The Dragonhood Windows game

Steam Next Festival June 2024 is over! The Dragonhood was part of this year's June edition with demo available. Some things exceeded my expectations, others disappointed me. What mistakes did I make and which decisions were perfect?

1. Attend Steam Next Fest

Firstly, the game received a huge amount of wishlist income during the festival. A few days before the festival, that number was slightly above 200 people. Now it is over 1250, which means a 5-fold increase. Is that really a lot? No. Am I satisfied? Oh yes. The Steam page has been around for almost 9 months and in that time it has amassed a modest 200 wishlists. During this time, several marketing attempts were made on X (Twitter), Facebook, Tik Tok, Reddit, etc., but none of them worked (I was banned from X for spamming, lol).

In fact, many developers skip this festival and I don't understand why. This is a huge boost in visibility as Steam provides 2 hours of streaming time during which the algorithm pays close attention to your game and displays the live stream on the festival homepage. You can choose what times you get extra visibility, and here are two things - good timing and low competition. I tried two variants, the first one in the 3rd hour of the festival (1:00 am Warsaw time) with a lot of competition, and the second one on Thursday, the 4th day of the festival, at 5:00 pm Warsaw time.

2. Be sure to get the most out of featured streams

First broadcast - Monday, June 2nd, 1:00 am Warsaw time

• 450 peak viewers
• great competition and great timing
• over 250 wishlists income after that stream
• on top for most of the time

Second broadcast - Thursday, June 4th, 5:00 pm Warsaw time

• 852 peak viewers
• low competition and not bad timing but late into festival
• slightly above 100 wishlists income after that stream
• on top for a whole hour

Conclusions? I didn't expect such a large number of viewers, I don't find my game very attractive to watch, but maybe I'm wrong. That's why I think it's worth believing and competing with others in the most competetive hours at the beginning of the festival.

Based on my results, I would say: timing is more valuable than the streaming window with low competition. Plus, more viewers don't mean more wishlists, and the number of people playing the demo when my stream was presented on front page didn't increase at all.

It's important to mention that I wasn't actually streaming, I looped prerecorded gameplay video and it was running throughout the week. I think it made a difference and increased wishlist revenue overall, but my featured stream results could have been better if I had actually stream it. The number of viewers throughout the festival, apart from the broadcasts presented, remained between 20 and 40 most of the time.

3. Prepare a decent demo

I have prepared a demo version that will take about 1.5 hours to max out. I made the demo much easier than the actual game because I thought it would make fewer people leave before the real gameplay loop began. This was a mistake because people who had become attached to the game were simply disappointed by how unchallenging it was, and yet many people left the game before the 10 minutes were up. Additionally, the demo lacked a proper tutorial, which resulted in many people not understanding how the game worked. Still, playtime's results are pretty good:

I find the above results a huge success for me.

In the demo, I implemented the option to leave feedback without external websites. It was connected directly to the Google form. Throughout the festival, I received an impressive amount of 4 replies, and two of them were actual feedback. Not worth it.

Also I put a plenty call to action things in certain places:

• at the end of the demo
• late in the demo
• main menu
• in options window (the last thing player sees)

It could have an impact on wishlists count!

4. Steam Page and Steam Capsule

It's very important to have a good-looking Steam page, proper screenshots, and a well-explanatory description of the game. I put a lot of thought into them and invested time and money into a good looking, bright and unique Steam Capsule. I believe it standed out among other games. It could all pay off during such a festival!
Besides all of that, I have a bad, made by myself (I am bad) gameplay trailer, and that's definitely a mistake.

5. Martketing outside Steam

I created a $50 ad on Facebook that ran for an entire week. Over 500 people visited the Steam Page via the link, which is approximately 12% of all visits during the festival. Not bad. But I can't tell how this translated into wishlists.

Also I paid a streamer $150 to run 2 sponsored streams on Twitch.tv with 100 average viewers count. He did a good job as he tried to market and hype the game, but he didn't know how to show a proper gameplay (or he didn't want). So that's a lesson for the future, prepare clear instruction for the streamer! Steamworks statistics say that only 1 person entered the Steam Page through link from his chat (it was probably him).

Conclusion

It was a great festival, my first festival. I learned many things and that's priceless. I am indie solo dev with poor marketing and specific game, so these results are brillant for me. I did some mistakes but these are about to be fixed!

• over 1000 new wishlisters (5 times grow)
• over 1000 unique players played the demo
• over 50% people played demo for more than 30 minutes
• 20% played for more than 1 hour!
• over 850 live stream viewers in peak
• over 700 000 impressions
• top of the festival's front page reached

Until next time!

The game releases on July 12th
STEAM PAGE