We spent $0 on marketing and got 20,000 wishlists
Our Diablo-inspired incremental game Horde of Distraction recently passed 20,000 wishlists. And we achieved almost all of that with barely any marketing budget.
So I thought it would be interesting to look back and understand what actually worked well… and what didn’t.
Each point includes:
- the date
- wishlist count BEFORE the event
- what happened
- 09.11.2025 (0 WL) Steam page launch
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4167640/Horde_of_Distraction/
If I could do it again, I would treat the announcement much more seriously and try to reach as many people as possible right away.
Back then, we simply launched the page and posted it in a couple of places.
- 23.12.2025 (245 WL)
Released demo on itch.io
https://static-feed.itch.io/horde-of-distraction
itch.io did not bring much traffic for us. Probably because most incremental games there have a web version, while ours only had a downloadable build. However, this site unexpectedly became a really good traffic source for our itch page: https://www.incrementaldb.com/
- 09.01.2026 (550 WL)
Idle Cub made a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5osG8xj8RY&t=939s
We never contacted him. He found the game himself on itch and decided to make a video about it. The video got over 130,000 views and brought us more than 5,000 wishlists. This was our first real traffic explosion. But moments like this are impossible to rely on as a strategy.
- 25.01.2026 (6,744 WL) Reddit post about the Idle Cub video https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1qmnbv3/our_oldschool_rpginspired_incremental_game_horde/
We realized the Idle Cub video was a perfect opportunity for a Reddit post. We shared the game on the Incremental Games subreddit and got a noticeable wishlist boost from it.
- 16.02.2026 (8,830 WL)
Steam demo release
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4407700/Horde_of_Distraction_Demo/
We released the Steam demo and sent emails to a carefully selected list of influencers. 138 relevant channels contacted. 23 of them made videos. Pretty solid conversion rate, but honestly - you need WAY more contacts. Thousands. Peak CCU on demo launch day was 159 players.
- 23.02.2026 (13,210 WL)
Steam Next Fest started
We managed to get a decent position among the top demos during Next Fest.
If we had known development would take longer, we probably would have participated in the June Next Fest rather than the February one.
- 01.05.2026 (18,775 WL)
GFR festival
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/blackbalancegames/sale/gamesfromrussia2026
We participated in the GFR festival. It gave us a solid wishlist boost. Festivals are awesome!
- 02.05.2026 (18,866 WL)
Streamer Mel discovered the game during the festival
https://www.twitch.tv/melharucos
He challenged himself to kill the boss during the very first phase and replayed the demo over 20 times in a row. More than 2,500 viewers were watching simultaneously. That day both demo CCU and wishlist growth spiked hard.
- 10.05.2026 (20,150 WL)
Started our first paid marketing campaign on Twitter/X
We began actively experimenting with paid traffic channels to acquire wishlists. Right now we’re testing Twitter/X ads. So far we’re getting wishlists for around $0.20 each (mostly Tier 1 countries). More on that another time :)
If you have any questions, feel free to ask - I’ll try to answer everything I can.