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You are working on an indie game that's fun to play, now how do you get the word out?  Here are a few ideas you can try to help get some exposure.

You may have heard or taken part in some silly holidays already, such as "Talk like a Pirate Day" on Sept 19th, or "May the 4th be with you" for Star Wars.  Silly events like these are happening every day, and they can be a great opportunity to get exposure for your game.  So how can you use them?

Create footage of your game characters celebrating these holidays in silly and fun ways.  Start with events that match the theme of your game.  For example, if you are making a cooking game then food based holidays like "Carrot Cake Day", "Gumdrop Day", and "Dentist's Day" are pretty sweet.  But unrelated holidays can work just as well, show your hero sleeping somewhere funny for "Napping Day", or without pants for "No Pants Day".

Then share your fun creations on Twitter/Instagram using the holiday hashtags.  Facebook groups related to the holidays can also be great audiences, as could certain forums, discord channels and other communities.

Similar to silly holidays, you can leverage popular events and news stories to get exposure for your game.  Your current interests are a great place to start, and they probably have some good opportunities if you seek them out =)

For example, if you love space exploration you can create content based on NASA missions.  Here is what a cookie company did: when the Mars rover landed Oreo tweeted "We come in peace.  With Oreo cookies", along with a picture of a red Oreo.  Or if you love sports perhaps you can recreate a historic moment with your game assets.  The Guardian does this, having a section of there website dedicated to recreating sports moments in Lego.

When people think of making tutorials based on their game, they often think about the programming side, but this is only useful to other game programmers.  If you want this to be a marketing opportunity, aim to reach a wider audience by covering more topics.

For example you can make art and design tutorials.  Show how you create your pixel art, how you make animations, or how you design your user interface.  Another example would be to write about the tools you use.  Share how you setup Aseprite/Photoshop for 2D graphics.  Write about how your team works remotely with Slack/Discord.  Or how you planned your game out using Trello.  People love to hear tips and tricks for their favorite programs.

And the important step here, once you have finished your article, promote it!  If you wrote a guide on creating pixel art or using Aseprite, share it on Pixel Joint, Pixelation and other design communities.  If you wrote about remote work or project management, share it with startup/entrepreneurship communities.  This goes for programming tutorials as well, if you wrote an article about dungeon generation, share it with roguelike communities.


That's all for this article, hope this gives you a few new ideas to market your next indie game =)