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How to Launch an Indie Game: Week-by-Week Timeline

By Lauren "Celeste" Rousell · November 3, 2026 · 10 min read

To launch an indie game, start planning 6-12 months out: build your Steam page and vertical slice first, market steadily through the wishlisting window, freeze content a month before release, and patch fast in week one. This guide sequences every phase into a single chronological checklist your tiny crew can run on one task board, from T-12 months to post-launch.

How far ahead should you start planning an indie game launch?

Work backwards from release day and start 6-12 months out. That runway exists because three dates gate everything: when your vertical slice or demo is ready enough to show publicly, when your Steam page can go live, and any festival deadline you're targeting for wishlists.

The three dates that set your timeline

Steam page approval and store review add lead time you can't compress, so check the Steamworks documentation on store page setup and review before you commit to a date. Demo readiness usually comes first: you can't drive traffic to a page without something to show. Festival deadlines then anchor your demo milestone.

What to do if you have less than 6 months

Cut scope, not steps. Skip festivals, keep the Steam page, and sequence what's left on a board your whole tiny crew can see. Inferno is free to use and built for a 2-8 person crew.

What do you do 9-12 months before launch?

Freeze the scope and cut the backlog

Nine to twelve months out, the vertical slice should be playable, and that slice defines what ships. Walk the backlog and cut anything that isn't load-bearing: features that don't show up in the first hour, systems the slice proved you can live without. Scope creep kills more indie launches than bugs do, and the cheapest moment to cut is before the milestone is scheduled. Write the freeze down as a list of what's in, so when a cool idea shows up in month four, the answer is "patch or DLC." If you haven't built a slice yet, vertical slice planning is the place to start.

Steam page setup: assets, copy, and the review queue

Create the Steam page now, even if the trailer is rough. Valve's review process takes days, not minutes, and you'll want time for capsule art iterations and copy passes. A live page also lets you start wishlisting, which feeds your launch-day visibility. Ship a placeholder trailer first; replace it later.

Board setup: launch phases as columns

Set up the production board that will carry you to release day. On a tool like Inferno, that means columns for each launch phase: slice polish, content production, Steam assets, marketing, beta, launch. Give every task a discipline (art, code, audio, design) and a due date, so a tiny crew can see at a glance whose pipeline is the bottleneck. Honest self-assessment: a board is only as good as the Friday ritual of updating it, and no tool fixes a crew that stops triaging. If you're still juggling Trello, Discord pins, and a docs folder, consolidate now, six months before the crunch, not during it.

What do you do 6-9 months out?

Build the demo and pick your festivals

Scope the demo as a vertical slice: one polished loop, 15-30 minutes, cut from your backlog rather than bolted on. Enter Steam festivals and indie showcases that fit your genre, and treat each deadline as a milestone your whole crew plans around.

Steam Next Fest timing and wishlists

Valve's Next Fest rules require a playable demo and set the registration window months ahead, so slot registration into your board now. Wishlists earned during Next Fest feed your launch algorithm, so every demo build should end with a wishlist prompt. Sequence demo polish, page updates, and trailer cuts as sprints, not a pile of cards.

Press kit and content creator outreach list

Build a press kit with trailer, screenshots, GIFs, and a factsheet, and keep it in your shared workspace alongside the outreach list. Log each contact as a task with a follow-up date. Contact details are personal data, so keep the list to people who have a reason to hear from you; our privacy policy explains how data in your board is handled.

What do you do 3-6 months out?

This window is where the launch gets real: beta builds go out, the trailer gets cut, and pricing and store page decisions lock in.

Closed beta and playtest builds

Get a playable vertical slice or near-final build into outside hands. Recruit 10-30 playtesters from your Discord or mailing list, ship builds on a fixed cadence, and log every piece of feedback against a card on your backlog so scope creep stays visible. Watch what testers do, not what they say.

Trailer: cut it, test it, cut it again

Your trailer is 60-90 seconds of your best moments, front-loaded into the first 10 seconds. Cut three versions, show each to people outside your crew, and keep whichever one makes strangers wishlist the game. Budget two full iterations; the first cut is never the ship cut.

Pricing, launch discount, and store page polish

Pick a launch price, plan a launch-week discount, and rewrite your Steam page copy around what players actually do in the game. Sequence all of it on one board so the trailer deadline, beta feedback triage, and page assets don't collide mid-milestone. We built Inferno for exactly this kind of multi-discipline push, and honest shortcoming: it has no built-in playtester feedback collection, so you'll pipe that in from Discord.

What do you do in the final month before release?

The last month is a countdown, not a sprint: lock the build, send review keys, schedule comms, and freeze scope. Everything here runs on one kanban board split into three lanes.

Review keys and embargo dates

Contact press and creators two to three weeks out, track each one as a card with a send date and embargo time, and move cards across the board as keys go out. If a card has no embargo date by launch week, it is not a review, it is a wish.

