.

After Cowboy 3030, we did our own marketing. It's something we learned along the way, developing our marketing skills, observing which games are currently trending, and making games that people actually want to play, because part of marketing is figuring out how you're going to promote the game even before it's made.

George: When we initially prototyped, we didn't consider that we would first create a prototype, then a demo, and only afterward think about how to market it. Now, when we make a prototype, we're already considering its marketability, our marketing angle, and how we can adjust the gameplay to make it more marketable. 

Vivian: For our first game, we always wanted to make a game that we wanted to play. But it doesn't matter what game you want to make, because if no one wants to play it, it's going to be hard to sell and market that type of game.

Finding Trends & Incremental Games

Vivian: There are a lot of ways to tell what kinds of games are doing well currently. There are gaming communities on Reddit. I'm in several Discord communities with other game devs where we talk about game design and game marketing. You can also observe what indie games do well on YouTube and see what videos get a lot of views and what people are interested in.

George: We also factor in supply versus demand. When a new genre pops off, there might be demand, but not a lot of devs are making games for that genre yet. Competition is a little easier, and people are still looking for the game.

The next game we're working on is an incremental game. We were already playing incremental games for a while, but we noticed the demand keeps growing. An incremental game is kind of the opposite of a roguelike. In a roguelike, when you die, you lose all progress. Incremental games have two types: run-based and continuous idle.

Run-based is like a roguelike: you go on a run, but it's short, and you keep all your progress. You get an upgrade after every run, and through upgrading the skill tree, you get stronger and beat the game. The kind we're making is a continuous idle type. It's more relaxing: you beat the game by getting upgrades, and strategy is centered around upgrading efficiently rather than fast reaction skills.

Vivian: Examples: Cookie Clicker and Nodebuster. Small games, but they were able to make a lot of sales and build a huge player base. The demand keeps growing. We see that when we contact influencers and streamers to play our game early. Players want to play this game, and YouTubers want to cover it. There aren't as many devs making this yet, the genre is starting to grow, but it's still early.

It's kind of like when Survivors-likes blew up. If you release a month or two after, people want to play the next Vampire Survivors. That's why a lot of Survivors-likes did well because they caught that wave early. But you still need a good game.

George: For our new demo, we had more YouTubers play it without us contacting them. I think it has a lot to do with the genre. People are looking for incremental games, but there's not that much supply yet.

Vivian: We watch a lot of gaming channels, like streamers, and we noticed they started covering more idle games and incremental games. That's how we first found out about the genre. We started to look into it, and then we found out that like there aren't too many game devs making it. But it's starting to pick up, definitely. We've met a couple of game devs who are also making idle incremental games.

There's like an open community where people share how many wishlists they have, how they did the marketing, and so on. We bounce ideas off of each other, people share their thoughts, and what they did that worked for them. So, it's a good place to see where the trends are and how we could replicate or do it even better than other people have, while seeing where their success lies.

Monetization Strategy

George: With Cowboy 3030, we wanted to make a little bit of longer game and then charge $15. Then, some challenges we ran into caused us to make the game shorter than what we would have liked. With our next game, the incremental one, we decided we want to make a shorter game but just charge less because, as an indie company, we need to blow up.

We need to have a hit more badly than we need to just milk an extra few dollars out of the game. We decided to change to a model where we make cheap games that don't cost too much, and we could finish faster. Since it's cheaper, hopefully more people will be willing to try it out. That's another thing with incremental games, you can't charge too much for it because almost all incremental games cost from $3 to at most $7.

I think a strategy you'll see with a lot of game devs that make incremental games is they'll release like two or three games per year, and the games usually are under 10 hours to beat. So then, they're shorter to develop too. You spend less time per game, and you charge less, but you make more games per year. I feel like this model suits indie devs better than trying to make a big game.

There are indie devs who spent four years on a game and made a huge hit. But if you spend four years and it's not a hit, it's rough. If you make two or three smaller games per year, you have more chances of making a hit.

Standing Out in a Saturated Market

Vivian: For our recent game, Castle Idler, we wanted to test if it's viable. We had a prototype on itch.io, it's a community where indie players can find new games. Game devs upload prototypes there to test whether players want to play them.

George: We uploaded to itch.io first and made four prototypes before reaching our recent one. You need to find out if your game is viable first. If it becomes viable, the ball starts rolling. People follow the game, talk about it, and join your Discord.

Vivian: We set up a Steam page pretty early, so anyone who played and liked it can wishlist it. Wishlists are really important. They tell you whether you should work on the project or abandon it. We've abandoned several games because we weren't getting traction, and wishlists weren't moving.

The biggest factor in marketing is content creators. You need creators to make videos about your game. That's the main way to get wishlists: have a good demo, let streamers and players play it, and let them wishlist it.

Streamers and YouTubers are the most important. That's where we got most of our wishlists. Third-party events on Steam also help, like festivals for cozy games, narrative games, and roguelikes. Anything that gets more eyeballs on your Steam page helps.

George: When I come up with five different prototypes, we're trying to pick the best one out of the five. We only put maybe one-sixth of the prototypes we make on Steam.

Vivian: It's getting very saturated and competitive. You have to make a game that stands out, whether it's the art style or a unique mechanic.

George: We really don't know which prototype will do well until we upload it to something like itch.io to find out. The one we had the most faith in, nobody liked. We loved it, but no one else liked it, so we took it down. The one we're going with now, we thought it was pretty good, but we didn't think it was that great. It had by far the most success. Some YouTubers even made videos without us asking.

We couldn't accurately predict which one would succeed the most.

Castle Idler

Vivian: I did all the outreach to streamers and content creators for our new game. What stood out was mainly the mechanics. We're making an incremental tower defense game, but it's waveless. Instead of waves, it's a kill streak requirement.

In the email subject, I wrote "Waveless Tower Defense Incremental Game." That got a lot of YouTubers interested because they've never heard of a game like that before.

We chose a minimalist pixel art style because we thought it looked clean, simple, and gave cozy vibes. It adds a relaxing, chill feel to the game.

George: The art style also matches the genre. Games like Nodebuster have simple pixel art. Choosing that style signals what type of gameplay we have.

The reason we made our tower defense the way it is: since it's an idle game, it has to be relaxing. Most tower defense games make you worry about enemies escaping, and you feel pressure. In ours, if enemies make it through, nothing happens. You don't die, you don't get hurt, but your kill streak resets. To reach the next level, you need a 30 kill streak or a 40 kill streak.

Vivian: That made the game marketable. When YouTubers made videos, the kill streak instead of waves caught their attention. We also tested it on Reddit in a community where people find new incremental games. We posted: "I made an idle tower defense game with no waves," and it got a lot of upvotes. That's when we knew we should use that same Reddit title as an email subject when reaching out to content creators.

George: Our next game is called Castle Idler. Right now, we have a demo on Steam. We're planning to launch in March, around spring.

Soy Boy Games