Here's Why My Indie Game Went Viral on Steam

One of the most common questions I get asked is how did I market The First Tree so well? What was the special ingredient that made GIFs of the game go viral on reddit, Imgur, Tumblr, and Twitter? Like a lot of answers in life, there isn’t one simple reason why the game did so well in attracting an audience.

In fact, I could attribute a lot of it to just being lucky, but something important I learned is that luck is only part of the equation. Here are the reasons why The First Tree marketed so well. Reason #1: The visuals were eye-catching.

The bright colors of the fox contrasted well with the beautiful lush forests. I tried to follow the basic art rules of complementary colors, contrast, and negative space. Usually, the whole environment was one color while the fox was a bright orange.

Imagine you’re scrolling through Twitter at a hundred miles per hour; it makes sense this colorful, striking image would catch your eye for at least long enough to go to the website and learn more for 15 seconds. The visuals set it apart from all the other 2D games as well. Here was a beautiful 3D adventure game that didn’t look like other indie games.

It looked beautiful on its own, which is important for the initial three-second window of selling your product. Reason #2: It reminded gamers of things they already loved. By far, the most common comment I read was how the game reminded them of Okami, the Capcom adventure game starring a hand-painted wolf.

That game had such a big cult following that they’d attach themselves to my game immediately just by association. The comments would always remark how it reminded them of their favorite things like Miyazaki films, Firewatch, and Journey. In fact, a Kotaku article that got me a lot of press had it in the headline: Journey plus fox.

People normally don’t want something completely foreign and unique; they want something they already love with a little twist. I haven’t even mentioned the legions of fox fans who will buy anything with a fox! You want to know the real reason my game did so well with a $0 marketing budget?

It had a fox. My first game was abstract and didn’t have a visual character to rally around. In The First Tree, you were a fox, which was front page news for kids, teens, and adults alike.

When they found out it was a story-driven title with a beautiful music score, that attracted fans of a different kind who loved any game in that particular genre. It hit the mark for lots of different communities, and that’s why the market was so big for such a niche, experimental game. Reason #3: I posted GIFs constantly.

I took some advice from the makers of the cute farming game Ooblets, who said that their goal in development was to focus on the visuals first. This allowed them to start posting images and GIFs as soon as they could, even though the true structure of the game hadn’t been completed (or even started in some cases! ).

Marketing is a drop-by-drop accumulation, so I knew I had to start as early as possible. I focused on the graphics first so that I had something interesting to share, and I would capture video using OBS or Fraps. I would convert it to a nice, five-second gif and post every week.

Some of the gifs went viral, most of them didn’t, but I made sure to do it every week in a variety of places. This was also good marketing data, because I knew what scenes of my game resonated with people and what didn’t. I had the likes and views to prove it!

A lot of features in the game were added just because of that data, like the giant bunny glitch gif that went viral on Twitter and reddit, which led to me adding it as an easter egg in the first level. That data also helped me piece together my main marketing materials like my teaser trailer and Steam screenshots. Reason #4: Call to Wishlist.

Even though this is Marketing 101, I never did it with my first game. Even when a gif got some attention online, it was still a huge lost opportunity because I didn’t tell people to act! Normally, marketers call it the CTA or call to action, but for my game, I decided to think of it as my Call to Wishlist.

I always tried to add a comment telling people where they could wishlist the game or add their email to a mailing list. Even though it still helped during the crucial first hours of launch, I definitely could’ve used my email list better. However, telling people to wishlist the game is always a good move, and that’s because the Steam wishlist number is the most important indicator of success.

Valve could safely interpolate from that number if my game was going to be popular or not. If my game was popular enough, Valve would promote it more, which led it to being more popular, and thus, the happy cycle continued. Before I knew it, I had made $75,000 during the game’s first week which meant Valve could trust in my game taking up valuable store real estate, and would continue to promote The First Tree elsewhere in the store.

All of the marketing efforts I made over the course of a year were actually all for one single day: launch day. For now, your goal is to find those people who want to buy your game and make sure they’re notified when your game launches. It will take time, and you’ll have to get really good at making eye-catching gifs, but it’s essential.

I’m going to repeat it: it is ESSENTIAL for indie devs to market their game if they want an audience of any kind.