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How we grew Moonfrost’s marketing reach by 116% up to 147K+ people... With a marketing budget of $0 in 2024🧙‍♂️ Context If you’re not familiar with me or my work, my name is Jase, and I am the marketing and community department at Oxalis Games. For the past three years, we’ve been developing Moonfrost, an innovative pixel-art life sim RPG. Despite having spent only $3,000 on paid marketing in total (over the last 3 years), the data I’ll share today comes from 2024. In May 2024, we made a pivotal shift in our strategy by opening the game to players at scale, inviting 5,000 participants to a closed alpha test which was secretly a play to mint campaign (more info on this on 'Exposing GAM3SGG' thread). The key was striking the right balance of speculation without overhyping. I strongly believe that every time you declare “This is really important” it loses impact over time. Overhyping can diminish the effectiveness of future campaigns, so we carefully managed expectations while generating curiosity. Major Growth Drivers Three posts stood out as the primary drivers of our success: - The Release Announcement - A Stardew Valley Love Letter (blog post) - Epic Games Wishlist Activation These campaign posts led to remarkable growth: - 20,000+ new followers on X (formerly Twitter) - 10,000+ new email sign-ups - Placement in Epic Games' “Top Upcoming Wishlist” category This was our most successful campaign of 2024, but we didn’t stop there. (without using reply guy tactics, again I'm a one person department I don't have the capacity to use that method for growth) Expanding to TikTok in Q4 2024 X has always been our primary social platform, but we saw an opportunity to expand into TikTok and reach a broader audience of traditional game genre fans through organic, relatable content. I created a content pipeline to test this hypothesis while managing my other responsibilities. The goal: produce 20 videos per month across three main content categories, chosen based on competitor research. Breakthrough on TikTok One content pillar stood out as the best performer—competitor/genre comparison content. This strategy worked because it leveraged well-known games with large player bases, making it easier to capture attention and draw in potential Moonfrost fans. For the first two months, growth was steady, with video views gradually increasing from 500 to 1,000 to 2,000, alongside a strong engagement rate of 3.62%. Then, on December 11th, everything changed. I posted a highly relatable video featuring trending audio and a visually compelling hook, comparing Moonfrost to two beloved titles: Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. The video also emphasized one of Moonfrost’s unique selling points—it’s free to play. The Results - 500K+ impressions - 40K+ likes - 15K+ bookmarks Total video creation time: 20 minutes (excluding strategy and research) This one viral post demonstrated the immense ROI potential of TikTok and vertical video platforms. Following its success, our previous videos started gaining second-hand traffic—some jumped from 2,000 views to over 10,000. This effect lasted about a week. In January 2025, I temporarily slowed down TikTok content to focus on other priorities. However, moving forward, TikTok will play a central role in Moonfrost’s marketing strategy for the remainder of 2025. Key Takeaways Community engagement and organic growth strategies can be highly effective, even with a $0 budget, you'll just need to think outside the box. Leveraging speculation without overhyping is crucial for long-term marketing impact. Competitor/genre comparison content is a powerful tool for capturing audience attention. TikTok and vertical video platforms offer significant ROI when content achieves virality. Viral success creates a ripple effect, boosting visibility for other content. Summary This experience reinforced the power of organic marketing, community-driven growth, and strategic content creation. As we move forward into the rest of 2025 (our biggest year yet) I look forward to piloting the Moonfrost growth machine. You've seen what we can do with minimal marketing allocation now it's time to see what happens when we turn on the paid campaigns. If you'd like to learn more about the other elements of my role as a one man marketing community department or found this content useful please consider; Liking, RT or drop a comment on what you think of this approach...

this gotta be the nastiest combo i’ve ever seen