Forging an Indie Success: Marketing Lessons from Graveyard Gunslingers

What It Takes to Market, Launch, and Learn as a Solo Developer

Nov 28, 2024

Developing a game solo is a balancing act between passion and perseverance. For the developer behind Graveyard Gunslingers, it was a journey fueled by late nights, endless weekends, and a deep love for making games.

What began as a 6 month project turned into an 18 month odyssey, revealing harsh truths about timelines, budgets, and the grind of indie development. Along the way, the developer leveraged creative marketing strategies to turn limited resources into meaningful visibility.

Using insights gleamed from an interview with Ignas, solo developer of Graveyard Gunslingers, we’ll explore the marketing strategies he deployed to carve out his own space in the market. Ignas’s journey provides an insightful look at the challenges and triumphs of solo development, offering valuable lessons for small teams and solo devs.

Data taken from gamalytic.com, gamediscover.co, and Ignas himself

The Reality of Solo Development

Throughout Gunslinger’s development Ignas juggled a day job as a programmer while chasing his indie game dreams. Like many solo devs, his evenings and weekends became a second workday, filled with coding, design, and debugging.

“All the weekends, all the hours after work, every spare minute I spent on making my own games.”

Originally scoped as a six-month project, Graveyard Gunslingers ended up taking 18 months of part-time work, but he estimates he could have finished it in less than a year if he was working on it full time. Even with careful planning and a detailed GDD (Game Design Document) miscalculations were inevitable. Show me a game dev who accurately predicted how long their game would take to make and i’ll show you a liar.

“Even if you make a short game that’s intended to take 3 months, it can easily double or triple.”

Self-Publishing vs Publishing

It’s no secret that publishers can be very hit or miss. While some are exemplary, supporting developers, taking a fair cut, and conducting business ethically, others fall far short of these standards. In my interview with the developer behind Shogun Showdown, for instance, I detailed how he had a fantastic experience with his publisher, gladly sharing a portion of the revenue in exchange for valuable support. Unfortunately, Ignas’s experience with his first commercial game on Switch was the stark opposite, highlighting the challenges and risks that can arise when a publisher fails to deliver.

Ignas’s Experience with a Publisher: Lessons Learned

For many indie developers, signing with a publisher seems like a shortcut to success, a way to secure funding, marketing support, and distribution expertise. However, as Ignas discovered with his previous game, the reality can be far more complicated and, in some cases, disappointing. His experience with a publisher during the release of Cyber Velocity Run serves as a cautionary tale for other indie developers.

The initial excitement of partnering with a publisher quickly turned into frustration. Ignas found himself tied to a terrible contract that left critical details like timelines, responsibilities, and revenue sharing extremely vague. Despite the publisher's promise to handle marketing and promotion, little was done to support the game after launch.

“The deal had no deadlines or clear distinction of who's supposed to do what. When the game didn’t perform well, they just ghosted me.”

This experience highlights a common issue: publishers that take on numerous projects, hoping a few will succeed while neglecting those that don’t show immediate promise. For Ignas, this meant a lack of support and a significant portion of his revenue going to a publisher that didn’t do much in the end.

Lessons for Indie Devs Considering a Publisher:

Understand the Contract Thoroughly:
Try to contact game devs who have published games with that publisher to get their honest opinions. If possible, have a lawyer or trusted advisor review the publishing contract. Look for clarity on revenue sharing, promotional commitments, and what happens if the game doesn’t meet expectations.
Evaluate Publisher Fit:
Research publishers carefully to see how they’ve treated other indie devs and how their games have done. Pro Tip: Naturally a publisher will want to show off their best performing games, so rather than checking their website, look at the publisher on Steam to see the full list of games they’ve published and how they performed.
Don’t Undervalue Your Capabilities:
Ignas realized that he could handle much of what a publisher typically offers, such as outreach to influencers, social media promotion, and managing the game’s release.

“I can do like 95% of what publishers do, I can advertise it myself, I can do the promotion, outreach to influencers, etc.”

