From dev to dev: tips for promoting indie games with 0 budget from Andy Sum, developer of Crossy Road

If the name Andrew Sum doesn't ring a bell, I'm sure you all heard of Crossy Road. Yeah, that's right, that Frogger-like game, the best App Store of 2014. On November 23rd the app reached 1,000,000 downloads. That's cool, I thought. But only one month later Crossy Road scored 10,000,000 downloads and also became available on Android. Of course the game is awesome, hence the great success, but there must be something else. So I reached for Andy Sum, designer and developer of Crossy Road and I got him to answer a few questions regarding the promotion of his game.

He is such a cool and relaxed guy! It was fun talking to him.

1. What's the game that makes you proud and why?

At the moment it's tough! I've released a couple of games recently, but I'll go with Crossy Road because that just came out :) It's my favourite because it was fun to work on with Matt Hall and I think it's going to reach a lot of people and be enjoyed by many. That idea of lots of people having fun excites me.

2. Can you tell us, for the developers out there, what did you do to promote it? Or give out your 3 best tips to promote their indie game with 0 budget.

One of the best ways to promote your game is to give it to YouTubers for free. People who make YouTube Let's Play videos are always interested in the latest games and they can help drive a lot of new players to download your game. It doesn't matter if they have 200 subscribers or 20,000. It all helps generate awareness for your game.

I'd also say you should jump on Twitter and connect with other developers. That's where a lot of gamedev chatter happens and it's fun and interesting to participate.

Finally, make sure you have a nice website for your game with all of the information available so that anyone who wants to write an article on your game can easily get the info as well as images that they need.

Family portrait aka the full team of Crossy Road: Ben Weatherall, Andy Sum, Matt Hall (left to right)

The road to Gaming Heaven is paved with Indie Games.
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