If the default indie-shipping script is still “make a good game → wishlists rise on their own → launch week explodes,” then what Carpe Diem Studio (Reddit: u/CarpeDiemTeam) wrote on r/IndieDev on 18 September 2026 (Asia/Hong_Kong) tears that script down the middle: two brothers spent three years building the RPG they always wanted to play—*Breeze Of Adventure*; no publisher, almost no marketing budget or experience; about 401 wishlists at posting time—“by the numbers, it looks like we failed.”
That line can sound like self-mockery. What gives it weight is the second fact they admit next: making a good game and getting people to notice it are two completely different problems. Their first Reddit post unexpectedly reached about 60,000 people and brought around 120 wishlists; later short videos and social channels performed far worse. The title even says “It completely failed”—while the body pins “failure” to exposure numbers and keeps another ruler for “success”: we built our dream project exactly the way we wanted.
The image that runs through this essay is the mismatch between wind and wishlist. Wind should push the adventure; the wishlist is a sail that answers only to algorithms. This essay has not playtested the game; release and sales figures are not invented—only verifiable public-page facts are used.
1. The Default Logic: Wishlist as Report Card, Low Wishlist Equals Failed Game
Industry default logic is clean—and therefore cruel.
Steam culture trains the wishlist into a comparable score: press uses it to gauge heat, publishers use it in talks, developers refresh it at midnight to confirm self-worth. Once the number is low, the causal chain rewrites itself—not “marketing did not work,” but “the game is not good enough.” Player reading habits collude: low-wishlist titles are easier to pre-judge as “probably not.”
*Breeze Of Adventure* sits on the sorest point of that grammar. The public store page describes action-adventure across islands: quests for the Dawn Guild or your own path; defeat seven Overseer Gods to regain memory; master swords, hammers (or clubs), war scythes, and dual blades; rune skill trees and god-power shards in combat. Visually, an earlier public post aimed at a sweet spot between 2000s Monster Hunter / MMO vibes and modern anime aesthetics—treated here as the authors’ stated ambition, not a verified market position.
The number on posting day was about 401. They write that they genuinely believe the game turned out better than those numbers suggest. Default logic forbids that split; production ethics must admit it first, or you will misdiagnose “unseen” as “unworthy of being made.”
2. Smashing the Script: World-Building and Algorithmic Visibility as Separate Pipelines
The sharpest scene in the post is not a string of regrets but a controlled contrast.
First Reddit exposure: ~60k reach, ~120 wishlists. Afterward: short video, social, other free channels—much weaker. The authors write the conclusion themselves—production and acquisition are two production lines. You can weld thousands of hours into world, combat, animation, and environments and still not automatically receive thousands of hours of attention.
An earlier public post (source observation: r/indiegames, ~May 2026) adds bone structure: the brothers tried the same dream three times and failed for lack of experience and resources; the fourth attempt finally solidified the core. Self-intros include Mikita (game director & designer), brother Danila (art director, handcrafted visuals), Aliaxandr (tech director, Unreal Engine 5), and Raman (SMM & marketing). Some posts describe roughly three makers plus one marketing lead; others stress that almost all animation and graphics were reworked repeatedly by one person. This essay treats “brother-led, very small team” as the stable fact; titles follow public self-description.
They also left an easy-to-miss edit: 0% of in-game graphic assets were created with AI. Meanwhile Steam’s AI disclosure states AI was used for in-game sounds and 2D promotional art. The two statements do not cancel each other—one nails authorship of playable graphics; the other admits AI in audio and some promo material. Honesty means driving the nail into the right board, not letting one slogan erase the other.
3. Numbers Pin the Rhetoric: 401, October 12, and “Not Yet Available”
Without a timeline, failure talk slides into mood performance. Nail verifiable time back to the ground:
- 18 Sep 2026 (Asia/Hong_Kong): main r/IndieDev post; authors say less than a month to release, ~401 wishlists; plan 12 October, or late October; after editing, more clearly leaning late October to address issues the community flagged.
- Thread engagement (at scrape): ~2528 score, 413 comments—the “failure” narrative itself drew high exposure.
- 18 Oct 2026 (this essay’s date): Steam still shows *This game is not yet available*, `coming_soon: true`, planned window October 2026; no user reviews. Public APIs do not expose live wishlist totals, so this essay invents no “current wishlist” figure—only the authors’ ~401 at posting time.
In other words: the original 12 October window has passed; as of writing the full game is still not purchasable—consistent with their public correction toward late October, and not equal to a sales failure, because sales have not occurred yet. A Steam Next Fest demo existed; community patch notes describe a ~three-person team iterating quest boards, economy, and combat—demo feedback and wishlists are different loops: play is not the same as bookmark.
For indie teams, the unkind honesty is this: sixty thousand people can see you once and still leave only a hundred-odd wishlists; you can title a post “failed” and watch the comments become a late publishing channel. Numbers speak, but their grammar is often not the grammar of craft quality.
4. Backflow: Redeeming “Success” from Storefront Metrics
The closing almost rewrites where “success” sits in indie language. They say: for us this is actually a success—we created our dream project the way we wanted, and we are already looking forward. They do not know what happens after release; after three years they will finish the journey and finally let people play.
That is not chicken soup. It is a refusal to sign the default report card. Publisher narratives, press heat, wishlist dashboards all train makers to outsource self-worth to a curve; the brothers first peel “did we make the game we wanted to play” off that curve. Peeling is not ignoring marketing—they explicitly note no publisher and almost no marketing experience, and they tried free channels—but refusing to let marketing results pollute craft judgment in reverse.
Closing: Independence Allows “The Work Holds” and “The Market Has Not Nodded” to Be True at Once
Put the post back into autumn 2026 indie floors, and what it strikes is not the wishlist tool itself, but a quieter production laziness—assuming a low wishlist must equal self-negation, assuming launch day is the only final exam, assuming “failure” has only one spelling.
Carpe Diem Studio’s counterexample is clumsy and public: three years on a dream; 401 written into the title; acquisition failure split from product failure; an edit nailing graphic authorship; 12 October revised toward “more likely late October” after community feedback; by 18 October the storefront still honestly says not yet available. Clumsy, because it refuses the fog of “about to sell big”; public, because it treats an embarrassing number as discussable production material.
So *independence* can be redefined here. It need not mean high wishlists or anti-commerce; it can mean that when resources are tighter you still ask which ruler measures “did I finish what I meant,” and which measures “did others see it.” Making need not mean waiting for wind; it can mean finishing the boat first—then admitting wind is another craft.
Short prompts:
- Keep “quality metrics” and “exposure metrics” on two sheets; ban wishlists from vetoing feel in weekly meetings.
- Run a contrast test: log reach and conversion for the same content on Reddit / short video / social; admit channel variance instead of only blaming yourself.
- When a launch window enters the calendar, reserve buffer to digest public feedback; write date changes into the public post instead of silently evaporating.
- If AI is used, disclose by layer (playable graphics / SFX / promo art); avoid one slogan covering every asset.
- Invent no sales narrative before ship; not available means not available—leave honesty to the store page and to yourself.
October wind is still at sea. For *Breeze Of Adventure*, the wishlist is not the final audit; the moment players actually set foot on the islands is. Until then, the brothers have already stated a harder standard: not “whether the numbers forgive us,” but “whether we made the game we wanted to play.”
Sources and Further Reading
- Source observation: earlier r/indiegames intro (~May 2026) on team roles and fourth attempt; Steam community demo patch notes on ~three-person iteration