Make Your Indie Game Go Viral

Summary

Gavin Eisenbeisz of Two Star Games describes a strategy for building indie games with strong commercial potential by combining early market insight, a readily understood concept, content-creator appeal, and deliberate testing of demand. His approach focuses especially on games that can attract broad attention through creators and streaming, though Jonas Tyroller notes that other games can succeed through Steam discovery and direct store-page appeal.

Finding and evaluating game concepts

• Look for emerging opportunities before they become named trends. Study successful games and other media for patterns, but treat widespread discussion in newsletters or established genre labels as a sign that a trend may already be crowded.
• Borrow proven fantasies from other media and adapt them to games. Eisenbeisz cites Schedule I as an example of a game applying the appeal of Breaking Bad, and Phasmophobia as a recognizable ghost-hunting fantasy made playable. For Cuffbust, he drew on the familiar prison-break premise, including prison-break games in Roblox and Minecraft.
• Seek a concept that feels immediately compelling and is easy to explain. The goal is for someone to understand the game from a brief glimpse, while offering a fresh or more polished interpretation of a familiar idea.
• Assess the concept’s potential ceiling. Eisenbeisz says concepts capable of reaching very large outcomes are rare, while concepts with a plausible $1 million ceiling are more numerous. In his view, strong execution of a modest concept can still generate about $100,000; he cites My Beautiful Paper Smile as having earned roughly that amount.
• Treat concept and execution as equally important—roughly 50/50. A strong idea with poor execution will disappoint players; excellent execution cannot compensate for a concept that fails to attract attention.

Designing for attention and retention

• Build an immediate, clear story arc. Give players and viewers a conflict from the beginning and a reason to see what happens next. In Cuffbust, each round starts with cell doors opening and guards rushing in, creating an immediate escape challenge rather than a slow setup.
• Design for creator retention as well as player enjoyment. Eisenbeisz argues that the same fundamentals—clear goals, progress, tension, rewards, and readable situations—can benefit both viewers and players.
• Prioritize meaningful tension over constant action. He distinguishes:
  • Potentially strong for retention: A threatening boss or chase, where the outcome is uncertain.
  • Potentially weak for retention: Mowing down many low-threat enemies, where viewers expect the player to win and tension quickly disappears.
  • For a co-op arena concept, he recommends considering a boss-rush structure, with distinct, escalating encounters, upgrades, and movement between arenas, rather than repetitive waves.
• Remove friction that interrupts play. Avoid long death or loading screens, excessive exposition, scattered lengthy notes, and other interruptions to progress.
• Use familiar mechanics where they work. Eisenbeisz favors clear, proven gameplay loops over unnecessary complexity, arguing that too many novel systems can weaken readability and onboarding.

Making a game memorable and shareable

• Create distinctive visual branding. A recognizable color palette and visual style help players identify the game across repeated exposures.
• Make characters visually legible. Eisenbeisz believes faces and memorable animal-like or human-like characters are especially useful for recognition and thumbnails.
• Choose an easy-to-remember title. The game’s name is another part of its brand.
• Design for repeat exposure. He argues that it may be more valuable for many people to see a game repeatedly than for a larger audience to see it only once; repeat recognition can help build perceived popularity and consideration.
• Maximize “mass content ability.” Give creators enough variation to produce multiple distinct videos, and give players reasons to return. Multiplayer, alternative escape routes, custom maps, a level editor, and varied modes can support this.
  • Choo Choo Charles generated strong creator performance, but Eisenbeisz says its linear format limited the amount of follow-up content.
  • For Cuffbust, a level editor is intended to let players create prisons and extend replayability. He also identifies more maps, escape routes, items, and content updates as ways to increase its content potential.

Workflow: from concept to launch

1. Define the target outcome and its drivers. Eisenbeisz reduces game revenue to three factors: how much attention the game gets, how effectively it converts attention, and how much each user is worth.
2. Evaluate the concept against several criteria: intuitive appeal, familiarity, readability, visual and character identity, creator potential, replayability, and likely conversion.
3. Set a clear picture of the intended finished game. He says he does not generally prototype, instead deciding whether the proposed gameplay loop makes sense and moving into development. He cautions that this is not necessarily a recommended approach for everyone.
4. Build enough of the game to represent the final product accurately. Release an announcement trailer once the game’s look and core experience are sufficiently clear.
5. Use the trailer as both marketing and a demand test. A strong response can justify more time and budget; a weak response can prompt a smaller scope, lower spend, or faster release.
6. Develop and test continuously. Get people to try new features, check whether they are intuitive, track bugs and performance, and confirm in beta that the game is genuinely fun—not merely an appealing concept.
7. Reassess if the concept or execution is failing. Eisenbeisz says he would return to the drawing board if a concept fails key tests or the finished game is not enjoyable.

