If you go to learn the Steam charts this week, you’ll ensure of an enormous shock: the best-selling game was little-known, stone age city-builder Dawn Of Man. It had no writer, its two-person developer was recognized just for the considerably under-the-radar colony sim Planetbase, and it hadn’t loved prior protection from any of the biggest websites or streamers. Hell, its official trailer has solely accrued 57,000 views since being uploaded in December 2018.
But there it was, a $20 strategy-management game about gathering sticks and randy goats, outselling Plunkbat, GTA 5 and DMC 5.
How might such a factor occur, in an age the place breakout hits more and more solely appear to return from massive companies?
According to Madruga Works‘ programmer and designer Martiño Figueroa (formerly of Criterion), Dawn Of Man’s rampantly profitable launch got here as a shock to the two-person developer. “We spend zero money on marketing, as we are a very small studio. So our usual strategy is to have a showable version of the game about 2-3 months before launch and send pre-release keys to press and YouTubers.”
Which I can corroborate. Madruga despatched a beta key to RPS again in December 2018, which sadly didn’t rise to the highest of our overflowing assessment code tombola on the time, however the idea caught different consideration. “This time around a few fairly large YouTubers made content about the game.”
The main participant there seems to be smooth-voiced Swede Keralis, whose first Dawn Of Man beta video, shared together with his 1.8m subscribers, racked up virtually 1,000,000 views.
Keralis launched round a dozen subsequent Dawn Of Man movies, with views starting from 400ok to 60ok – in complete, 3.four million.
