Hey guys! Who’s up for more story time?
We have one for you: together with Homo Narrans Studio, we released Casebook 1899 on September 4, which happened to be the same day as the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong.
When that release date was announced, the indie dev community went into a bit of a frenzy. Developers and publishers were quickly shuffling their launch dates around, trying to avoid getting lost in the Silksong hype and secure the best visibility for their own games. Of course, we can't deny that many of us were also looking forward to playing it ourselves on day one.
When Silksong’s launch was announced, we considered delaying the release of our own game, but after internal discussion, we decided to stick to our guns. Were we crazy? What was the big idea?
Our Decision to Stay the Course
The decision to launch the game alongside Silksong didn't come lightly. There were several factors we had to consider before we were confident about staying the course.
For one, the audience for a German-voiced point-and-click detective game is very different from Silksong's. Sure, there's some overlap if you were to draw a Venn diagram; players who love rich stories and multiple endings might enjoy both, but we felt confident we'd still reach our core audience. After all, gamers don't just play one type of game.
We were also concerned about capturing the attention of influencers and press. With Silksong being such a highly anticipated release, there was no guarantee they'd choose to cover Casebook 1899 over Silksong. That said, we knew that many press outlets and content creators would be looking for alternative titles to cover, especially those hunting for something unique to stand out from the flood of Silksong content. To capitalise on this, we focused specifically on niche outlets and PC-focused communities in Germany, reaching out to them early to build excitement before announcing our release date. The goal was to get them invested in Casebook 1899 well before we informed them of the release date.
Many would see this as a bold move, but we believed that launching on the same day would actually get us more eyeballs. In our head, once Silksong was live across all platforms, the sheer spike in traffic on Steam would help boost our game’s visibility. More people browsing, more chances for discovery. Instead of competing directly for coverage, we'd benefit from the increased activity around launch day.
The Outcome
Casebook 1899 saw strong sales at launch, with English and German audiences leading the way. Even better, several media outlets featured the game in articles specifically highlighting releases launching alongside Silksong. This kind of coverage wouldn't have happened if we'd deviated from our original plan.
On the influencer side, we didn't see as many ‘variety’ or ‘general’ streamers playing the game. With Silksong finally out, they were understandably focused on the game everyone had been waiting for a long time. However, we were delighted to see strong coverage from niche streamers, which turned out to be more valuable than broad coverage, because we managed to connect Casebook 1899 with audiences who were genuinely interested in what our game had to offer.
Unfortunately, Steam went down for a few hours during Silksong's launch due to the massive influx of traffic. This was our biggest challenge on launch day; we lost roughly three hours of potential traffic that would have otherwise come our way. It was frustrating timing, but honestly, there wasn't much we could do about it except wait for the servers to come back online. The only bump along the road in our strategy.
Ultimately, notwithstanding the Steam downtime, our launch was a success. It was a ballsy move to stick to our guns and release on the same day as Silksong, but it paid off! If we'd moved the date to avoid the competition, we would have been fighting against similar titles with far less visibility after the September 4 spike had passed. More importantly, we built stronger connections with our niche audience, which is exactly what matters most when you're making a niche game. All in all, we're glad we took the risk!
If you’d like to speak with us about launch strategies for your indie game, we’re all ears! Come and say hello.