XenoFeels: Steam Next Fest results

Hey, xenophiles! Mota here, which means you can expect a few more letters than usual, and even a few numbers!

The summer Steam demo festival has concluded. To say that Kota and I are shocked by the results would be an understatement.

We published the XenoFeels Steam page on June 1st. We wanted to release the demo at least a few days before the festival, but even with severe crunch, we only managed to do it the night before NextFest. Honestly, we were so exhausted from development and testing that we didn't expect anything at all. The very fact that we managed to release two demos in time for the festival, despite all the difficulties, was already a great achievement for us. If even a few people play them, well, that's not bad. It means our efforts weren't in vain!

At the start of the festival, XenoFeels had around 35,000 wishlists. Our subscribers provided tremendous support: those who have been following the studio since the first game, Kota`s New Journey, and even earlier, since the comics and art days. These people greatly helped boost the game before the festival, and many supported us with donations on Patreon and Boosty – this essentially made the development of XenoFeels and Kotamon possible.

Be that as it may, compared to the giants with hundreds of thousands of wishlists—hyped games, expensive triple-I projects whose trailers cost more than our entire development—XenoFeels looked like a tiny boat in a tanker port. But that was okay with us: we didn't plan to compete with these titans. Our goal was (and is) to make a small but fun game that would be fun to play over a beer, have a good laugh, explore references, and maybe even a plot. A little horny, of course (you know us).

Apparently, people wanted the same game. We still don't understand what happened (it's a long way from the Christmas miracle, and we didn't see any lamps with genies), but suddenly a ton of people started playing the demo. And not just playing: they started streaming and recommending it to their friends, subscribers, and, apparently, even strangers on the street.

Within a few days of the festival, we were already in the top 10 trending upcoming games... and still growing! Online usage grew from 300 to 700, and at its peak, it exceeded 1,000 users. The median gameplay time was 36 minutes (which is essentially the length of the entire demo). Kota and I don't know what that means, but smart people told us it's pretty cool.

A few days before the festival ended, our moment of glory arrived – for a day, we became top-1 in the trending upcoming category. It was a total shock!

In Steam's summary of the Festival, XenoFeels was one of the most popular and wishlisted demos of the event. Steam even sent us a letter! When we save up for a printer, we'll print it out and frame it.

What about wishlists? Over the course of the festival week, we earned over 136,000 wishlists, up from the 35,000 we had before—that's around 170,000+ wishlists. We're not going to lie, we've never seen numbers like that before.

But that's not all! The fest's aftermath was so long and powerful that on July 1st, exactly a month after the page's release, XenoFeels surpassed 300,000 wishlists! Needless to say, all the nearby bars and stores ran out of beer that day. At one point, our game was among the top five in wishlist activity.

Since the demo's release, we've been watching a lot of streams and videos about the game. It's incredibly inspiring to see people laughing at our jokes and reacting to our creativity. We also monitor what could use some improvement, and what's working just fine. Thanks to streamers, we've even found a few less-obvious bugs.

As of this post's publication, XenoFeels has 350,110 wishlists. On the one hand, for a micro-studio like ours, this is simply indescribably awesome. On the other hand, it's a huge responsibility. Literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world are waiting for our game. Therefore, we are obliged to justify their trust – expand the team by 10, or better yet, 100 people, add an immersive sim, at least 50 hours of gameplay, and extend the development time to 2-3 years…

Just kidding. We'll stay true to the team's and the project's original vision. We'll try to release the full version soon... and we hope you'll like it as much as the demo!