What Are Simple Ways To Promote My Indie Game?

Picture it: You’re working on your game, it looks phenomenal, friends and family have expressed a desire to play it, and then you realize - how do I show other people? 

Launching is just the beginning, but ensuring it reaches your target audience and stands out in a competitive market requires strategic promotion. We wanted to share 11 amazing yet simple ways to promote your game by yourself, no marketing team needed.

1. Using Social Media!

Obviously it’s one thing for us to say “use social media” and it’s another to actually know how. Take a look at large AAA studios and bigger indie companies in your genre that do have accounts, and take inspiration from them. What kind of content are they posting? Do you notice people engage more with concept art in your niche, or do people respond better to screenshots from the upcoming game? Use this research and create a posting plan for yourself.

2. Create Visually Appealing Content

Once you’re on a platform, be it social media or Kickstarter, etc. it’s important to have release-friendly content. This could look like high-quality screenshots from the game, interviews with devs, all your concept art you’re wanting to show off in a folder, or anything you’re comfortable showing off to the world. Use a photo editor to maybe add a cohesive border, tweak the lighting, or take it to the next level. Putting that extra effort into your content will go a long way.

3. Collaborate with Influencers

This one can be trickier to do, as depending on your connections you may need to start from scratch. Our advice is to define a few competing games, go on twitch, and find people streaming those games that have between 20-40 average viewers. Find their business email/professional contact info, and send them an email. This can also work for YouTubers who post reviews, walkthroughs, and more. Smaller Twitch creators are often very happy to simply help promote a small indie game, while others may request something in return, be it financial or promotion for their channel. Always go into this with an open mind and be prepared to negotiate.

4. Hosting Online Contests and Giveaways

Once you have a bit of a larger platform and you have people interested in your game, you can use your existing platform to host a contest or a giveaway. Maybe you can put a call out for fanart, and have the community vote on the best one, with the winner receiving a shoutout or a Steam key to the game. If you decide to go down the merch route, you can do a merch giveaway by requesting people share your game on their socials or channels. 

5. Offer Exclusive In-Game Rewards

Once your game is out, you can offer rewards within the game to those contest winners, or even collab with a larger/major streamer to create custom in-game content for them to incentivize them. You could also do #4 within the game, and setup seasonal events in-game to encourage people who might have put the game down to come back to it.

6. Encourage User-Generated Content

Similar to #4, encourage fan art! It’s a really great way to get people involved in the game, especially since artists will play a character in depth to get a sense of who they are while they’re working. This can also turn into people creating videos on social media listing their favorite characters, “Top Things You Might Not Know,” and other informational content. 

7. Building a Community Discord Server

Discord on its own does not serve as a tool to find a new community like Instagram and Twitter do, unless you are networking within other servers. However, Discord can be a fantastic gathering place for your existing community, and a great way for you to keep tabs on people’s feedback, engagement level, and ideas. You can even offer various VIP roles that unlock behind the scenes content to people. 

8. Organize Playtesting Sessions

Level up your Discord use by actually organizing playtesting sessions within the software. It has a robust voice chat and virtual meetup function, and can support high-res screen streaming. People can watch gameplay or play the game themselves (depending on what kind of game you’re releasing) and provide real-time feedback and suggestions, while allowing you to search for bugs that may not appear in a dev environment.This also will allow people to get excited about the game, and be able to talk about it more in detail with friends and family.

9. Provide Exclusive Updates and Sneak Peeks

As mentioned in #7, you can award certain community members with behind the scenes peeks at what you’re working on. If you wanted to monetize this, however, you could consider a platform like Patreon. Patreon allows you to put exclusive content behind a paywall, which means only people who financially support your game will be able to view the content. Not all game designers and developers are comfortable doing this, so you could also simply create a new role in your Discord server for people who make fanart, or people who have played and reviewed the game publicly. 

10. Send Out Press Releases

If you want to update a huge amount of people at once, writing a press release and sending it to various gaming news outlets is a great way to start. Find an outlet that you would be interested in featuring in, and find the professional emails of people who write articles and blogs for them. This especially can be helpful if you secure a partnership with a major streamer in your community, you can announce the debut of the partnership. We can’t guarantee any responses, but if you reach out to smaller journalists in a professional, kind manner it’s always the best way to go!

11. Offer Review Copies to Journalists

If you’re looking to sweeten the deal for journalists who potentially will write reviews and walkthroughs for your game, offer them a Steam Key or a package of your game ahead of the release. It lets them really learn the mechanics of the game, and write a real review instead of a “News Flash: This Game Exists!” type of article.

And finally, it’s less of a promotion tip and more flat advice, but be yourself. Players and gamers can tell when you’re faking a voice or pretending to be someone or something you’re not to promote your game. Indie games are always a labour of love, and we always will encourage you to share that love of your game openly. Don’t use specific wording because it’s the “right thing” or because some business guru told you to use certain buzzwords. Be true to the voice of both your studio, and your game. People will come for your vibe, and stay for your game.