In a recent series of articles, we told you about important life hacks that will help you promote your indie game on the Steam store.

An extremely important topic for game developers, which one way or another, sooner or later, each of you will face.

As a rule, indie projects do not have huge budgets, which is why the responsibility for promoting the game often falls on the creators themselves.

But after all, developing a game and setting up an attractive game page in the Steam store are far from the same thing, and in order to make life a little easier for all game developers, we took up this mini-series of articles.

Previously, we talked about how to properly work with reviews, how to promote the game on Steam, or how to improve the “about this game” section.

Well, now we will move on to an equally important and significant topic - the visual design of your project page on Steam!

Top life hacks for effectively announcing your indie game

How to successfully promote your upcoming indie game

What is the first thing you notice when you visit a game page on Steam?

Of course, on the visual design of the page, in particular, the first thing the eye clings to is the capsule of your game on Steam.

Actually, this is the main task of the capsule - to make sure that your game is noticed.

The visual design should clearly communicate what exactly you offer to potential players. The goal is to reach the right target audience and give them a reason to click on it.

For example, if your game is only for co-op, then we strongly recommend that you reflect this visually as well! Depict several characters at once, which will greatly facilitate the idea of the project for the user. This greatly increases your game's chances of success and is almost guaranteed to increase your game's click-through rate on the Steam store.

So how to properly design the visual component of your project page?

Now we will talk about it briefly!

Ready?

1. Saturation and colors of your page!
When sitting down to design your game page, always keep in mind the fact that Steam uses a dark blue color for the background of its store, and sometimes dozens (or even hundreds) of video games can simply be visually lost against this background. After all, they simply “merge with the environment” and do not catch the player’s eye even at the most “basic” level.

How can thousands of users find out about your game if you yourself, albeit unwittingly, put a spoke in your wheels?

Hundreds of video games remain ignored by everyone, sliding smoothly to the bottom of Steam, only because their main capsules are too much washed out with the dark blue background of the store itself.

Do not believe in the word? So check for yourself. Open your Steam right now and just spend 20-30 minutes of your time in the free search for new video games.

Then you can see for yourself that many developers ignore such a simple rule, forgetting about seemingly very banal things. Therefore, feel free to use bright colors and tones for your game on Steam (the main thing is not to overdo it, you don’t need to call an epileptic attack and you don’t need to call players). Even if your indie game is gloomy and the game takes place at night.

Take a cue from the great indie games "Limbo" and "Inside" from Playdead.

Two standout indie titles that are famous for their dark side, but look how their core capsules stand out visually against the deep blue of Steam itself. It seems such a trifle, but a trifle is incredibly important!


2. Borders and Strokes!
Another extremely simple yet effective way to make your capsule more visible and stand out from the background.

To my great surprise, few indie developers resort to such an obvious life hack. After all, as I said above, developing a game and setting up a page on Steam are far from the same thing, but due to the lack of budget, game publishers have to quickly master the profession of both a sms manager and a copywriter, and be all marketing separate in one person at once.

Therefore, after watching videos on YouTube and taking examples from major releases, developers often forget about such an important and not obvious fact as the borders and outline of your capsule. Feel free to use this hack!

What will help distinguish the game from the rest will help you. The main thing is not to overdo it with the thickness of the borders and color, let's act within reason.


3. Text over the picture!
It is often said that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

And it's true, sometimes a game screenshot can answer a question of interest much better than any words.

But at the same time, a picture may not always convey your message clearly and quickly enough. So sometimes it pays to brush up on your Photoshop skills and do a little design by adding short text on top of the picture! For example, your game has a strong focus on a particular gameplay element, such as open world survival. But from one picture this will not be understood. So how do you convey your idea and the main feature of your game to users without resorting to a huge selling text?

Everything is simple. Incorporate the text "OPEN WORLD SURVIVAL HORROR" into your capsule design, making sure that the lettering coexists harmoniously with the rest of the visual content.

Four words, literally four words, will help you convey the main feature of your game to a potential audience, which will subsequently help increase sales of your game.

I hope these three life hacks will make your life much easier.

And it's okay if you didn't follow these rules when designing your Steam page for your previous game.

After all, as I said above, you are not a marketing department, and you are not required to know all the subtleties of promotion.

Now, next time, follow our advice and resort to the help of these small, seemingly obvious tips. As practice shows, this will significantly increase the recognition of your game among the players, and for this we started our selection of articles on promoting games on Steam!

Well, do not forget to look at our author's blog , where you can find even more important tips and life hacks!