An Unexpected Journey: How my first game on Steam sold over 50.000 copies

2 points

2 years ago

Backstory: This game was made with a total budget of $0 (I even got donations from the prototype on itch which covered the $100 Steam fee). I've been programming for about 15 years and have been doing some gamedev for about 7 years very casually. This was my first time putting a game on Steam and selling it. When I came up with the game idea, I was actually only thinking about creating a little game for myself and maybe some friends.

Long story short, after posting some concept art to reddit, I deploying an early prototype on itch.io, which received over 1000 plays within 24 hours. The game then got discovered by SplatterCat (youtube, over 100k views) and from some content creators on bilibili (Chinese streaming platform, over 500k views). Using this momentum, I could acquire over 30.000 wishlists before releasing the game into Early Access on Steam on 17.08.2023 which put me into the 'Popular Upcoming' charts. I'm still actively working on the game and to this date could sell over 50.000 units globally.

Link to game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2205850/Dwarves_Glory_Death_and_Loot/

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