Tiny Glade: An Indie Game By 2 Devs That Garnered Over 1 million Wishlists With Zero Paid Marketing
How two indie devs achieved viral success without spending a dime on ads
Introduction
Promoting your indie game can be pretty intimidating. Between the massive resources of AAA studios and the thousands of games released every year it’s easy to feel like your humble indie game has no chance of being noticed. Yet, Tiny Glade, a charming castle-building sandbox game developed by only 2 full time devs (and 2 part time), has managed to achieve what many indie developers can only dream of – over 1 million wishlists on Steam without spending a dime on paid marketing. So how did they do it? Well Ana, one of the two devs, wrote up a super informative Twitter thread on how they managed to gather 257,387 wishlists only 3 months after announcing Tiny Glade. I highly recommend giving it a read when you have time. She kicked off the thread by stating “I'm NOT a marketing expert or anything like that so I'm simply going to share what we did, to hopefully provide a useful data point for others” and ended with “I worry that it reads that one thing neatly led to another. It's easy to reconstruct a tidy story post-factum, but in reality it was a combo of an iterative process AND factors outside of our control”. This thread perfectly encapsulates why I love indie game development. You can clearly tell that Ana is just a fellow indie dev who somehow nailed this whole marketing thing and is eager to help others. That thread was written in early 2023, but spoiler alert they’re still killing it in the marketing department. In this blog post, we’ll do a deep dive into the marketing strategies behind Tiny Glade’s rise to indie stardom so that you can apply them to your own game. If 2 devs with no budget or marketing expertise can do it, you can too! ❤️🎮
“When starting as indies, the scariest thought was that we'd pour thousands of hours of love & hard work into a game no one would know about.” - Ana
Tiny Glades Humble Beginnings
Anastasia Opara (Ana) and Tomasz Stachowiak both worked at Embark studios while specializing in real time rendering and procedural generation. It should come as no surprise that those two skills would later become the backbone of Tiny Glade. Before Tiny Glade was a full fledged game it began as a hobby project for Ana to learn real-time rendering. Ana regularly took to twitter to show off WIP updates of her project.
A few viral tweets later combined with some encouraging from Tomasz and the idea to turn their hobby project into a game began to take shape.
Finding Product Market Fit
They began their journey from hobby project to full fledged game with an important question - would anyone play this? You’d be surprised how many people forget to ask themselves this question before beginning serious game development. If you’re just making a game for the fun of it and don’t care about sales, then by all means chase your passion and make your dream game! However, if you hope to make any money with your game (or just want people to play it), it’s worth figuring out if people will buy/play your game. In fancy marketing terms this is often referred to as product-market fit. Basically you want to make sure there is a market (demand) for the game you’re making and that your game will appeal to the audience in that market.
So how did Tiny Glade find product-market fit? Let’s break it down using the definition i provided above:
Make sure there is a market for the game you’re making
They knew of a similar game, Townscaper, that had massive success proving that their is demand for their type of game.
Make sure it will appeal to the audience in that market
There are only a handful of games like Townscaper, so by providing a new and fresh take on the genre it’s a reasonable conclusion that the same audience would be interested and they would face little competition.
At this point in the story the only validation they had of their game was a few viral tweets. Which is fantastic, but Ana wisely recognized that those early tweets were aimed at other devs who appreciated the tech on display. There was no way of knowing if the interest in their project from a tech standpoint would translate into interest to enjoy it as a game. Knowing this Ana focused on making the visuals more apparent that it was a game and began highlighting the game aspect in her tweets over the tech aspects. It wasn’t long after they began seeing engagement on their posts showing interest in their game!
I had multiple viral tweets, but I didn't know if it was devs impressed with tech, or players seeing it as a game. - Ana
Building a Strong Community Through Early Content and The Power of Feedback
Okay cool so they have a game on their hands that has some verified early interest, that still doesn’t tell us how they got 1 million wishlists. Here’s the backbone of their strategy broken into 4 broad categories:
Strategic choices
Early and Consistent Updates
Community Building and Player Feedback
Strategic announcements
Strategic Choices
Finding their niche
Tiny Glade knew their audience thanks to their close association with Townscaper and other similar games that have begun to be earn nicknames like “townscaper-like”, “low stress building games”, and “stress-free city builders”. Check out this great article by PC Gamer for more info on these types games! Now that they had identified their audience they knew Tiny Glade would appeal to players seeking a chill experience where they could enjoy creative freedom without focusing on maximizing points, progressing levels, or other typical game design mechanics.