Be Realistic About Expectations:
While publishers can provide valuable resources, they’re not a guaranteed path to success. For solo developers, retaining creative control and profits might outweigh the perceived benefits of signing with a publisher.

Ignas’s story underscores an important lesson: publishers aren’t always the right choice for every project. For some indie developers, learning to manage marketing and distribution independently can lead to better results—and more rewarding experiences—in the long run.1

Winning Marketing Strategies

Building Momentum with a Demo

As pointed out in the Postmortem by Ignas, the turning point for Graveyard Gunslingers was its demo. After launching the demo he reached out to 150 Youtubers that play games in his genre. The result: A dramatic increase in wishlists from 2,000 to 6,000 in a single month. It’s worth noting that only a handful of Youtubers ended up covering his game, but it was more than enough to make a big splash.

“If not for youtubers maybe I would have released only one update for my demo, but once I saw that updates can make a big blow up of views and stuff, I released multiple.”

After the success he found combining demo updates with influencer marketing, he found it far more efficient to double down on this strategy and largely abandoned social media as a marketing tool. There’s a great lesson to be learned here. There is no one size fits all marketing strategy that applies to every game. When you find a strategy that works well for your game it’s best to focus and scale that strategy, especially if your a solo dev with limited time.

Festivals

Realms Deep : 650 wishlists
Games Baked in Germany: 588 wishlists
Steam Next Fest Oct 2024: 1,400 wishlists

Another reminder to always join as many festivals as possible. They’re a pretty reliable way to get at least a few hundred or thousand wishlists depending on the festival.

The most recent Steam Next Fest was a special one. Due to the increasing amount of games in Net Fest, Valve decided to update the algorithm along with a number of other changes. Chris gathered some data and wrote a great article that concludes with “The new Next Fest Format was kind of bad for top performing games and about the same for everyone else.” I asked fellow game devs who had been in previously next fests how this one compared to previous ones and the general conscious was that it was “alright” but worse than before. It could be valve’s changes but its more likely the fact that Next Fest has significantly more games than before.

Leveraging Social Media For Authentic Relationships

Ignas used Twitter2 to engage authentically with content creators by commenting on posts and building genuine relationships. He’d engage with them in a friendly manner and let them discover his game on his profile or only bring up the game when it felt natural.

“I live on their wall, comment on their posts, try to engage, be friendly, and just be friends.”

This strategy was a fantastic way to foster goodwill and get organic coverage.

Using Assets: The Smart Approach to Solo Dev

Premade Assets as a Strategic Tool
To manage scope and cover skillsets he lacked, Ignas leaned heavily on assets like Synty’s low-poly packs for visuals and freelancers for music and sound design. This approach minimized costs while keeping the art style cohesive.

This largely applies to solo devs and small teams, studios are generally expected to create custom content. Creating a game requires a combination of a ton of different disciplines. My personal advice is to hand craft the areas you are passionate about and either outsource or use assets to cover everything else.

“I can spend months making my own assets or buy Synty for a couple hundred and save so much time.”

Avoiding the "Asset Flip" Trap
Ignas emphasized that when using premade assets, especially popular ones like Synty, customization is extremely important. Using shaders, effects, and post-processing are all effective ways to make your game look unique.

Post-Launch Struggles: Lessons in Managing Expectations

Despite its marketing successes, Graveyard Gunslingers currently sits at a mixed review rating, with reviewers citing a lack of content and features common in competing games, such as meta-progression.

The point of this blog is not to review games, but I wanted to highlight this part because there’s some great lessons in community management and market research to learn here.

Updated In Game Menu addressing the main concern left in reviews

Reacting to Negative Reviews
Upon reading the reviews Ignas immediately leapt into action releasing a simplified roadmap promising more content to come. This is absolutely the best response in this scenario! If you see a common trend among negative reviews, it’s vital you get in front of it ASAP. Ignas has already implemented many of the features that negative reviewers pointed out as missing. After shipping a “fix” for a specific issue, it’s worth the extra effort to reply to negative reviews mentioning that issue thanking them for the feedback and informing them a fix has been implemented.

