What happens when Game Jolt feature your game and a big Youtuber finds it? Here I will try to show all the stats and give some tips for indie developers so they can increase their userbase!

Remember, this is my 'case'! I'm only spreading my story here!

First of all, I will speak a little about me.

Hi! My name is Rodolfo and I'm a game developer from Brazil.

In August of 2015 I participated in a Game Jam / Competition hosted on the forum GameDev.net, I had 7 days to create a game with the theme "death is useful". I ended up with my little game Try. Die. Repeat. and I won the first place \o/

At the 7th day of the game jam, I published my game on Game Jolt, after that it went crazy! it was on the home page all the day and I started to receive a lot of feedbacks, videos, ratings, everything... I was really happy because all the feedback was very positive! with it, I started to mail a lot of Youtubers about the game, etc... I tried to find channels which the game could fit.

Image: Initial days after put it on Game Jolt

One big Youtuber from Brazil (3 million subs) answered my email and played it! after that, a bunch of smaller Youtubers tried it too. It gave a good boost on the Game Jolt page and on the IndieDB page.

Almost 2 months after the release on the Game Jolt, Pewdiepie played it, I think he found it in his forum, because I posted it there and it received a lot of view / bumps... with the video the stats went crazy again! Pewdiepie didn't put the link of the game, so few people tried to play it, but my website went crazy :D

Image: month of October when Pewdiepie played the game.

After all, the Game Jolt page was getting 100 plays and the website 40 new visitors every day... then, BOOM again! Game Jolt featured the game on their Homepage and Markiplier played it, exactly 1 year after the launch.

Image: Google Trends since the launch

When I saw the video made by Markiplier I thought: "how can I get even more for this video?" because it was good! then, I put a comment on the video saying thanks to everyone who liked the game and explaining that I made the game in 7 days and I was working on the full version!

It went viral! I was answering everyone and the people was very happy because they wouldn't think a 'game developer' would spend their time answering every question asked on a youtube commentary. I think it helped and some of the people checked the game after see my commentary.

I tried it with other Youtubers (even non-English speakers) and it worked very well too! people seems to like when the dev appears to thanks then :P

I tweeted a bit and I got some good stats from it too... always using #gamedev and #indiedev.