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Over the past few months, we have been posting to Instagram (@keepers.veil) and X (@KeepersVeil) and noticed the advantages and limitations of each platform.
While we were able to gain a reasonable-sized initial following on Instagram, made up entirely of friends, family and university classmates/staff, it is difficult to find and connect with other indie developers. Whereas on X, although we have a smaller following, we have gained increasing traction with other industry personnel.
Initially, I began my networking attempts with fellow indie developers as this felt the most natural. I focused on following and liking the posts of indie devs/games that had similar themes to Keeper’s Veil, including horror games, narrative-driven games, and games set around the ocean. I hoped they would notice our games had aspects in common and so would want to check out Keeper’s Veil.
Below is an example of an interaction I had with an indie developer of a first-person horror game. I replied to a post that shared images of an asylum featured in the untitled game. I was struck by the name of this asylum, and considering Keeper’s Veil is a visual novel, I thought it would be great to comment on it; not only to imply what our game is about but also to compliment an aspect of this developer’s game that not many would have noticed.
Interaction with an Indie game developer.
My comment was received quite well and, as a result, he had followed our profile and has been liking our posts!
Correlating to each day of the week, multiple hashtags provide indie creators the opportunity to shamelessly self-promote their work. You can include these hashtags when posting on your own, or reply to larger accounts that frequently host these hashtags with the possibility of being reposted to their followers.
I found the perfect hashtag to reply to - given Keeper’s Veil’s genre - that was hosted by an author and game developer with over a thousand followers.
Replying to #TextBasedTuesday
The hashtag was ‘#TextBasedTuesday’ and encouraged indie creators to share their books or narrative-driven games. I responded with the promotional poster for Keeper’s Veil and a short description of the game, as well as a link to our Itch.io page where our prototyped Twines are available to play/read.
Interaction with a host.
Luckily, the host not only liked and commented on the reply but reposted it to his followers and followed the Keeper’s Veil account!