We're bringing Chris Zukowski on to share their experience with you all about the best ways to market your indie game.
Making a game is hard. Getting anyone to care about it might be harder. That’s why we launched the Indie Survival Guide — an evolving archive of Q&As, VODs, and live streams from developers and industry folks. There’s no guaranteed playbook for success, but hearing how others navigated design, business, and getting by can give you better odds.
In this recent stream, we sat down with Chris Zukowski from HowToMarketAGame.com, who shared honest, actionable advice on standing out in a crowded Steam marketplace. Below are a few highlights from the conversation.
We're bringing Chris Zukowski on to share their experience with you all about the best ways to market your indie game.
A good Steam page does two things: it tells players exactly what kind of game they’re looking at, and it proves that it’s worth their time. According to Chris, clarity is king:
“You wanna make your Steam page look like your type of game so that at an instant somebody shopping goes, ‘Ah, it's that type of game—I’m gonna buy it.”
To build trust, you also need to look professional, and that starts with how your game is presented visually.
“You wanna show quality. And another way to do quality is you should hire a capsule artist,” says Chris. “I’m telling you folks… don’t just use Unity, take a screenshot, and then use MS Paint to write the title of your game. Don’t do that.”
Details matter, even in your thumbnail. Chris pointed out how players make fast visual associations when skimming through the store.
“Every capsule always has a hammer. I don’t know why,” he says. “But if you just put a hammer in your thumbnail for your game—it’s called a capsule—people are gonna see that hammer and subconsciously go, ‘Oh, I bet I build a city with that.’”
Why is all this important? Often, you have that first 5 seconds when someone lands on your Steam page or views your capsule browsing the platform to grab their attention. The competition is steep, and you need to find any way to rise above the noise.
Your first marketing decision isn’t the trailer, or the tweet — it’s the game you chose to make. Genre isn’t just a creative choice; it defines your market fit.
“The moment you say ‘I’m gonna make this type of game,’ you’ve actually made the biggest marketing decision,” Chris explains. “People think like, ‘Oh, I’ve made my game and now I want to start thinking about marketing.’ It’s too late.”
Chris emphasized that certain genres are better suited for Steam’s player base. Horror is a consistent favorite, as are systems-driven games.
“Most of the games that do very well are genres that people don’t typically make. The big one is horror. The other ones I call crafty building strategy simulation-y games,” he says. “Crafty building strategy simulation-y games—these are games where they’re almost like a sandbox. It’s not like a linear story where you’re a dude with a sword and you run through an environment.”
Things like crafting games, management and automation games, city builders, and simulation games do really well on Steam, even if they don’t become household names. This has held true for awhile. Trends on Steam aren’t as unpredictable as they seem. Chris has tracked genre performance over several years and found them surprisingly stable:
“I’ve done this for the past three years to look at the big genres that are on there… and typically, it’s very consistent year over year. These trends aren’t running. These trends are staying the same.”
Even great games can stumble at launch because of simple oversights. One of the biggest? Not treating your Steam page launch as an announcement:
“People have never announced their game,” he says. “I know this sounds weird… but a lot of people just throw their Steam page up and then their Steam page is live. No. When you put your Steam page up, you announced your game.”
Another major one: forgetting to use Steam’s built-in tools to notify your audience.
“You launch your game and… you didn’t push the ‘email wishlisters’ button? That’s a big one. That’s a new rule. That was instituted in about October. But that’s it—you have to push the button,” he says. “You have two weeks from when you launch your demo to push this button called ‘email wishlisters’… do not forget. A third of responses to my survey were like, ‘what’s an email button?’”
Discovery on Steam is based on a lot of things, but don’t underestimate metadata and tags. Steam’s discovery algorithm relies heavily on tags, yet many devs ignore them or don’t maintain them.
“Another stupid thing—check your tags. I’ve seen people that have like 10 tags. No—you wanna get all the tags."
Steam Next Fest can offer a massive visibility spike — if you show up prepared. That means your demo needs to be in shape before the event begins.
“You should not be debuting your demo during Next Fest,” he says, “Next Fest is the grand… it’s the quinceañera. It’s the grand debut of the final stage of yourself. You should have released your demo long before.”
This is especially important because Steam gives all participants equal footing at first — but only boosts games that perform well early.
“You want your demo bulletproof,” he says. “You’ve wanted it vetted by streamers before. You’ve wanted it in other festivals. Because if on that first day everybody fires it up and there’s some bug… you’re done.”
Chris emphasized the importance of building wishlists before the event begins:
“If you’re coming into Next Fest hot with more wishlists, you will do better. That’s why you want to get that demo out early and build some momentum before the fest begins.”
If you're chasing visibility, you don’t need to buy a massive toolset or a stack of ads. In fact, most of this process can be done with strategy and timing.
“There aren’t that many tools… you don’t need to buy a lot. Marketing is not pay-to-win that much,” he says about marketing a Steam game. “Marketing is actually much more strategic, and it’s about when you time certain activities and what you do.”
The only thing Chris consistently recommends spending on? A pro-looking capsule image.
“The only thing I really recommend spending money on is hiring a capsule artist. Other than that, most of this is free and DIY.”
There are no magic formulas, but learning how others have done it can go a long way. If there’s one consistent takeaway from this chat with Chris, it’s that marketing is not just about shouting as loud as you can on social media. You need to make a game that the market on that platform is looking for, make it obvious that it’s that type of game, and let the game do the marketing work for you. Getting demos out early is key.
You can follow more of Chris’s work at HowToMarketAGame.com, or dive deeper into the Indie Survival Guide for more hard-earned advice from devs who've been there.
Keep making games, and don’t forget to push that e-mail button.