Wherever I sneak and linger, I hear the people talk about Aura Clash!
Mighty Cultivator, the orcs have sung legends about you around the campfire while roasting halflings. They shall add another verse to their song!
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I wonder if it would be worth compiling a list of places that might be useful when we promote our games. Excuse my humble suggestions, mostly of the basic level, but perhaps others know more.
REDDIT is a big one (always read the forum rules; some are friendlier to promo posts than others):
The big guns:
8.8 weekly visitors
20k weekly visitors (with tribute to the chief, @hustlertwo )
There is crossover between ‘this thing of ours’ and the reddits below:
3.5k weekly visitors
2k weekly visitors
Game Development Discussions on Reddit
420k game devs—(although IF may not be the thing they are looking for )
76k weekly visitors (must contact moderators before posting about your game)
356K weekly visitors
Indie Games - discussion, news, devblog updates, releases, demos, teasers, reviews.
53k weekly visitors
178k weekly visitors
Video game RPG news, reviews, discussions, and updates
230k weekly views
Worldbuilding - Explore Every Impossibility
332k weekly visitors (perhaps useful during development for some games)
Perhaps some genre and fandom communities are worth a post. For An Unexpectedly Green Journey, I tried the following, for example:
600k weekly visitors (you must have a track record of quality posts before promotion)
861K weekly visitors (my post didn’t go down well since my orcs are not Tolkien enough; I think I got distracted by the big audience)
Often referenced sites
@interact-ifinteract-if @interact-ifinteract-ifs a real blessing. The@interact-ifinteract-if @interact-ifinteract-ifsill prop up your post.
Download the latest indie games - itch.io
A good place for a devlog too, if you can get it to ‘click.’ Itch has a feature called ‘collections,’ which can boost a title’s visibility.
Both of the above have great potential and warrant an in-depth discussion from those who know them best. Hard to get traction for me. I know some here have gotten involved with festivals on places like itch to help build recognition.
The Interactive Fiction Database - IF and Text Adventures
Put your game here when you have released it.
Other sites that might be useful—just things I looked at before:
I posted here and it wasn’t taken down. Perhaps useful if you have a sci-fi or fantasy game.
Since Green was partly inspired by Warhammer, among other things, I posted here. It wasn’t taken down, which is something.
Another place for a devlog, but it will be challenging to get interest for an IF.
Discord: various groups, perhaps especially those tied to various ‘fandoms.’
Play@Yog-Sothoth- For those dealing with the intricacies of the Mythos (Cthulhu).
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You mistyped the link. It leads to some weird website. Fix it. 
Devlogs don’t usually get me a lot of views. Low hundreds is about typical for me. Maybe other folks might have better luck.
Done
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(That was a bad one 
)
A slow process that may never reach a ‘tipping point’ for sure. There’ll always be an exception to the rule; I’m just hopelessly considering things we can try at our end. At best, for most of these, it is just trying to put the word in a few more mouths.
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Sooo is it really worth putting a “demo” up for HG promotion (before or after publishing) on itch? I figured given they’re paid games referring off site they wouldn’t get much traction. Possibly as a WIP…
Apart from my actual comp entries, I usually get very minimal in the way of engagement back on itch, but that could just be me. Sometimes something random pops up like someone will add a game to a list they’re curating and it bumps up the views (or an “I have no idea why” happens), but often it’s just a steady lower level tick along of plays with few comments.
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I am utterly sporadic with these things. Perhaps having a sustained interest helps; posting in various places and funnelling a few more views to a central point could see an uptick or be an exercise in expending energy for little gain.
With Green, I had a little bit of interest on Itch. Not this time.
If there is time and the inclination, it surely couldn’t be a detriment?
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In my experience, itch can potentially get you a lot of views, but it requires you to be popular before it makes you popular, since you need high traffic to ascend the Popular and New and Popular categories, where people browse for games.
Scarlet Sorceress had 1.3k views from itch in its first month, but it took 3.2k views from this forum to drive the game up the critical New and Popular rankings, where people on itch could see it. (first month stats, I can share current stats on request.)
Collections are actually another useful way to get views, if you can get folks to add you to a popular collection. Scarlet Sorceress actually got a good bit of traffic from collections, and one member of this forum in particular got the game a lot of traffic when she added it to her collection back during release, even up to today. (I’m very grateful, of course. 
)
Getting engagement (comments) on itch is tough though. It can be good for getting traffic, but I’m not sure how well this traffic will convert to a paying audience. Anyway, just what I’ve noticed.
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Thanks, I know you’ve been swimming in the itchy waters for a while. This is very useful info. Who knows what might come of it if you continue on course?
