Solo dev, 2 years working on first game, 0 prior followers, zero marketing experience.
Posted to several subreddits in 8 hours plus cross-posts to Bluesky / Mastodon / X. Steam Coming Soon went live yesterday. 24 hours later, wanted to share the data with you.
Game: Everfront, real-time roguelike strategy on procedurally generated maps, built in Godot.
Caveat upfront: this is one data point from one first-time launch. Take everything below as "what I observed," not "what works." Other launches will look different.
Headline numbers
- 450 wishlists (1 deletion)
- 1,014 visits to the Steam page in the first day
- r/godot post: 891 upvotes, 100 comments, 0.99 ratio (the one viral post)
- 0 external pickups in the first 24h (no press / curator / blog coverage)
- +19 Bluesky followers, X effectively dead, Mastodon negligible
Wishlist contribution by source (UTM-tracked)
r/godot ████████████████████████████████████ 113 r/RealTimeStrategy ████████ 25 r/computerwargames ████████ 23 r/StrategyGames ████ 10 r/IndieGaming ███ 9 r/IndieDev █ 4 r/IndieGames █ 3 Total UTM-tracked: 192 wishlists from 766 visits
One r/godot post drove 59% of all UTM-trackable wishlists. Six other subs combined for the rest. I imagine that's what many indie launches look like. Radically asymmetric.
What surprised me most: niche subs converted 2-3x better than broad ones
Click-to-wishlist conversion rate per sub:
r/StrategyGames ████████████████████████████████ 32% r/godot ██████████████████████████████ 30% r/RealTimeStrategy ██████████████████████████████ 30% r/IndieGaming ██████████████████████████ 26% r/IndieGames █████████████████████ 21% r/computerwargames ████████████████████ 20% r/IndieDev ██████████████ 14%
I went in assuming the broad indie subs would be my engine because they're huge. The data went the other way. The bigger the sub, the lower the conversion. Niche subs felt like shopping audiences; broad subs felt like browsing audiences. A r/godot click was worth 2.2x a r/IndieDev click for wishlists.
Geographic and platform breakdown
- US 39% · Germany 11% · UK 7% · France 6% · Canada 5% · Sweden (home) 2%
- Windows 94% · Mac 5% · Linux 1%
- Mobile 54% · Desktop 46% (most first impressions happen on phones)
What worked
- Native video uploads beat YouTube links in feed-scrolling subs (verified by data)
- Engine-specific framing in r/godot converts. It indicates more appeal to devs than players
- Substantive bodies (technical detail in r/godot, mechanics in genre subs). Marketing-speak underperformed everywhere
- Replying to every comment for 6+ hours kept r/godot climbing through the workday
What didn't
- 3 posts removed: r/IndieGames (mod, Rule 9, Steam links in body), r/DestroyMyGame (mod, Rule 8, gameplay-vs-logos), r/Roguelites (Reddit spam filter, modmail still pending)
- X from 0 followers was essentially zero contribution. Black hole at launch
- r/SoloDevelopment flopped at 5 upvotes, r/gamedevscreens at 1 upvote. I thought the solo-dev story should have hit
- Posting in several subs within 8 hours triggered Reddit's spam filter
What I'd do differently
- Spread the launch over 3 days, not 8 hours (avoids spam filter)
- Read every sub sidebar twice. Lost 3 posts to avoidable rule violations
- Cut a focused 10-15s gameplay GIF
- Lead with the GAME in titles, not the dev story. "After 2 years solo" hooked devs, but not players
One-line takeaway
I hope fellow devs planning their launch find this insightful. Happy to dig into any of the numbers in comments, or feel free to reach out.
Wilhelm Tranheden, Gothenburg