You know who else enjoys games like this? Cozy gamers! If you’ve never heard of cozy games, they are basically low stress games that are designed to be, well… cozy🧋! These games typically have cute stylized art styles with bright colors, relaxing music, and low stress gameplay.
“ A game for everyone is a game for no one " - Arrowhead Game Studios
Tiny glade did an awesome job designing a game that simultaneously appealed to fans of the niche genre of low stress building games and the much bigger niche of cozy games. Many game devs make the mistake of thinking marketing and game development are separate entities. Knowing your target audience and making game design choices that appeal to that audience is just as important as knowing where to find your audience with your marketing. Tiny glade nailed this! The art style, music, and game design all clearly appeal to the aforementioned niches. They also knew where their audience lived. Cozy and visually stunning games typically do very well on TikTok so it should come as no surprise that they had multiple viral TikTok posts.
Defining what their game is not
The devs also used TikTok to test how to talk about their game. A very valuable skill to cultivate if you are a game dev turned overnight marketer. After a few posts on Tiktok Ana mentioned “it showed that the genre was unclear. Many thought it was a tower defense or a management sim. Building+castles is a classic combo for those, so I can totally see why. I had to communicate what kind it is, but most importantly what it is NOT.”
This is one of those it’s not if but when things. From AAA to indie, people will misunderstand your game and often even draw comparisons to other games that you may know is wildly inaccurate as the creator. While working on the marketing for Setback we regularly had people compare us to Overwatch and Valorant, leaving comments like “Overwatch 3?” or “Valorant copy”. Setback was neither a hero shooter like Overwatch or Tactical shooter like Valorant, but that didn’t stop players from comparing Setback to the FPS they were most familiar with.
I’ll be honest this regularly drives me crazy as a full time game marketer, and it can be a hard pill to swallow. Inaccurate descriptions and comparisons of your game may sound insane to you as the creator but the reality is that the only thing that matters is the players understanding of your game. So take a page from Tiny Glades book and try to identify what’s causing the confusion, then adjust the game design, marketing, or both to more accurately represent your game. Seeing the confusion over the genre of their game, Tiny Glade updated the one place where everyone is visiting to learn more about their game - their steam page! The description of their game on steam includes the line “There's no management, combat, or wrong answers - just kick back and turn forgotten meadows into lovable dioramas.” A perfect line that clarifies, Tiny Glade is not in fact a tower defense game and that all your suppose to do is relax and build stuff. Tiny Glade’s first viral tiktok (Currently at 9.7M views) was also Ana clarifying what the game is!
Early and Consistent Updates
It’s easy to look at Tiny Glade’s success and think “they just got lucky”. Well your not totally wrong, there absolutely was some luck involved. After all there are plenty of talented devs out there with great games and marketing expertise doing all the right things who do don’t have half the success of Tiny Glade. So how did Tiny Glade “Get Lucky?” I think the answer to this lies in a favorite quote of mine from Roman philosopher Seneca - “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity."
Tiny Glade consistently posted high quality content about their game from before it was even a game until now. By high quality content I am not referring to the production value, but rather the content created was a good fit for their intended audience. Consider their target audience mentioned above while checking out their Twitter & TikTok to see how they tailored the content to their audience. Returning to the quote from Seneca, you can consider everything in your power “preparation” and things outside of your control as “opportunity”. In Tiny Glade’s case, the research into their target audience and active social media was their form of preparation, while outside factors like their invitation to the Wholesome Snack: Game Awards Edition by wholesome games are the opportunities.
The main take away here is to do as much preparation as possible so that when opportunities come by you don’t miss them. For games this preparation can take many forms but if you do nothing else I would urge every game dev to follow Tiny Glade’s lead in learning your target audience and posting content as early as possible.
Maintain consistent tone and style
Part of what made Tiny Glade’s content so effective was their emphasis on having a consistent tone and style. In marketing terms this would be your “branding”. We live in a digital age where the average user is bombarded with someone trying to sell them something at every turn. This is just my opinion, but I think everyone is a bit exhausted by it at this point. People hate to be marketed to. Even if its a product they may like, they are defensive as soon as they smell a wiff of someone trying to sell them something. However, this is where you get to truly shine as an indie game! Many indie games, Tiny Glade included, are able to successfully market their game by taking the approach of being normal people making their dream game. It’s so common it’s become somewhat of a meme amongst indie game devs. It feels like every week there’s a post in a gaming subreddit about a dev who quit their job to follow their passions and create their dream game. Here’s a great example of this by another very successful up and coming indie game, Lotfia.
