indie-game-marketing-skills

Indie Game Skills

Agent skills for planning, developing, and auditing a small, primarily Steam-distributed indie game from concept selection through post-launch.

The repository is intentionally opinionated. It treats genre, scope, visual identity, and the trailer-worthy vertical slice as marketing decisions made before full production—not cleanup performed after the game is finished. It also treats announcements, demo launches, festivals, release-date reveals, and launch as scarce marketing beats that should be prepared and coordinated rather than allowed to pass quietly.

Skills

• plan-indie-game-marketing: build and maintain the end-to-end roadmap.
• audit-steam-store-page: audit positioning, capsules, media, tags, localization, and demo presentation.
• optimize-steam-tags: build an accurate ordered tag profile around the players of the right similar games.
• review-game-trailer: plan or review gameplay trailers and map their visual promises back to the build.
• develop-pixel-art-games: design, implement, audit, and test the logical pixel grid, asset pipeline, effects, UI scaling, pixel fonts, accessibility mode, and cross-platform presentation of a pixel-art game.

The lifecycle planner also covers base and regional pricing, early game and store-page localization, Steam's Personal Calendar and launch visibility, an official game site with a downloadable press kit, an itch.io demo, and a browser playtest build whose optional diagnostics feed a privacy-conscious incident database. Its social and community workflow maintains concrete, dated distribution opportunities—such as named Discord showcase channels, Reddit events, and recurring social pitches—alongside platform strategy and measurement.

The planner also covers sending finished trailers to trailer-hosting outlets such as IGN, GameTrailers and Indie Games Hub, including a dated contact list, non-exclusive reposting, and negotiated premieres that preserve the Steam-page trailer.

Install the skills

Clone this repository somewhere that will remain on the machine:

git clone https://github.com/GarrettPetersen/indie-game-marketing-skills.git /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills

Each directory under skills/ is an independent skill. Link the individual skill directories, not the repository root.

Use them in one game repository

For one game, link them into that game's .agents/skills directory:

cd /absolute/path/to/game
mkdir -p .agents/skills
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/plan-indie-game-marketing .agents/skills/plan-indie-game-marketing
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/audit-steam-store-page .agents/skills/audit-steam-store-page
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/optimize-steam-tags .agents/skills/optimize-steam-tags
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/review-game-trailer .agents/skills/review-game-trailer
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/develop-pixel-art-games .agents/skills/develop-pixel-art-games

This is the preferred scope when the skills should apply only while working on that game. Absolute symlinks are local machine configuration; do not commit them to the game repository unless every collaborator intentionally uses the same checkout layout. A team that wants versioned installation should vendor or submodule this repository instead.

Use them for every project

To make the skills available globally in Codex, link them into the user's Codex skills directory:

mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/plan-indie-game-marketing ~/.codex/skills/plan-indie-game-marketing
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/audit-steam-store-page ~/.codex/skills/audit-steam-store-page
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/optimize-steam-tags ~/.codex/skills/optimize-steam-tags
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/review-game-trailer ~/.codex/skills/review-game-trailer
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills/skills/develop-pixel-art-games ~/.codex/skills/develop-pixel-art-games

Do not install the same skill at both scopes. Project-local skills take context with the game; global skills are more convenient when working across several games. After adding the links, start the next Codex turn or task so skill discovery refreshes.

Because these are symlinks, updating the clone updates the installed skills:

git -C /absolute/path/to/indie-game-marketing-skills pull --ff-only

Use the skills

Mention a skill explicitly when you want a particular workflow:

• $plan-indie-game-marketing for a full roadmap, marketing calendar, next action, pricing decision, localization plan, demo strategy, festivals, creator outreach, or launch preparation;
• $audit-steam-store-page for a publish-readiness or conversion audit of an upcoming or live Steam page;
• $optimize-steam-tags for tag ordering, comparable-game research, Tag Wizard diagnosis, or fixing the public similar-game neighborhood; and
• $review-game-trailer for a trailer concept, shot plan, timecoded review, or revision plan using authentic gameplay; and
• $develop-pixel-art-games for logical-grid architecture, mixel audits, sprite and effect scaling, pixel-font failures, cross-platform rasterization, accessibility-mode separation, or pixel-presentation release checks.

Codex may also select them automatically when a request clearly matches their descriptions. Give it the game repository, current stage, intended date, known deadlines, store URL, and available evidence. It should ask only for missing facts that affect the next decision.

These skills plan, audit, organize, and implement internal work. They do not grant permission to publish a page, send outreach, submit a form, release a demo, or launch a game. Codex must obtain explicit confirmation immediately before an external action.

Repository layout

• skills/*/SKILL.md contains each skill's entry instructions.
• skills/*/references/ contains detailed workflows loaded only when relevant.
• skills/*/agents/openai.yaml contains Codex-facing display metadata.
• SOURCES.md records which conclusions come from official rules, practitioner guidance, or firsthand project evidence.

Human-authorship policy

These skills must not author original public-facing marketing copy or generative key art. The agent asks the developer for the exact source-language words that will reach players, press, creators, or platform reviewers. It may organize approved words, transcribe human speech, insert verified factual fields into a human-written template, and flag errors, but it must not quietly rewrite the developer into an artificial marketing voice.

AI-assisted translation is a deliberate exception. An agent may faithfully translate exact human-authored source text so the game, Steam page, website, and assets containing text can launch in priority languages instead of waiting for a later localization budget. It must preserve claims and voice, track the machine-translated status internally, run localization QA, and route the highest-impact text to a native editor when feasible. This exception permits translation, not invention or synthetic localization-specific marketing copy.

Steam capsule art and other key art must be made by a human developer or artist, or commissioned from one. Agents may audit, crop, resize, export, and assemble supplied human-made layers; they may not generate the underlying art.

There is also a narrow exception for non-promotional privacy, consent, and telemetry boilerplate. An agent may draft it from a verified inventory of what the product actually collects and does, but may not invent practices, omit a material fact, or use manipulative consent language. The developer must review and approve it, with qualified legal review when warranted. This exception does not apply to store copy, outreach, press releases, social posts, or any other marketing text.

Sources and limits

The workflows synthesize:

• firsthand lessons from shipping and marketing an indie Steam game;
• BiteMe Games' public development and marketing videos;
• Chris Zukowski's How To Market A Game articles and datasets; and
• current Steamworks documentation for platform rules.

Advice is labelled by source type where that distinction matters. Platform rules and dated festival requirements must be checked again at the time of use. See SOURCES.md for the initial research ledger.

This is not a promise of commercial success. It is a system for making the important decisions early, producing honest marketing evidence, and avoiding preventable launch mistakes.