We recently announced Turn-based Fest, an event that originated from the initiative and hashtag #TurnBasedThursday – a collaborative project we launched roughly one and a half years ago. The Fest itself was essentially a curated Steam sale that put a focus on turn-based games. With the first Turn-based Fest now behind us, we are happy to report that the Fest was both a blast and a resounding success among many participants! Imagining that the details may be of interest to many people, regardless of having partaken in the festival or not, we have put together some noteworthy insights about the event and its aftermath.

As far as numbers are concerned, more than 300 titles participated, including RPGs, sims, grand strategy, deck builders, roguelikes, city builders, and much, much more – most of them being sold at a discount. Both older and more recent games took part in the festival, more popular ones and lesser-known delicacies alike. We had a dedicated section for upcoming games, putting a particular focus on highlighting intriguing demos, too. Feel free to check out the full list of all the games.

There were special feature categories to showcase all the diverse games within their own genres. Some of them were active and available throughout the entire duration of Turn-based Fest – Vagrus, for example, got its place in the Hidden Gems category. We also presented a top feature box, the theme of which is changing every day, such as Excellent Early Access or I <3 Words: Story-Rich & Text-Based, another category where Vagrus popped up.

Even though Turn-based Fest is officially over, its Steam Sale page is still live so that you can check out all the cool and fun entrants. Beside it being an excellent collection of games, we tried to make the fest unique in a way that garnered extra attention for content creators. So, just how did we do that?  Well, we were involved in several featured streams where the games of the fest could be picked and streamed – this was a feature that we promoted throughout the festival.

Several content creators have streamed on Twitch, and some of their videos made it over to YouTube as well, of which we have created a playlist.

Luckily, content creators were not the only ones who enjoyed the fest’s demonstable success,  but many developers of upcoming games were happy to share that their wishlist has grown considerably in the wake of the Festival! Allow us to share a graph of our numbers. Sadly, our Turn-based Fest discount went live 12 hours after the Fest kicked off due to a technical failure on Steam. This resulted in a less-than-ideal start, despite which solid results were delivered, comparable to our Steam Autumn Sale campaign. The reason that is impressive is that the two campaigns were close to one another, launched almost back-to-back.

The other interesting aspect based on which we evaluate the success of a sale and the value such a festival brings is the proportion of sales over the duration of the fest that comes from pre-existing wishlisters versus from those who have made the purchase upon discovering the game at that moment. The latter figure is considered to be the direct effect of a festival or sale. With that in mind, the first sale on the graph was Adventure X - Narrative Games yielded 85% of the sales from the existing wishlist and only 15% from new sales. Both Steam Autumn Sale and the Turn-based Fest sale yielded a ratio of 80%/20%, which was certainly very welcome. Of the three sales, Turn-based Fest was the only one we came out of with a net positive Wishlist number, another impressive feat.

All in all, we are quite chuffed with the results and about the opportunity to assist other developers as well. On that note, we hope to see you next year! *wink*

That leaves us at about time to sign off, so, until next time – stay safe and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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