Indie Games on Instagram You Should Follow
Social media is a great way to build an audience for your indie game on a $0 budget.
There’s only one catch – you need to know how to use it right.
You may know that I provide social media management services to game developers in my spare time. I talked about three indie games on Twitter that caught my interest in particular.
The Twittersphere is where you see the most #gamedev related content. However, in recent years, more and more game developers are experimenting with Instagram.
The reasons for this aren’t hard to see.
Successful social media marketing for indie games requires offering visual content with every post. Instagram is a visual-first platform. The algorithm basically works by going “give me stuff that’s cool to look at and I’ll reward you with followers who will engage with it.”
This means is that being successful on Instagram means variety. It’s a relatively new territory for game developers and yet more and more are having success on it.
Here are a few who’ve made it happen!
Rose and Locket – A Wild West Action-Adventure Game Set in the Underworld
Let’s say Kira Ora to Rose & Locket, made by New Zealand devteam Whistling Wizard! They currently have 3,695 followers on Instagram.
Rose & Locket is a project that came to my attention a while ago when I was first learning about gamedev content on Instagram.
They’re one of the games that stand out on the platform and it’s easy to see why. The combat looks fun and exciting and the artwork is gorgeous.
Rose & Locket is an action-adventure game featuring Rose, a Wild West gunslinger who ventures into the Underworld to free the spirit of her daughter.
The game features a protagonist with a bold visual design. Cowboy hat. Pistol. High-heeled boots. Bleach white overcoat. The art and animation make me think of Samurai Jack, and I make that comparison favorably.
It’s got WiPs.
It’s got GIFs.
And it has an aesthetic that makes striking use of color and shadow. It really makes the visuals pop out.
I consider Rose & Locket to be one of the stand-outs on Instagram. They have demos available on GameJolt and Itch.Io so be sure to check them out. Give their Instagram profile a follow too.
Chip in a few dollars on Patreon while you’re at it too.
MindSeize – a Pixelart Metroidvania
I already talked about MindSeize quite a bit in my MindSeize review last March, so I won’t go into too much detail here.
I’ll just saw that they have a very sizeable following on Instagram as well as Twitter. They currently have 10.6 followers.
I’ll just recap. MindSeize is a pixelart metroidvania that’s easy on the eyes and with combat to get your blood pumping.
The animation has lots of little detail in every frame, making the character models move fluidly and seamlessly.
It has robots.
It has a cool Vaporwave soundtrack.
It has vibrant alien worlds, each with their own ecosystem of aliens and robots to slice and dice.
There were some bugs on release but the devs were on top of it in working out the kinks. Check ’em out on Steam. Plans are also being made to release MindSeize on Switch.
Guinea Pig Parkour – a Hand-Drawn 2D Platformer
Years from now, Guinea Pig Parkour will be examined as a marketing case study for how to make indie games that stand out and survive online, right alongside Slime Rancher and Sanctuary RPG. They have a whopping 15.3k followers on Instagram.
Guinea Pig Parkour is a hand-drawn 2D platformer, made by solo-developer and animator Jeff Mumm. There’s a good chance you’ve seen his Guinea Something Good series of webcomics and animated shorts floating around on the internet.
The game has been in development for the last seven years now and it’s come a long way since then.
The animations are really fun to look at. The titular guinea pig jumps, somersaults, back-flips, pole vaults, glides, slides, ducks, crawls, smooshes, squishes, and bends in every way possible to jump over obstacles.
And it’s all hand-drawn. By just. One. GUY.
Look at this animation by the way. This is some Harry Partridge levels of dedication to craft.
The game has a 90’s aesthetic that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else, certainly not in any game of recent memory.
Checkerboard, squiggly lines, zigzags. It reminds me of A Goofy Movie or Saved by the Bell. In an alternate timeline, we might have been watching Guinea Pig Parkour every Saturday morning on Nickelodeon.
Congratulations to Mr. Mumm are in order as well for his recent successful Kickstarter campaign, beating his $20,000 goal. Those who missed it are encouraged to support his Patreon.
There’s More Indie Games on Instagram Too
Those are just a few of the games that have been on my radar, but there’s all sorts of cool gamedev stuff going down on Instagram.
What games do you follow on the platform, if any? How do they stand out?
Tell me about them in the comments!
