First-time poster here. Solo indie dev from China. My wishlists drop to zero after events. Is this normal?
Hi everyone, I'm a solo indie developer from China. I'm working on a 2D anime style Boss Rush game. This is my first game. Before this, I was a programmer for nearly 20 years, and I started working on my own game full time two years ago.
Oh, and just a heads up, English isn't my first language, so please bear with me if my grammar or something sounds weird.
I didn't know anything about Reddit until last year. I found out about this community online, and I registered an account about 4 months ago following some guide. But I didn't really understand the culture or the rules in this community, so I've just been browsing other people's posts and occasionally leaving comments. I've learned a lot about game development and marketing from being here. One thing I'm really grateful for is that someone in this community helped me fix the German description on my game's demo page.
Today I'm posting because I want to ask for some advice about my game's numbers.
Basic info about the game:
The Steam store page went up in June 2025. The first demo came out in January this year, then I updated it once in February, and the third update just came out in April.
Some marketing numbers:
In December 2025, I joined an event in China (it had a Steam promotion page). Back then I had no demo, and the capsule art and store page were pretty rough. That event got me 120 wishlists.
In April this year, I joined the same event again. This time I had a demo, and the store page and capsule art were improved. I got 270 wishlists. What's interesting is that more than 80% of those new wishlists came from outside China. But I've barely done any overseas marketing, just occasional posts on X and YouTube, and almost no one watched them.
Then right after the event ended, my wishlist growth dropped back to single digits, sometimes zero.
So I have a few specific questions for you all.
Is this normal? Is my game only being carried by event traffic, or does it have potential but just lacks daily visibility?
Why is the wishlist share from outside China higher when I haven't done any promotion overseas? I checked and now over 70% of my total wishlists are from outside China. Is my game type (anime Boss Rush) just more appealing to overseas players naturally, or is there another reason?
What should I focus on next? Keep polishing the demo and store page, or try to get more daily visibility (like ads, streamers, etc.)?
Has anyone been in a similar situation or have any advice to share? Of course, if anyone has feedback on my actual game, I'd love to hear that too.
Oh, one more thing. If anyone has any questions about the Chinese indie game market (like platforms, marketing, that kind of stuff), I can share what I know. This community has helped me a lot, and I'm really grateful. I'd love to give something back if I can.
Thanks everyone.