How to launch an indie mobile game: a checklist for small teams

Short answer: a good indie launch starts weeks before release. Get strangers to playtest early, polish the first five minutes, build a store listing that sells the game in two screenshots, collect a small group of people who want to play, and then concentrate your launch into one day so every post and share lands at once. After launch, keep updating and keep talking to players: most indie games grow slowly, not overnight.

6 to 8 weeks before launch: is the game ready?

• Playtest with strangers. Friends will finish your tutorial out of kindness. Strangers quit the moment it is boring, which is exactly what you need to know. Watch where they stop.
• Fix the first five minutes. Players decide fast. Cut long intros, get to the fun part quickly and teach by doing, not by reading.
• Test on cheap phones. Many players use older, low-memory Android devices. Check load times, frame rate and battery use on one.
• On Android, plan closed testing. New personal Google Play accounts need a closed test with 12 testers for 14 days before production. See our guide on getting 12 testers for Google Play.

4 weeks before: is the store listing ready?

Your store page does most of the selling. Treat it like a trailer:

• Icon: simple, readable at small size, and different from the top games in your genre.
• First two screenshots: show real gameplay and the core idea. Add a short caption on each ("Merge, build, defend").
• Short description: say what the player does and why it's fun in one sentence. Avoid "the best game ever".
• Video: 15 to 30 seconds of gameplay, starting with action in the first two seconds.
• Keywords: use the words players actually search for ("offline card game", "cozy farming") in your title and description naturally, without stuffing.

2 to 4 weeks before: who will play on day one?

You need a few hundred interested people, not a huge audience:

• Share development progress where players of your genre already are: subreddits, Discord servers, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Short clips of satisfying moments work better than announcements.
• Collect contacts. A pre-registration on Google Play, a pre-order on the App Store, a Discord server or an email list. These are the people you'll message on launch day.
• Reach out to small creators. Creators with a few thousand followers in your genre are more likely to reply, and their audiences trust them.
• List the game early on discovery sites. On TrueLaunch you can submit your game, collect honest reviews before launch and pick a launch day.

Launch day: how do I make it count?

Put everything on one day, so the attention adds up:

1. Schedule your launch on launch boards. On TrueLaunch, launch day runs midnight to midnight UTC, and games are ranked by the upvotes they get that day.
2. Message your list in the morning: what the game is, a link, and one clear ask ("try it and tell me what you think").
3. Post in the communities where you shared progress, with a short clip and a personal note. Follow each community's self-promotion rules.
4. Be present all day. Reply to every comment and review. Fix urgent bugs fast and say so.

After launch: how do I keep growing?

• Read every review and look for patterns. What three players say is probably true.
• Ship updates often, and tell players what changed because of their feedback. Updates give you new reasons to post.
• Ask for store reviews the right way: use the official in-app review prompt after a positive moment, like finishing a level. Never ask for a specific rating and never reward a rating with coins, items or anything else; both stores forbid it.
• Try small experiments with your store listing (Google Play has built-in store listing experiments) to see which icon or screenshots convert better.

What mistakes should I avoid?

• Launching with no one who knows the game exists.
• Spreading your announcement over weeks instead of one focused day.
• Buying installs, reviews or ratings. It wastes money and can get the game removed.
• Disappearing after launch. The first month of updates and replies often matters more than launch day.

Next steps

Pick your launch date, work back from it with this checklist, and get strangers playing as soon as possible. List your game on TrueLaunch to start collecting honest reviews, and read how to get honest feedback on your app to make playtesting worth it.