Humor and Personality in Marketing: The Indie Charm of Tactical Breach Wizards
Why Tactical Breach Wizards' Humor-Fueled Marketing Is Winning Hearts (and 300K Wishlists)
Unfortunately with so much competition a great game no longer sells itself. In the crowded world of indie game development, standing out isn't just about having a great game - it's about how you market it. So what happens when a great game meets great marketing? Let’s find out!
Tactical Breach Wizards, the latest title from game journalist turned indie developer Tom Francis, exemplifies how humor, passion, and throwing people through windows (more on this in a moment) can capture the hearts of gamers and drive significant wishlist growth. Today we explore how Tactical Breach Wizards built a dedicated following, drove wishlist velocity, and ultimately set itself up for a successful launch.
Defenestration - the act of throwing someone or something out of a window 🪟
The Defenestration Trilogy
Tactical Breach Wizards is the third title in what has come to be known as the “defenestration trilogy”. No need to feel ashamed , I had to google that one too. The defenestration trilogy is a thematic series of strategy games that share a common blend of tactical gameplay, humorous narrative elements, and of course throwing people through windows. The trilogy includes:
Gunpoint (2013): A stealth puzzle game that lets you rewire its levels to trick people. You play a freelance spy who takes jobs from his clients to break into high security buildings and steal sensitive data.
Heat Signature (2017): A top-down action game set in space. Players take on the role of mercenaries who infiltrate enemy spaceships using a combination of stealth, combat, and gadgetry.
Tactical Breach Wizards (2024): A turn-based tactical game where players control a team of wizards equipped with modern tactical gear. The game features a mix of spell-casting, tactical combat, and a storyline filled with conspiracies and humorous undertones.
This blog will purely focus on Tactical Breach Wizards, but needless to say the previous games helped their marketing efforts.
Tom Francis: Developer/ Designer/ Writer & The Beating Heart of Tactical Breach Wizard’s Marketing
Tactical Breach Wizards was made by 3-5 devs (conflicting sources on this) that together form Suspicious Developments. With that being said CEO Tom Francis is undeniably the master mind behind the game. Game Developer wrote a great article on how Tom arrived at the idea for a game that somehow mashed together wizards with navy seals when he was a journalist at PC Gamer.
From time to time you see an indie game’s marketing that is almost entirely composed of one person’s (usually the main dev) activities. Other examples include Pirate Software, Pontypants, and Mortal Rite. Mortdog, is a rare example of a AAA version of this. This strategy usually consists of gathering a large following through devlogs, blogs, and openly developing your game in public.
For Tom this meant regularly posting devlogs and cool game dev rants on Youtube, as well as managing an active twitter and blog on his website. There’s no way around it, this takes a lot of time and effort to do, but the payoff can be substantial. If your considering doing devlogs i’d highly recommend checking out Tom’s channel. He doesn’t do fancy editing and half the time he’s just speaking his mind and always seems genuinely excited to share updates.
Marketing with A Heart: Why Tactical Breach Wizards Stands Out
Tactical Breach Wizard’s marketing excels due to its authenticity and humor.
People hate being marketed too. We’re bombarded by marketing constantly and we immediately put up a shield the second we feel like we’re being sold something. The brands & products we see consistently winning are those that manage to entice you without making you feel like your being marketed too. What’s the easiest way to do this? Humor. If you don’t believe me just check out the marketing efforts of Deadpool or The Boys for some entertaining homework.
In my case study on Tiny Glade I mentioned how all of their copy was cute and cozy matching their target audience and theming. Tactical Breach Wizards also knows it’s audience and speaks their language. The only active official online presence for Tactical Breach Wizards is it’s Twitter and Steam Page, which i’m pretty sure are both run by Tom. Every piece of content is either humorous, authentic, or both. The copy in their content matches the same humor present in their game (probably because it’s written by the same guy). As for authenticity they nail this by developing openly, sharing bugs and funny moments, sharing successes, and generally not taking themselves too seriously. Here’s a few examples:
Humorous
Authentic
Tactical Breach Wizards Launch Strategy
Finally, let’s get to what we’ve all been waiting for….some sexy data. Tactical Breach Wizards maintained wishlist momentum through promoting various betas, Tom’s marketing efforts (devlogs, tweets, etc.), and great use of Twitter. Finally they skyrocketed after launching their demo and entering next fest with tons of games press and creators covering their game.
Game announcement & Steam Page Launch (March 2019)
Closed Beta 1 (March 2020)
Playtest (May 2021)
Closed Beta 2 (June 2022)
Closed Beta 3 (March 2024)
Demo (June 2024)
Next Fest (June 2024)
Launch Time Baby 🍾(August 2024)
Game Announcement & Steam Page Launch (March 2019)
Tactical Breach Wizards was first announced in March of 2019. Tom nervously revealed it in a tweet before pushing people to the newly created official twitter account for the game. The above video was also dropped along with a steam page update with a few more details.
I would call this a “soft announcement”. I have know idea if that’s a real thing but that’s what I call it. It’s when a studio announces their game when it’s in a really early state then announces or reveals it again later with a fancy new trailer and usually at a gaming show. You can also do like Tiny Glade and market your game with no name then do a big drop with a name reveal. That works best for when you’re really early development and don’t have a steam page yet.
I also want to point out the video they announced with. Most people would go with a trailer of some sorts rather than a 10 minute long gameplay video. However, given Tom’s intimate relationship with his audience, his long history of dev logs, and the early state of the game, this was probably a smart call over a snappy 1 minute trailer.
Closed Beta 1 (March 2020)
Steam Announcement / Steam Announcement 2 / Twitter Announcement
They did an awesome job getting signups for their mailing list here. Keys were released in three stages simultaneously pushing people to their mailing list, following on steam, and following socials. So so good.