Day-one patch and the launch-day bug triage lane

Name one person build owner and freeze feature work a week out. Create a triage lane with three columns: crash, blocks ship, patch later. Anything in the first two columns gets fixed before the day-one build goes gold; the third column becomes your first post-launch patch backlog.

Launch week comms schedule

Map every post and announcement, Steam news blurb, Discord message, and social push, onto dated cards the moment the date is locked. Assign an owner to each so nobody discovers at 11 PM that the trailer never went up. Keep what you promised reviewers and platforms visible on the board, so the tiny crew is working from one shared truth, not memory.

What happens on launch day and the first week after?

Launch morning, check the store page first: price, trailer, screenshots, and the "coming soon" conversion. Wishlists convert to sales at a rate you can track in your dashboard, and the Steamworks documentation on wishlists explains how that data flows. Assign one person to own the page; everyone else stays on the build.

The first 48 hours

Watch three channels in shifts: reviews, Discord, and your bug board. Stream or co-stream if you can, because early visibility compounds. Log every report as a card with a repro step, even if it's one line. Sleep in rotation, not all at once.

Triage: what gets patched first

Crashes and save corruption ship first, always. Progress blockers next, cosmetic bugs last. Cut one small patch within 72 hours so players see the crew is awake, then hold everything else for a planned update.

How do you handle post-launch patching and updates?

Patch cadence and public roadmaps

Weeks 2-8 are triage. Pull every bug report, review complaint, and Discord thread into your backlog, then sort by how many players hit the issue, not by who reported loudest. Ship one patch every two weeks in this window: a fixed cadence beats reacting to each crash the night it appears. Put a short public roadmap on your Steam page listing what's coming and what you're choosing not to fix, so scope creep doesn't eat the whole crew.

When to start the next project

Once patch volume drops for two consecutive weeks, the build is stable enough to hand off. Keep one person on maintenance duty and let the rest start a vertical slice for the next game. If your board still has more open items than closed ones after two months, that's a signal the first game needs more support before you split focus.

Which task board should a tiny crew run the launch on?

Criteria: what a launch board needs

A launch board must hold milestone dates, a vertical slice checklist, patch tasks after ship, and your marketing beats, including the Steam discount windows Valve documents in the Steamworks docs. Chat, docs, and kanban in one place beats stitching three tools.

How the tools compare

For a closer look, see how Inferno compares with Codecks, HacknPlan, and Trello.

Where Inferno falls short

Honest scoring against our own criteria: Inferno has no built-in wishlist analytics, no Perforce support, and no Steam-specific discount reminders. It does link GitHub commits to tasks, so a commit that mentions a task code like INF-12 shows up on that task, but that only helps if your code lives on GitHub. Codecks' chat-like updates are faster for distributed teams, and HacknPlan's production reports run deeper. If those gaps matter most, pick the tool that covers them; the board matters less than running the sequence.

How do you sequence launch tasks so nothing slips?

Dependencies and the critical path

Most launch slips are dependency slips. A vertical slice needs the build stable, the build needs the milestone scope locked, and the scope needs someone to cut features. Write those chains down where the whole crew can see them, so the critical path is visible. If Steam page copy depends on final key art, say so on the card, not in someone's memory.

The weekly launch ritual

Run one async ritual: every Monday, each discipline (Design, Art, Code, Audio) posts what ships this week and what's blocked. The lead reads the board, resolves blockers, and cuts scope where the critical path is slipping. That single pass replaces standups and keeps a tiny crew aligned across time zones without meetings.

FAQ

How much does it cost to launch an indie game on Steam?

The Steam Direct fee is $100 per game, refundable once you hit $1,000 in adjusted revenue. Beyond that, costs vary wildly: capsule art, trailer editing, and festival submissions can run from nearly nothing if you DIY to several thousand if you outsource. Budget for a launch discount too, since that's a revenue cut rather than a fee.

Should I launch my indie game in Early Access or full release?

Choose Early Access if your core loop is fun but content is thin, and player feedback will genuinely shape development. Choose full release if the game is complete and you'd rather spend your wishlist momentum on one big visibility spike. Early Access spreads that spike across multiple events, which can work well for longer development cycles.

How many wishlists do you need before launching an indie game?

There's no magic number, but more wishlists feed stronger launch visibility on Steam, since the algorithm rewards early sales velocity. A common indie benchmark is several thousand before launch day. Track your conversion rate in your Steamworks dashboard rather than chasing a fixed figure, because conversion varies by genre, price, and how warm your audience is.

What is the best day of the week to release an indie game?

Most indies launch Tuesday through Thursday, leaving the week open to patch problems and respond to players before the weekend. Avoid launching the same day as a major release in your genre, and check Steam's seasonal sale calendar so your launch window isn't swallowed by a festival. Consistency with your comms schedule matters more than the exact day.

Do I need a publisher to launch an indie game?

No. Plenty of two-person crews self-publish on Steam and run the whole sequence themselves: page, demo, festivals, beta, launch, patches. A publisher buys you funding, marketing reach, and platform relationships in exchange for revenue share and creative control. Consider one only if you lack time, money, or audience, not because self-publishing is impossible.