Honestly I might stay away from the whole “I quit my full time job to make my dream game” line because its very overused at this point, but the core of the strategy of talking to your audience as a fellow passionate gamer rather than someone trying to sell them a product (your game) is a good one. Tiny Glade mixes this strategy with branding that matches their target audience of Cozy Gamers. Actionably this looks like using lots of emojis, a friendly and personable tone, and little jokes here and there. Really they just made all their copy “cozy”. Check out this small snippet from a recent newsletter below as an example of this. I’d also encourage checking out their twitter and tiktok to see how they keep consistent branding both in their written copy and videos.
Email Newsletter
Having a way to recapture potential customers that are interested in your content is a vital part of any social media strategy. If you go viral on social media and get millions of views but have no way to turn that interest into an intent to purchase, such as a wishlist, then you potentially just lost thousands (or more) customers. This is why you see every indie game dev begging for wishlists as if their life depends on it. Those of you paying attention so far might have stopped at this point and thought, “wait so all those viral social media posts Tiny Glade had before getting a steam page were mostly wasted then? ” Nope! Tiny Glade used a common but horribly underutilized marketing technique by indie game devs - an email newsletter 📨.
Chris from How To Market A Game gave a great talk at GDC on how to best utilize an email list for your game, check it out! Without a Steam Page up to wishlist, having an email newsletter ensured that people interested in their game had a way to stay updated and be notified about Tiny Glade’s release. It’s worth noting that even after 1 million wishlists Tiny Glade regularly uses their newsletter! For the most part they post updates about their game on steam, then duplicate and send the same content through their newsletter. This is a really smart move since users are way more likely to see the newsletter than the steam update even if they are following the steam page.
Generally speaking it’s a good idea to include a CTA (Call To Action) in each of your posts if you can do it while avoiding the feeling of being marketed too. If including a CTA in a specific post feels too forced or wrong for some reason as long as you also have that CTA (wishlist/join newsletter) in your bio you’re probably okay. Anyone genuinely interested in your game will be willing to at least check out your profile page. That being said its well researched that any friction (extra actioned needed) introduced leads to more people dropping off in the marketing funnel so always include a CTA when possible!
Content Marketing
A key tactic Tiny Glade has used to sound authentic and avoid people feeling like their being marketed to is content marketing. If you’ve never heard of content marketing it’s essentially creating content that does not explicitly promote a brand or product. The general idea is to provide value in some form, usually through entertainment or education, that serves to gain enough interest or trust overtime to turn people into customers. It’s a very effective modern marketing strategy as it neatly avoids coming across as an annoying sales person. Tiny Glade excels at content marketing. Check out the two posts below. There’s no mention of wishlisting their game or obvious marketing pushes. She’s simply posting about a cute sheep with an umbrella and her mom trying her game.
Community Building and Player Feedback
Playtesting
The purpose of playtesting is to normally help find bugs, give feedback, etc. Many devs assume it’s better to wait until closer to release to begin playtesting since many of the problems and feedback you will get are well known aspects of the game that are simply not finished yet. Which is true. However, playtesting can also be used as a clever marketing tool for community building! While the feedback you get early on may be expected, you’d be surprised how important early feedback can be in making sure your game is on the right track.
Tiny Glade opened a Discord in early January 2023 shortly after launching their Steam page (Dec 2022). They primarily used Discord to run closed playtests with their own social circle. This allowed them to gather valuable early feedback without putting the game into the publics hands yet.
Finally in July 2023 they opened up the playtest to a handful of people in their community. I included their discord announcement above to highlight the last paragraph. Having a very limited public playtest then slowly scaling it up from there is absolutely the best way to go as a studio with only 2 full time devs. Given they have had quite a few viral posts, if they had announced a public playtest on all their socials and opened the flood gates they could have very easily had “problems of success”. From thousands of people joining the server and spamming irrelevant or inappropriate content to tech issues, a lot could have gone wrong with only 2 people to fight the fires. By making the Discord invite only and managing who had access to the playtest through steam they were able to gradually ramp up their playtesting.
Another fantastic way they used playtesting was to improve and test their Steam Next Fest Demo. If you’re interested in this blog I probably don’t need to inform you how important Steam Next Fest is for indie games. Knowing this Tiny Glade ran two playtests shortly before Steam Next Fest where they uploaded the Demo build to the playtest branch. With this strategy they had their existing community provide valuable feedback on how to improve their demo before thousands of other people had their first experience with Tiny Glade. Many devs (dare I say most) who just launch their demo during Next Fest with no one else having played it then panic when they realize their tutorial was too long, or the game crashed, or people were confused what to do, etc. Save yourself the stress and playtest your demo with others well before you put it live on Steam!
