Before launch : a SAS that took its time
À la Mine launched on March 30, 2026 on Steam. But that date had been set twice before. Two delays, one month each. And it wasn’t the game that was blocking us. It was the paperwork.
To carry the game, we needed a structure : Studio Dés Kréatifs. A SAS (a French limited company), with a slightly unusual setup that demanded to be handled cleanly (drafting bylaws, filing with the registrar, post-incorporation operations). We wanted to do things in the right order, no shortcuts, because we knew we’d be living with this entity for years.
We approached a classic business creation support firm, then one specialized in video games. Both listened, helped us structure our case, and made serious proposals. Except their quotes came back at twice our budget projections every time. And not just on the incorporation itself, on the ongoing management too. We knew À la Mine wasn’t going to be a hit big enough to absorb that level of fees. Starting at a loss like that, off the bat, wasn’t sustainable.
The most frustrating thing during those weeks was the dissonance. We laid out our project, our budget, our forecasts. We were told “sure, we’ll send you a proposal that fits”, and we ended up with quotes that doubled our numbers. After a while, we got the sense someone was trying to take us for a ride.
Those conversations weren’t wasted, though. They forced us to sharpen our case, to anticipate questions we wouldn’t have spotted on our own. When we eventually went with an online incorporation service (cheaper, less hands-on), we arrived with a rock-solid file and a clear set of requirements. The setup held, the budget held.
But between the search and the paperwork, two months had passed. The release date slipped, then slipped again. We hadn’t announced anything publicly, so no one saw the delays. What we did see, though, was a studio that stayed silent for two months when we should have opened the year with the game’s announcement. Our community didn’t notice, but it cost us, mostly in energy.
First lesson : if you’re starting a project that depends on a legal structure, add plenty of margin to your administrative timelines. Really plenty.
The visibility war
We launched on March 30 with fewer than 300 wishlists. That number captures the indie game challenge today : you can build a solid game, polish your Steam page, communicate, and still arrive on launch day with an audience counted in the hundreds. Not the thousands.
À la Mine’s goal was never commercial success. As a first game, our target was a critical success : proving we could design and ship a coherent, finished, defensible game. Demonstrating our craft to the industry. Profitability would come later, or not at all.
But we still ran headfirst into the visibility problem every indie studio knows : if no one knows your game exists, no one can stumble onto it. And on Steam, the algorithm needs signals (wishlists, sales, reviews) to surface you to players. It’s a feedback loop that feeds itself : the more visible you are, the more visible you become.
The influencer bet
We’d scraped together a modest marketing budget : €2,000. The plan was to reach several small influencers specialized in indie games. Except at €2,000, even the “small” ones already take a big slice of the pie. We managed to negotiate with three influencers who regularly cover indie games in vertical short-form on socials. Combined, they reached 500,000 followers on Instagram alone, and their videos were set to be cross-posted on other platforms afterwards (TikTok, YouTube Shorts in particular).
The results were below everything : some videos under 1,000 views, others with more views but no traction (few likes, few comments), and most importantly almost no traffic to our Steam page afterwards.
The precise analysis still eludes us. One hunch : of the three collaborations, the one we expected the least from produced the highest-quality video and surprised us the most. The other two went fine, but you could feel the slightly forced, commercial undertone. That feeling probably weighed on conversion, and we likely underestimated other factors too.
What’s certain is that we learned what this kind of service is really worth for our type of game, and we won’t be targeting mid-small influencers anymore.
The real allies : small streamers
The influencer who brought us the most sales is a streamer we reached out to, who’s been playing the game once or twice a week since launch. He’s less well-known than the three above. He’s also infinitely more engaged, more authentic in how he talks about the game, and he converts much better. His viewers are few but they’re there for him, they listen to what he says, and some of them end up buying.
The other small streamers who tried À la Mine were also our first to flag the important bugs. They play, they report, we patch, they come back to play. That’s a feedback loop infinitely more valuable than a 1,000-view Instagram video.
Lesson : for an indie studio with a budget of a few thousand euros, the right marketing target isn’t the mid-influencer, it’s the engaged ultra-niche. Someone who genuinely loves your game and carries it sincerely weighs more than someone with 200k followers posting a sponsored story.
Except those profiles are also the hardest to find. They’re fighting their own visibility war on the side, the market is saturated with small streamers, and finding the ones who genuinely match your game takes a lot of energy and filtering. We got lucky with the one who attached himself to À la Mine, but you can’t industrialize that kind of luck. It’s probably the marketing piece we’ll need to prepare best on the next game.
The month that followed launch
On the evening of March 30, the game was live. And that’s where the real work started.
We chained bug fixes through the first weeks. Bugs reported by players who actually play the game, in configurations we hadn’t tested, at moments we hadn’t anticipated. 3-to-6-player multiplayer, Twitch integration, Friend Pass : that’s a lot of surface area where unexpected things can break.
In parallel, we kept producing content. Social media, patch communications, exchanges with the Discord community, monitoring Steam reviews. The idea : not letting the game die on its own. A game without post-release communication on Steam sinks into the catalog within weeks.
We made under fifty sales at the start. Which means it took time to reach the 10 Steam reviews needed for the platform to display a review score on the page. And when we finally got them, mostly positive, we saw a real effect : visibility went up, wishlists started coming in more regularly, the game finally existed algorithmically.
Since launch, we’ve more than doubled our wishlist count. It’s slow, it’s steady, but it’s constant. The game isn’t dead. It keeps growing gently, especially since that “Positive Reviews” tag showed up on the Steam page.
What we make of it, at 5 weeks in
On paper, the results are modest. Sales are capped by a visibility problem we couldn’t break through with the means we had at the time. If we were chasing commercial success, we’d be disappointed.
But we were chasing something else. We wanted to prove we could ship. Incorporate a studio, release a finished game, defend it publicly, keep it alive. Done. And the feedback we get, the kind that comes from people actually playing, is very positive. The game holds up, we stand by every design choice, and the signature mechanic (the asymmetric Owners / Union endgame) delivers exactly on the promise we set out two years ago.
We’re proud of having put a period at the end of a project that’s been running since 2021. Or rather a semicolon, because the game is still going, and because the original board game might one day find a publisher. Watching people play what we made, exchange on Discord, report bugs in their own words : that’s a motivation loop no number can replace.
Better a quiet but positive launch than a launch caught in a bad buzz. We’ll take it.
And now ?
We’re entering the second month post-release. We’re going to gradually scale back work on À la Mine to shift part of our energy to the next project. Communication continues, patches continue when needed, but we can’t live indefinitely on a single game, especially at our scale.
We also just released the À la Mine soundtrack, specially remastered for the occasion, available on Steam and on every streaming platform. It’s a bonus for players who loved the game’s sound design, and a way to keep the project alive in other forms.
A lot of open questions remain. Will we find funding for what’s next ? Will À la Mine keep growing slowly or plateau ? Will we handle visibility better on the next game ? Will the lessons we’re drawing today hold up after 6 more months ?
See you in 6 months, end of 2026, for a fresh review. In the meantime, if you want to take a look at the game or follow how it evolves, the À la Mine Steam page is the most up-to-date place for all of it.