Marketing and demand signals

• Announce early enough to inform investment decisions, but only when the trailer is representative. Cuffbust was announced after roughly a year in development, at an estimated 30–40% completion. Choo Choo Charles had a trailer in its first month of a roughly 14-month development cycle.
• Use early wishlists as a form of risk control. Eisenbeisz prefers learning whether people want the game before committing substantially more budget. He describes a weak announcement response after heavy spending as a costly scenario to avoid.
• Plan a later marketing push as well. He expects to make another trailer and run additional promotion about a month before launch, alongside devlogs. He believes Cuffbust has enough initial awareness and creator interest that continuous marketing throughout development may not be worthwhile for him.
• Treat creator interest as evidence of launch reach. If creators can see that a game will make compelling content, they may request keys and plan coverage. This is not guaranteed for every game, but can indicate potential launch visibility.
• Choose the marketing route that fits the game.
  • Creator-focused games benefit from watchable tension, clear presentation, and repeatable content.
  • Steam-focused games may rely more on a strong store-page fantasy, attractive screenshots, and direct purchase appeal.
  • Jonas notes that Islanders succeeded largely through Steam discovery and store-page conversion rather than exceptional creator coverage. Both speakers suggest pursuing both routes when feasible.

YouTube as a business investment

• Do not assume a new channel or devlog series will market an upcoming game immediately. Eisenbeisz frames YouTube as a long-term commitment that may take years to learn and build into a useful marketing channel.
• Account for audience fit. His channel’s audience was largely interested in horror and Choo Choo Charles, so its reach did not transfer strongly to Cuffbust, a different genre.
• Use creator knowledge more broadly than your own channel. Eisenbeisz says his deeper understanding of retention and platform dynamics has helped him design games for coverage by many creators, even when his own channel was not an efficient marketing tool.
• Compare marketing return with development opportunity cost. If a devlog takes three or four days and brings only a small number of wishlists, those days may be better spent finishing the game.

Metrics and benchmarks cited

These figures are the speakers’ reported estimates and examples, not universal benchmarks:

• Concepting: Eisenbeisz says finding the concept for Cuffbust took about six months.
• Wishlists for Cuffbust: About 100,000 in its first week, following an announcement at Summer GameFest; roughly 200–300 per day at the time discussed; approximately 210,000 total.
• Store-page conversion comparison: He says Cuffbust had roughly twice as many wishlists per page view as Choo Choo Charles.
• Content response: Articles or YouTube videos with roughly 10,000–20,000 views reportedly coincided with spikes of about 600–700 wishlists for Cuffbust.
• Creator outreach: Eisenbeisz reported a press list of around 200 YouTubers, with a combined subscriber count he estimated at 200–300 million.
• Creator performance: He estimated Choo Choo Charles videos received around 250% as many views as other videos posted to the same channels in comparable periods.
• Devlog performance: Choo Choo Charles devlogs reportedly generated around 20,000–40,000 wishlists each; Cuffbust devlogs generated about 2,000–3,000. He estimates the Choo Choo Charles devlog series drove about half of that game’s wishlists.
• Game structure: Cuffbust rounds were described as lasting roughly 5–20 minutes, depending on player skill.
• Revenue examples and targets: Eisenbeisz describes $100 million as a very high aspiration with few potential concepts per year, $1 million as attainable by a broader set of concepts, and $100,000 as possible with strong execution. He says My Beautiful Paper Smile made about $100,000.
• Production timing: Cuffbust was announced at roughly 30–40% complete; Choo Choo Charles was announced in its first month of a roughly 14-month development period. A further promotional push was planned about one month before launch.

Sources and presenters

• Gavin Eisenbeisz, also known as Two Star Games; creator of Choo Choo Charles, My Beautiful Paper Smile, and Cuffbust.
• Jonas Tyroller, podcast host and game developer.