Clever Community Building Tactics
Tiny Glade did a few really clever marketing tactics here I want to highlight:
Exclusive Discord link in Demo
Demo Build Challenge
The only official way to access the Tiny Glade Discord was to play the demo for at least 10 minutes at which point a Discord button would appear in the main menu. This is a really clever way of making the community feel more exclusive and help make sure you don’t have “dead” Discord members.
Tiny Glade simultaneously found a way to bring their community together and encourage people to play the demo throughout Steam Next Fest by hosting a daily building theme. They would announce the theme on their socials and encourage players to capture and share their creations with an associated hashtag on Twitter. Here’s an example using the #tinywizardtower hashtag.
I am in love with this idea. It did so many things right. If you haven’t played Tiny Glade you should know their in game photo mode is one of the best I’ve seen. You can change the time of day, adjust focus, make things tiny, and tons of other features to take cinematic photos of your castle.
They made it incredibly easy (and very satisfying) to take a gorgeous photo and share it on social media. The daily prompts also helped improve the gameplay for many people! Some of us are naturally creative, but if your anything like me you may end up staring at the blank canvas of the empty glade and become paralyzed by the endless possibilities you could create. By having a prompt it not only gives you a sense of direction but you can also search the hashtag and see what others have built for inspiration. Genius! Finally throughout next fest they reposted hundreds of peoples creations. Seriously, the Tiny Glade Twitter account had 643 Tweets in June! Thanks to the clever idea to simply post a build idea every day they had thousands of Tweets about their game putting a massive amount of eyes on Tiny Glade while barely lifting a finger.
Time Limited Demo vs Open Access
There are strong arguments on both sides for leaving your demo up or limiting it to be enjoyed for a specific time. The unfulfilling, but true answer as to which is better is that it depends on your game. In short if you suspect players may get their fill of your game from your demo, its probably best to limit it. On the other hand if you think your demo is designed in a way that will leave players begging for more than it might be good to leave it up. This topic is deserving of it’s own post in the future, but for now i’ll leave you with some words Tomasz posted in the Tiny Glade Discord explaining why they choose to limit their Demo to a specific time period.
Strategic Announcements = Maximum Exposure
If your you’re reading this than it’s likely your Youtube algorithm has thrown announcement trailers for new games your way. Another likely fact is that most of those trailers you see recommended to you have tens of thousands of views. Seeing this and expecting that your announcement or reveal trailer will automatically get the same result is a great example of survivorship bias. The sad reality is that there is a big possibility that you publish your trailer with stars in your eyes only to reach a few a hundred views (or less 🥹) over a few days. This is especially true if you have no existing audience. This is also true for Tiktok or any other social media you plan on making your announcement. For many indie game devs their announcement strategy largely revolves around simply posting a series of trailers and teasers expecting to make a big splash. Which can happen… if your lucky. Instead take a page from Tiny Glade’s book and have a multifaceted approach. You’ve probably heard the common investment advice of “not putting all your eggs in one basket”. Same thing here, don’t pull all your announcement eggs in the social media basket. Here’s what Tiny Glade did:
Exclusive trailer reveal with Wholesome Snack that was costreamed by IGN
Cross promotion with a game that has a similar audience
Email Newsletter Announcement
Games Press
Social Media Announcement
The exclusive trailer with Wholesome Snack: The Game Awards Edition was a fantastic way to officially announce Tiny Glade as it instantly brought their game right in front of their target audience! The devs also reached out to to all the major gaming press outlets which lead to PCGamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and GameSpot covering the announcement. It will significantly boost your chances of having your trailer highlighted by game award shows if you choose one relevant to your target audience and are willing to exclusively announce their first. Although with that being said Tiny Glade was fortunate enough to have Wholesome Snack reach out to them!
Tiny Glade did a cross promotion with Frozen District and Stray Fawn Studio. Stray Fawn Studio included Tiny Glade’s banner on their Steam Page while Frozen District gave them a shout out. Cross promotions are always a great idea and a fantastic way to garner some good will with other indie game devs and players. AAA games often have cross promos that include new in game skins and gameplay changes (Check out the Final Fantasy/ Apex Legends Collaboration), but for indie games a simple shoutout is often plenty and highly appreciated.
Naturally when it came time to announce their game Tiny Glade posted the trailer on their socials and a more detailed announcement to their newsletter subscribers. This is kind of the default announcement strategy but thanks to Tiny Glade’s earlier marketing efforts it was super effective!