Truth of the world, my friend.
The collections thing is very interesting. I wonder if various Steam groupings help towards a few more sales. Actually, I’ll add a note on collections to my little list.
I have noticed that having a title mentioned on the HG Reddit often correlates with an apparent bump in sales. As for anything else, I’d like to find out.
EDIT: @ChanceOfFire You’ve got my mistyped dodgy link in your quote. Be better to edit it out… It can be a ghost only alluded to but never seen.
Pow!!!
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I assume it will convert to an increase in audience who’s annoyed it isn’t free, at least.
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I’ve promoted my WIP on Play@Yog-Sothoth, a play-by-post forum for Call of Cthulhu (and similar) RPGs. I’ve been there for almost twenty years, and I’ve been an admin there for a very long time. Players in the games I run there enjoy my writing, so they’re likely to want more of it. I also promote it on various Discord servers I’m on that allow self-promotion in specific channels, which has worked out very well. August Hahn on the Lone Wolf server has recommended it and said the prologue was excellent, which goes a long way,
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I do not much understand Itch’s algorithms. I just put a short little Twine game up for Engine Jam and it hit some “new and popular” lists when it only had a few views. Still only has 24 plays a week later (not unexpected for a quick little jam story).
My main WIP has ofc been doing a lot better there and I think it was worth putting it up. It’s not like it requires a ton of extra work and maintenance, and it’s a nice home page to direct people to who aren’t as familiar with CoGDemos.
idk if this is helpful to anyone but you can see here what the most effective tags have been for this particular game. It’s not like an internet breaking WIP or anything but it has consistent traffic
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It was one of your comments the other day that prompted me to reanimate this thread. You spoke about promoting your game, something like that.
Sounds like an amazing foundation—and of course, reviews and shoutouts! That is, if we can get them. Cthullu, I imagine, has a very firm and deep interest in the dark corners.
Discord! Ok, I’ll add that to this list. Never got the hang of it.
Edit: I’ll add Play@Yog-Sothoth too. Something worth exploring for many reasons…
That’s really helpful to many people, including me. It’s interesting that text-based does, indeed, have a pull of its own among medieval and all-powerful romance.
EDIT: I’ve added text-based and romance to mine now 
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That is a lot of google searches. 
Highest I ever got was 400+ after MCU’s Scarlet Witch,
It happens. Quite a number of my short and crappy VNs hit some New and Popular categories while capping out at maybe 200-500 views, but Scarlet Sorceress was up there for quite a few days. Dragon of Steelthorne: War Sky, actually topped the popular list under choicescript momentarily, which I suppose was a glitch with the algorithm.
I’m not sure how it really works. (itch keeps the algorithm a secret, of course.) I believe the Popular category also gives more weight to recent views, to prevent old games with a lot of views from hogging the spots forever.
Now I’m really thinking I’m long overdue to create a tumblr account.
That sounds useful. Definitely a great way to get extra interest off these forums.
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Mine are nothing if not consistent at the moment in the search list report 
Tags:
Games-mermaid
Free-mermaid
Interactive fiction-mermaid
Platform/mobile/web-mermaid
(By the way, what on earth is going on with your google searches?? And I’ll have to add text-based from the looks of it to my tag list.)
Edit- Ironically Nereid’s not even up on itch so that’s not what’s driving it. it’s just mermaid seems to be a popular search term.
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Beats me 
my best guess is the game comes up with certain GoT related searches but I really don’t know
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Would you say having project names that can be pinged through other media is more of a help or of a hindrance? On one hand, engangement, but does it actually last? Does it result in more word-of-the-mouth or fans?
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Honestly? If all you’re doing is relying on your game’s name to promote it through random pings, it’s probably doomed to failure. Making it clear what it’s about can help with algorithmns. Original names can definitely help. (If you pick something generic or something that is already the name of a massively popular game) it’s probably going to get buried in any searches anyway. If you’re talking HG, your main path is always going to be how many people pick the game up and rate it well in release week via the mailing list. Name variations are probably a minor factor.
Edit- What you’re seeing on the itch readouts is also taking into account tags. So the reason why I have so many searches with mermaid in them, is not because the title has mermaid, it’s because I’ve tagged the game as having mermaids (or similar creatures) in it.
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We can help each other. I am pretty active on Facebook, X, Youtube, Mastodon, Bluesky. So if You are posting about Your games there, I can like/follow/sub/comment/repost (on Facebook and Youtube, with some friends).
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That’s great, Adeptus, true community support. No matter what we do, this is probably the key to everything else. Cheers.