Originally posted on Medium

I released my first game approximately a month and a half ago and actually tried almost all of the methods I could find on various websites out there - all of them will be listed here. With this article I want to share the story of my “promotion campaign”.

The very first thing I did was the Medium account creation. I decided to promote the game using thematic articles about game development and related stuff. Well, actually, I still do this, even with this article here :) In addition to Medium the same articles were posted to my Linkedin profile, but mostly to strengthen it. Moreover, you may find a separate topic on Libgdx website (the framework the game is written on). Then, the press release was published. Actually, you should do a press release the same day as the game launch, but I didn’t know about that back then.

And to be honest, all of the methods above were not quite successful in terms of game promotion.

So I decided to increase the game presence around the web and started to post articles on various indie-game dev related websites and forums (that's how this blog started)

Finally, here comes the list of everything created over the past month (some in Russian, be aware):

1. https://www.igdb.com/games/totem-spirits
2. http://www.slidedb.com/games/totem-spirits
3. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=63066.0
4. https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/693334-logical-puzzle-totem-spirits/
5. http://www.gamedev.ru/projects/forum/?id=231428
6. https://gamejolt.com/games/totem_spirits/298139
7. https://vk.com/gameru.indie?w=wall-9222155_202256
8. https://test4test.io/gameDetails/24

Not so many one can say. But I could not find any more good services! If you know one, please, share in comments.

What are the results you may ask? Well, I have to admit that they are terrible. I got a little less than a hundred downloads, and I’m pretty sure that most of them from the relatives and friends. And you can’t really count such as a genuine downloads, since I literally just asked them to get my game on their smartphones. But the good thing is that many of those who played Totem Spirits shared their impressions about the game. They truly liked the product! That was so pleasant to hear their thoughts. I know in person several people who finished the game with all diamonds (a.k.a stars) collected.

Still, I don’t regret the time spent on the game because I’ve learnt a great lesson — two years of development is a way too much for such simple and narrow-profile game. It seems that now is not a good time for such complicated puzzlers or I just failed badly with the promotion)

Now the next plan is to develop and launch a game in a maximum 160 hours (two working months). The coding process has already begun, so hopefully in January you will see the next product of Pudding Entertainment company!