Finally, let me stay it again for those in the back, START MARKETING EARLY! Wholesome snack reached out to Tiny Glade because they already had a great social following and they knew it would be great for their audience. All 5 of the announcement strategies mentioned above would have been less effective had they not already had a base following.
10 Actionable Tiny Glade Inspired Marketing Strategies
Okay enough about Tiny Glade and their insane success. Tiny Glade is awesome and deserve all the praise in the world but what about your game? How can we make sure that your game is such a massive success that i’m writing about it next. Here’s 10 Tiny Glade inspired strategies to consider for your own game:
Research Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience is vital. If you haven’t done it yet I would absolutely start with this step before any of the ones below! Here’s a few things to look for when finding your target audience:
What other games do they play?
Which ones did good or bad and why
Where do they live?
Tiktok? Youtube? Reddit? Facebook groups?
What tone works best for them?
Tiny Glade = Warm, Friendly, Chill
Call of Duty = Badass, Bold, Competitive
Baldur’s Gate 3 = Epic, Adventurous, Proudly Nerdy
What content from other games did they engage the most with?
Start Marketing Early and Build Anticipation
Begin sharing your game's development process on social media platforms as early as possible. Remember Tiny Glade started before they had a store page or even a name! Engage with your audience by sharing updates, behind-the-scenes content, and sneak peeks to build anticipation and create a loyal following well before the official launch and announcement.
Maintain a consistent tone
Figure out the tone that fits your game and stick with it!
Create an Email Newsletter
Develop an email newsletter to capture and retain the interest of potential players. Use the newsletter to provide regular updates, exclusive content, and announcements. Encourage social media followers to sign up for the newsletter to ensure they stay informed about your game.
Grow a Community on Discord
Create a dedicated Discord server for your game to foster a community of fans and followers. Use Discord to host playtests, share development progress, and gather feedback through playtests. Your Discord community should feel valued and involved in the game's development process.
Conduct Early and Regular Playtesting
Start playtesting your game early with a small group of trusted players or friends before gradually expand playtesting to include more community members. Use the feedback to make iterative improvements to the game and involve your community.
Don’t forget to playtest your demo before officially launching it on Steam!
Utilize Cross-Promotions with Other Indie Games
Partner with other indie developers to cross-promote each other’s games. This can include shoutouts on social media, featuring game banners on each other's Steam pages, or collaborative content. Cross-promotions help expand your reach and introduce your game to new relevant audiences.
Host Themed Events and Challenges (especially during festivals)
Organize themed events or challenges within your game and encourage players to participate and share their creations on social media. This not only increases engagement but also generates user-generated content that can further promote your game.
Strategically Plan Your Announcements
Have a plan for your announcements that consists of more than simply posting on social media and hoping for the best. Seek out relevant communities that may be interested in an exclusive announcement of your game.
If your not able to find a popular niche gaming community like wholesomesnack that fits your game I guarantee there are creators and influencers that specialize in covering games in your genre. Reach out to them as well!
Secure Press and Media Coverage
Reach out to gaming news outlets and influencers for coverage and endorsements. Create press kits with detailed information about your game, high-quality assets, and contact details.
The most important factor in deciding if they will cover your game is if they think it will interest their audience. You can do this by having a popular social media, proving people are interested in your game, or in the case of content creators, by elaborating on why your game would appeal to their unique audience.
Recommended Readings New and Old
New
The Great Steam Demo Update: Announcement from Steam with some significant updates on Steam Demos!
Hooded Horse CEO hits back at claims that Manor Lords slipped up in early access: It’s not too often you get hot tea 🍵 gossip like this in the gaming world but here it is. I was lucky enough to actually see this live play out live on LinkedIn before all the resulting articles came out.
A small games manifesto: An interesting article on how small indie games are the answer to sustainable success in the gaming industry.
A twitter thread covering 10 great marketing tools for indie games!
Go-To-Market Breakdown: Another Crab's Treasure: An awesome article from the push to talk blog detailing Another Crab’s Treasure’s marketing.
Old
How To Market A Game: Benchmarks: How many wishlists are normal? How many reviews should I have? Some valuable numbers here from Chris who has lots of data to determine what “normal” numbers look for indie games!
That’s All Folks
Getting a million wishlists is an absolutely insane accomplishment. I hope this article helps your own game get the attention it deserves! I’ll be back next week with a new deep dive breaking down the marketing of another successful indie game. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!