Tag: game dev

Yesterday (June 25th) was the 3rd anniversary of my first commercial game, That Which Binds Us, which was a commercial failure. After it released to little fanfare, I realized I was missing something- marketing. Yadda yadda, 3 years later I’m sitting here trying to teach others how to market their visual novels. Over those 3 years, I’ve been asked a lot of questions on marketing VNs. Today I want to answer some of those for future VN devs.

Some of these questions are ones I’ve heard over and over while others are questions I’ve received in my VN marketing channel (feel free to join us and ask any questions or share insights!).

Visual novels are a great form of media- they combine game mechanics with an emphasis on narratives and strong visuals. They can be used to tell horror stories, high school slice of life, and so much more. But how do you market visual novels?

I’m Arimia, the lead developer at Crystal Game Works and marketing lead at Studio Élan. Marketing visual novels is a bit of a passion project for me- I like learning more about what people like and how they think. I’ve compiled a bunch of concepts I’ve learned over the years while marketing visual novels so you can get more eyes on your games.

Last updated November 2024.

As of 2019 Twitter has over 81.7 million users, according to Statista. Over 55% of Twitter users as of July 2020 are between 18-34 years old. This is the site you’ll see recommended again and again to indie devs, and for good reason- it’s easy to pick up, there’s a wide array of indie devs on the site, and you can easily link things.

Today we’re going to look at how to compose your tweets and different tips & tricks for indie game marketing on Twitter.

Hi, I’m Arimia. I’ve been learning digital marketing ever since my first commercial game, That Which Binds Us, didn’t sell as well as I expected. Nowadays I do social media management at Studio Élan as well as my own studio Crystal Game Works. I get asked a lot how new devs can promote their indie game and the short answer is “post interesting images consistently” but the long answer is, well, much longer. When does a new dev start posting? Where do they post? How do they post?

This series will be long. Treat it as a guide book. An advice list. Take some parts as solid rules and others as ideas you can mold into your own style. Figure out what works best for you and your game as you learn. Let’s get started.