Case Study: How DREADMOOR Reached 200,000+ Wishlists and Where They Came From

Irene Borodina, CMO of Digital Vortex Entertainment, explained how wishlists for the new game DREADMOOR were specifically generated in her column for Game World Observer.

Irene Borodina

We hit 200,000 wishlists on DREADMOOR and decided to break down exactly what got us there.

The most interesting part: we achieved most of this growth without “big marketing guns.” No massive budgets, no large-scale ad campaigns, and no demo release at festivals like Steam Next Fest.

The hype around the project started back in April 2025 after the announcement. We began working with Dream Dock in autumn 2025, at which point the game already had around 70,000 wishlists, built on nothing but an idea and an atmosphere. Over the following months, we tripled that number. Here’s how.

Spike #1, January 2026. First closed playtest (+4,000 in one week)

The playtest was primarily a technical milestone for us: gather initial feedback and test gameplay hypotheses. It also became an important signal for the audience: “the game is real.” After the announcement, theories had started circulating that the game was fake. The playtest shut that down quickly.

From a marketing perspective, we did almost nothing: just our own social media and a little UA. And yet, +4,000 wishlists in one week.

Spike #2, February 2026. Gameplay trailer at IGN Fan Fest (+44,000 in one month)

IGN Fan Fest is a free online showcase with a selection process. We got in with a Gameplay Trailer.

At that point, the game didn’t have a lot of content yet, so the main goal wasn’t to show scale but to convey the atmosphere and vibe of the project as clearly as possible. And it worked.

At the start of the festival, we had around 88,000 wishlists.

But the showcase itself was only part of the story. In parallel, we:

sent the trailer to vertical content creators;
ran a press outreach campaign;
actively supported the release on social media (one Reel, for example, got almost 300K views);
bought a little additional traffic.

In the end, all of this came together in a snowball effect and brought in more than 44,000 wishlists in one month. In March, we kept the momentum going with participation in GDC 2026, picking up coverage from a fairly large number of indie outlets and making first contact with IGN.

Spike #3, April 2026. First big hit from our own vertical content and IGN preview (+13,000 in one week)

At some point, the algorithms finally “got a taste” of our content. Several videos went off simultaneously on TikTok and Reels, accumulating around one million impressions combined.

Important: there was no news hook behind this. No trailer, no announcement, no event. Just the team’s regular content work. And this is probably one of the most important takeaways from this case: algorithms rarely reward you immediately. But if you post consistently, the chances of catching a wave increase dramatically. After this spike, new videos started getting picked up by the platforms noticeably more readily.

The IGN feature also played its part, following a journalist’s visit to our booth at PAX East, where we brought a fresh build of the game.

Spike #4, April 2026. Posts from IndieGameJoe (+25,000 in one week)

IndieGameJoe’s influence is already the stuff of legend among indie developers, and now it was our turn to experience it firsthand.

We simply reached out to Joe directly, showed him the project, he liked it, and we agreed on some posts. To answer the obvious question upfront: it was free.

He published DREADMOOR on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Within the first 24 hours, the posts accumulated more than 2.5 million views combined.

10,000 wishlists in the first day;
more than 25,000 in one week.

Spike #5, May 2026. Unexpected viral trailer on Indie Games Hub (+17,000 in one week)

The most chaotic spike of all.

The Indie Games Hub channel posted our old announcement trailer without warning and it unexpectedly went viral with 150,000+ views, well above the channel’s usual numbers.

Even old content can suddenly take off if the game has already started building recognition.

All of these major spikes are now beginning to work in synergy with each other.

The project has stabilised at an organic inflow of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 wishlists per day.

Major accounts like Dexerto, ClemmyGames, and others continue to write about the game periodically, and our vertical content now picks up hundreds of thousands of views far more often.

Key Takeaways

DREADMOOR has a very strong core hook. The concept of “DREDGE, but with a different angle and its own atmosphere” is instantly readable to the audience and triggers an emotional response.
Atmosphere sells just as well as gameplay. Many of the videos and trailers worked purely on mood, tension, and vibe, and that alone was enough to get people to add the game to their wishlist.
Consistency on social media is critical. Most of the “viral moments” happened not because we did something magical, but because we posted content consistently and systematically over a long period of time.
Vertical content is currently one of the most powerful sources of organic growth for indie games.
Events still work extremely well, as long as you don’t limit yourself to just showing up but amplify the moment with distribution, social media, and influencers.
One right influencer can deliver results comparable to a large ad campaign.
Wishlists don’t grow linearly. For a long time it can feel like “nothing is happening,” and then several news hooks start reinforcing each other and growth accelerates sharply.
And yes, IndieGameJoe is a machine.