Playtest (AKA Act One Beta) (May 2021)
Steam Announcement / Twitter Announcement
This time they opted to use Steam’s playtest function. Interestingly after this they returned to doing closed betas with keys distributed through mail. Once again they pressed on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) by stating that only 1,000 playtesters will be approved.
They with another gameplay video featuring Tom. I think this is a great alternative to making a trailer if you fit in any of the following categories:
You don’t know how to make a good trailer. Seriously it’s hard. Feel free to roast the trailer I made for Setback in the comments.
A lot of your marketing is centered around a dev’s personality.
The game art is still really early so a trailer may not be the way to show it off. People are way more forgiving of rough art and early gameplay if presented in a devlog style.
Closed Beta 2 (June 2022)
Steam Announcement / Twitter Announcement / Twitter Announcement 2
Significant update here is that they finally dropped a trailer that was revealed during the 2022 PC Gaming Show (probably helped he used to work at PC Gamer). So this would be the hard announcement vs the soft I mentioned above.
Following up on the first point of why you might not want to make a trailer in the section above this, they got Derek Lieu to make their trailer! If you don’t know Derek Lieu he’s basically the go to guy for indie game trailers. He actually did a break down of how he made the Tactical Breach Wizards trailer if you’re interested.
As they did for all the betas, except for the one where they utilized the playtest function, they pushed people to their newsletter to claim keys. I would assume the benefit of more newsletter signups is why they stopped using the steam playtest function.
Closed Beta 3 (March 2024)
Steam Announcement / Twitter Announcement
Once again pushed to their mailing list for keys, However a bold new feedback strategy emerges!
If you’ve ever conducted a playtest or beta than you know that getting people to play is hard, but getting people to leave feedback is much much harder. Tactical Breach Wizard’s helped get around this by blocking the final 25% of the beta behind a feedback wall. By putting it at 75% he guarantees he’s only getting feedback from people that have played long enough to give it a proper chance and are genuinely interested.
This is one of those moments where I face palmed and thought “why didn’t i think of that”. Suppose that’s why I started this blog.
Demo (June 2024)
Steam Announcement / Twitter Announcement
The June 2024 Steam Next began on June 10 so why release their demo on June 3rd?
They did address that question above using the sarcastic humor that defines their game. But why did they actually launch a week early.
Playtesting
Games Press & Content Creators
Wishlist Velocity
By launching your demo early you can playtest your demo and iron out any bugs or make improvements before Steam Next Fest. The last spot you want to be in is feverishly working to fix your demo right in the middle of Next Fest. This is an even bigger deal now since users can leave reviews on your demo. You can say goodbye to precious wishlists if your demo gets bad reviews during next fest due to problems you could have fixed beforehand. Scare you enough yet? Good, its tough love. You only get one shot at Next Fest so treat it seriously and prepare accordingly. To be honest you probably want to launch your demo at least a month ahead of next fest so you have proper time to fix and improve it. Tactical Breach Wizards got around this due to their numerous betas. They regularly tested the build that eventually became their demo so they were in a healthy spot, that being said they still shipped an update to their demo right before next fest.
Another reason to make your demo available early is so that games press & content creators can get their hands on it and begin covering it garnering excitement for your game ahead of next fest.
Wishlist velocity. It’s a thing. Consider the following two games.
Game one: 100,000 wishlists over 10 years.
Game two: 10,000 wishlists over 1 month.
Game 2 is likely to sell better due to wishlist velocity. Simply put a game that is racking up a lot of wishlists in a short amount of time tells Steam that their is excitement around the game. This is an extremely important factor in getting onto the Trending upcoming category during Steam Next Fest.
I think its likely that Tom knew how popular their game was so even though they could have released their demo sooner (still the best advice for most games) they knew that by doing one week ahead of time, it would increase their wishlist velocity. This bet paid off with them acquiring around 20,000 wishlists between June 6 - June 10.
Next Fest (June 2024)
Steam Announcement / Twitter Announcement
A release date trailer was dropped and once again announced at the PC gaming show. They also livestreamed with Hbomber guy where he played their full game while Tom hosted a Q&A. Hbomber guy has 1.72M youtube subscribers, so this was a huge win.
Their Next Fest formula was as follows
Drop demo a week out
Get it in the hands of Games Press & Creators
Test and improve Demo
Improve wishlist velocity
Live Stream with popular game creator who genuinely loved their game
Drop release date trailer (August 22nd btw)
The result? 108K wishlists. More wishlists earned in a week than the large majority of indie games get before release.
Launch Time Baby 🍾(August 2024)
Its currently August 21st as i’m writing this so Tactical Breach Wizards should be releasing in a handful of hours. I can see them sitting comfortable in the popular upcoming section ( no surprise there) so i’m sure their launch will go stellar. I’m gonna return to Tactical Breach Wizards in about month to see how their doing sales wise and what marketing efforts they put in post launch, so make sure to subscribe to check that out!
Recommended Readings
The state of games publishing: "The era of the generalist indie publisher is over": An informative look into how the publishing landscape is changing.
Signing with a Publisher in 2024: Lessons learned from my year-long negotiation process as a solo indie game developer: Some more great insight into working with a publisher from an indie dev.
On Perennial Sellers - games just keep selling, years after release: A fantastic read that points out the under appreciated importance of reviews per week as a success metric.
What is wishlist velocity and is it a better indicator of success: A great article on wishlist velocity by Chris.
This is great. And such a good-looking game by 5 devs? That still astounds me.
I really wanted to play this demo, but it never worked for me so I was really sad :(
(weird bug where I couldn't get past the menu screen...probably my old potato PC).
I'm hoping my new system will be able to play this game though!