“Kind of agree with players. The game lacks typical meta-progression… live and learn.”

Market Research
Ignas pointed out that he actually agreed with players complaining about the lack of meta progression in the game. This a great example of the importance of analyzing competitors gameplay features during market research. It’s a good idea to actually play your competitor games and identify common features across them as well as what makes them “fun”. Some of these things can be identified by simply reading the reviews, but I like to think it helps to be the player yourself.3

Managing Expectations: I vs We
It’s common for solo ventures to say “we” in their marketing to help establish trust and confidence, when in reality it’s one person. Personally, I think this can backfire if your a solo dev making an indie game. If players are aware that it’s only one dev behind the game they’re more likely to have empathy for the developer for a problem like lack of content. While its anecdotal, I have seen multiple reviews and Reddit threads where players came to the defense of the developer asking for people to be reasonable since it’s one person trying their best, especially when the dev is clearly actively addressing issues. There’s also the fact that public affection for AAA studios has waned recently, so there’s never been a better time embrace the underdog indie identity.

Great examples of this are Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles and Thronefall who proudly embrace their indie identity to the point of having their face or voice explaining the game on their Steam page.

Crunching the Numbers

Sales and Revenue
At the time of writing, Graveyard Gunslingers has sold over 6,100 copies, grossing $42,000 and netting an estimated $30,000. While modest, these figures are significant for a first time Steam release by a solo dev.

Wishlist Performance
Graveyard Gunslingers launched with around 12K wishlists. Across it’s opening weekend it actually gained over 10,500 wishlists from Nov 8 - 12! This was largely due to Graveyard Gunslingers appearing in New and Trending and Popular Upcoming on the front page of Steam. Hopefully this signals strong future sales when Graveyard Gunslingers is discounted more heavily!

Localization Matters
Localization was a surprise win for Graveyard Gunslingers. With top audiences in Russia (27.5%) and China (20.9%), translating the game into Chinese & Russian was definitely worth the effort. Fun fact: According to the Steam Hardware Survey, Simplified Chinese is the leading language at 33.48% followed by English at 32.68% and Russian at 8.56%.

Regional sales for Graveyard Gunslingers:

China 21.2%
United States 16.3%
Korea 14.4%
Germany 11.2%
Russia 5.4%

Takeaways for Aspiring Solo Devs

Start Small and Learn: Start with smaller projects to fail fast and learn rapidly.
Plan for the unplanned: Expect your game to take longer than planned and factor that into your budget and schedule.
Focus on developing and marketing a strong demo: A great demo combined with influencer marketing can be a fantastic marketing beat. If this works during your initial demo launch, utilize demo updates as an excuse to reach out to content creators again.
Leverage Premade Assets Wisely: Premade assets are great time savors but make sure to add customization to make them your own.
Know Your Market: Research your audience and competitors, make note of key features that audiences expect in your genre.
Localize Your Game: With China, Russian, & English representing a significant portion of the player base on Steam, it’s worth the effort localizing your game. The most recommended are: English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and FIGS (French Italian, German, Spanish)
Plan for Post Launch Sales & Updates: Massive jump in wishlists upon release is a reflection of potential buyers who are either waiting for future updates or sales before buying.
Clear Your Schedule During Launch Week: Getting in front of negative reviews ASAP is crucial for success. This often means burning the midnight oil shortly after release implementing changes and responding to negative feedback.

Final Thoughts

Graveyard Gunslingers may not be a breakout indie hit, but it is a realistic success story, a steady win that many solo developers can aspire to. With over 5,700 copies sold, nearly $27,000 in net revenue, and lessons learned in localization, marketing, and game design, Ignas’s journey offers a relatable and achievable blueprint for indie developers. While triple-A success may seem out of reach, a project like Graveyard Gunslingers shows how determination, strategic thinking, and embracing your indie identity can lead to meaningful victories.