Dan Thomas 🚐

Should you make a Winter Holiday update for your indie game? 🧐 Will your community return for festivities? 🎅❄️ Let's look at some fabulous examples from @PounceLight, @TravRestGame, @SandCastlesSt, @DigVRgame and dive into the numbers to decide! 🔗👉 impress.games/blog/best-indi…

#SteamNextFest can be overwhelming for a lot of indie game developers... ...but does it have to be? 🤖 I build marketing tools like Coverage Bot to help on the community-side! 💚 #indiedev #gamedev

I've been improving the Steam Wishlists to Sales Calculator today! You can now: 👾 Select a Top-Level Genre to adjust Week 1 % 🎉 Adjust the percentile = more realistic estimations 🙏 Thx to @simoncarless for publishing the data! 🔗: impress.games/steam-wishlist… #gamedev #indiedev

I've been working on a "Steam Wishlists To Sales Calculator" 🤑 It can answer questions like "How many sales will my Steam game get with 5k wishlists?" and similar... 💸 Find it here: impress.games/steam-wishlist… #gamedev #indiedev

Today, I’d like to announce a big bunch of impress.games marketing toolkit updates, including ✨Press Kitty: Plus✨, but first some back-story: I started this IMPRESS project back at the start of 2021. I’d been running a lil Discord coverage bot since 2019 through Patreon after adapting some prototype tech I’d made for my old games studio originally around 2015… It’s been 3 years of dedicated hard work so far, but in reality, this idea has been bouncing around in my head for a lot longer. 9 years is quite a timespan! It’s been a long road to getting here today, and to understanding my place and purpose in the games industry, and I’m happier than ever to be supporting your games marketing efforts with my tools and articles. There's almost 500 of you now! But here’s the thing, I went all in on IMPRESS about 12 months in, quitting the full-time work I held through the Covid-19 pandemic. There was some very promising early-stage growth, and with reasonable projections, I had enough savings to see it through. And I did – I really did… But then came the games industry bad news that we’ve all been seeing lately: mass layoffs, publishers closing up, funding running dry, budget cuts across the board, and loads more I’ve likely forgotten. I’ve also been heavily affected. My revenue from Coverage Bot started going in reverse, and has dropped over 30% in the past 5 months. Cue existential panic! So alongside these new product/feature announcements, I am also asking for your help, if you are in a position to do so. Press Kitty is still a completely free service, but it now has a few extras for Plus supporters. Multi-language Press Kits 🌍 You can now add a second language to your press kits – this is free for everyone. If English isn’t your first language, I recommend doing this for your native tongue: this will help communicate your game/message in your domestic markets, e.g. for local press/creators. With Plus, you can now add as many languages as you like! (To be completely honest, I’d like to remove this restriction in the future and truly level the playing field here, but as above, I have to balance staying alive and keeping things running…) Massive thanks to members of the community who have contributed translations: German: @PixelProphecy French: Evian from @eternal_twin Dutch: @MrPeanutBelly Ukrainian: @Rayfulrand from unlocteam.com Croatian: @CrucialUpdat3 Japanese: @cuz_traveller from @StudioAsahiDev Simplified Chinese: @RickWePlay Polish: @MichalGem Please be sure to check out their projects, studios or services too. And if you’re able to localise to any other languages not listed here, please hit reply and reach out! Custom Domain Support 🔗 With Plus, you can now set up your press kits on your own domain / subdomain. This provides an extra layer of professionalism and credibility to your brand, as well as a few extra SEO-related benefits. I’ve set one up as an example for my old studio here, but keen to receive feedback and keep progress going! Dark Mode 🌚 A few folks asked about press kit customisation options, and this is the first step on that path. More font and colour options will be made available soon! PSD Support 🍰 This isn’t technically a Plus feature, I just forgot to announce it, ha! I want to make sure that creators get everything they need from you to play and promote your games, and layered thumbnail templates are really helpful time-savers for that, so here you go. It’s a freebie! Increased Limits 🚀 If you support the project with Plus, you’ll have your Press Kit limit increased from 4 to 10, and your Cloud Storage limit increased from 100MB to 1GB. You’ll also be able to upload large assets up to 50MB each. There’s still a lot to smooth out; from improved onboarding, image gallery views, pdf export options, and other remaining feature requests from a survey I sent out last November, not to mention Coverage Bot updates (saved for a future post). I’ll keep doing my best to support you where I can, and I only ask for a little help in return. How much? 🏷️ Press Kitty: Plus will be ordinarily $9 / €9 / £8 monthly or $90 / €90 / £80 annually for two months free, but as an early supporter, here’s a code for 25% off for life, redeemable until May 1st: PLUSFORLIFE If you’re headed to GDC next week, please think of me and consider spreading the word. I won’t be there unfortunately, but my calendar is open for anyone for the week and the week after, whether you’d like to chat for the first time or it’s long over-due: calendly.com/ashleygwinnell/… I think that’s everything from me. I hope to strike the line between “amazingly free” and “even better with your support”, or “simplified perfection for indies” and “advanced greatness for established outfits”. You can find Press Kitty – along with some reviews and example press kits – here: impress.games/press-kitty Please share! Best wishes, many thanks, and onwards! Ashley