How did my demo launch go? (Spoilers: Not well)
Lessons and stats from my demo launch
Hey all,
On March 21, 2025, I released the demo of a game I’d been developing for two years. It took me blood, sweat, and lots of anxiety.
The game is neither marketable nor streamer-friendly. It’s a highly niche game that focuses on story rather than fun mechanics. It’s basically the exact opposite of everything marketing experts recommend.
So I hope the data I share will be useful for those working on similar kinds of games. Let’s go.
What is Herald of the Mists?
Let me briefly introduce the game for those who have joined recently.
Herald of the Mists is a text-based RPG set in a dark fantasy world. It’s all about worldbuilding, atmosphere, complex characters, and intricate mysteries.
You play as the Herald of the Queen, sent to a land where loyalty to the Queen is fragile. Your task is to discover what happened to the Queen’s missing army. The entire story revolves around the mystery of the vanished forces and the choices you’re willing to make to uncover the truth.
Check out the demo on Steam or Itch and let me know what you think!
The Quick Timeline
March 2023 - February 2024: I started the project in March 2023. My initial idea was to create a minimalist, small game focusing on a kill-loot-and kill more loop. However, over the course of a year, it gradually turned into a story-driven RPG. By February 2024, the game had just begun to find its identity.
March 2024: I wrote the opening scene (Mountain Pass) and had my friends play it. I received positive feedback.
May 2024: I named my game Herald of the Mists and launched a Steam page with a terrible capsule art that I created myself. In the first week, I gathered only 53 wishlists. You can read more detailed information about this part here.
November 2024: I improved the visuals of the game and completely revamped the Steam page with a capsule image drawn by a professional artist. There was a noticeable increase in the number of wishlists. End-of-year wishlist count: 241. For more details, check this post.
January 2025: By this time, I had discarded most of the content I had added, as I wasn’t satisfied with it, and started rewriting from scratch.
February 2025: On the last day of February, I released an early version of the demo on Itch. My goal was to get feedback before launching it on Steam. Unfortunately, no one played it, and I didn’t receive any feedback.
March 2025 - 1 week before demo launch: I made the Steam demo page public. Wishlists went up only a little bit. Next time, I plan to make the demo page public one month before the launch.
March 2025 - 4 days before demo launch: I sent Steam keys to over fifty streamers, including some big names, who had played similar games. Only five streamers played it.
March 2025 - Demo Launch: On March 21, I clicked the publish button on Steam.
Before launching the demo, I had decided that if it didn’t bring at least 1000 wishlists, I would abandon the project and move on to a new one. So, how did it go? (Spoiler: Not very good)
Here are the Numbers
As of April 9, 2025:
Lifetime total units: 1,133
Lifetime unique users: 250
Median time played: 33 minutes
Wishlists before demo launch: 463
Wishlists as of April 9, 2025: 835
Reviews: 20, all positive (some of them are friends and family)
Lessons Learned
1. A Text-Based RPG is Still an RPG
Have you ever heard the advice “don’t make your first game an RPG”? I hear it a few times a day. But when I decided to make a text-based RPG, I thought to myself: “I love RPGs and writing. How hard could making a text-based RPG be? There are no assets! I’ll just write!”
However, when I finished the demo content, which makes up only 15% of the game, and saw that it had over 50k words, I realized something: In addition to making a full-fledged role-playing game with UI, combat, character creation system, resource management, and an economy, I’m also writing a huge fantasy novel that’s going to be at least 300k words long…
So, while I may have escaped the difficulties of environmental design, physics, and the other challenges of a 3D RPG, I’ve replaced them with something just as hard.
2. Fishing Rod Effect
When people (whom I watched play the game) saw that a fishing rod is being sold in the market, each of them reacted: “A fishing rod??? I need to buy that!”
Just learning that there’s fishing in the game makes people happy. So, if your game has a fishing minigame, I highly recommend adding it to the demo.
3. Communicating Rules
The game has a very simple character creation and combat system. A little bit of tinkering is enough to figure out how it works—so I thought. If you can’t figure it out, there’s an encyclopedia section where everything is explained.
Well, almost everyone who played the game was confused about how everything worked. The most common feedback I received in the feedback form was that the systems weren’t explained clearly enough.
Players shouldn’t have to struggle to understand the basics of the game. The game should communicate everything clearly and directly, even if it’s very simple.
Road Ahead
That’s the story so far. Numbers are looking bleak. Even though I had decided to quit if I didn’t get 1000 wishlists, I couldn't bring myself to quit after the positive feedback from people who played it.
For now, I continue working on it, but at the same time, I'm considering my other ideas as well. Maybe I can develop something smaller and more 'marketable' alongside it.
We’ll see how it goes together. Every now and then, I try to remind myself of this quote from The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell:
There is a saying among jugglers: “If you aren’t dropping, you aren’t learning. And if you aren’t learning, you aren’t a juggler.”
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Thanks for reading!
And that’s it from today’s issue of GameDev’s Journey. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. If you did, please like and leave a comment. Reach out for suggestions, objections, questions, or just say hi.
But regardless, thank you so much for reading, and have a great game dev journey.
Your figures actually look good. The rapid increase in wishlists when the demo was released and the average playing time of 33 minutes for a demo(!) are really impressive. And that at a time when many demos have just been released for Steam Fest.
This game sent a jolt of electricity through my spine.
I cannot explain it. There's too much detail-it's exquisite.
It may not catch everyone's attention at once, but the trade-off is so ambient, elusive and captivating.