Game Promotion

[CanadianGamer]

I apologize if this is in the wrong forum, but I am just wondering if anyone has tips for promoting games. I am beginning high school now and am hoping to do game dev as a career when I am older. I've released a couple games but the most downloads I've ever gotten is 70. Any tips are helpful but I'm hoping for free possibilities.

[davisdude]

From my experience (just observing, nothing released), trailers are huge. If you can't get a good trailer, at least got some pictures of the game up. That's a sure way to get some more people.

[ivan]

Hi, this is a tricky question.
Yes, for starters you want to make all of your art and assets stand out. And I don't mean using cheap "Silverdollar" clickbait by showing boobs in every thumbnail.
Looking at the itch.io link in your signature ( https://canadiangamer.itch.io/crossfire ) I have to say that your screenshots are not very exciting. A black image with the text "Cross Fire" just isn't very interesting. The same thing about your "Power Pong" page ( https://pentamonium-studios.itch.io/power-pong ), there's too much text and menus - you want to showcase the cool stuff in your game. Instead of writing "These power ups include a spinning square..." just show me how it works in the screenshots! I should be able to look at the screens and immediately tell (without reading) what the gameplay is like (in your case animated GIFs might help). That's the easy part - making your assets and screens representative of the game.
The hard part is - making your actual game look cool. The really, really hard part is - making your gameplay cool and worthwhile so that people are going to tell their friends.
Posting your games on Greenlight for 100 bucks might get you a few thousand downloads, but are you sure you are ready for that kind of attention? People on there are going to scrutinize every little detail in your games.
The other option would be to make your games playable in the browser. Downloadable stuff is a hurdle for many people and most won't bother unless it's really something they are excited to play.