So, you've made your game, uploaded a screenshot, and submitted it. Congrats! ...now what? Hibernate and wakeup once the rating period is over?

NO! My friend, this is where the fun begins!

Here are a few tips on how to promote your game jam game.

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A bit about me: I've been a long time game jammer since the peak of the Ludum Dare era (RIP). I took a hiatus and Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2 is my first ever game jam in 10 (!) years, and I've had a blast!

Starhauler. A game about hauling space cargo, outrunning pirates, and evading Interstellar Police. My first game jam in a decade!

While I don't claim to have made the best game jam games ever, I did learn a thing or two about how to market one.

But first of all, why bother? Well, you are doing yourself, and us, a disservice if you do not promote and share your creation to the world.

Imagine depriving the community of seeing an awesome indie game!

1. Setup a nice game page

Adding screenshots, taglines, and controls is the bare minimum. Get creative and make your game's page beautiful and cohesive.

Here's a collection of cool game pages for inspiration: /c/1536/cool-game-pages

One of my personal favorites is the game pages of Ludum Dare legend Managore: https://managore.itch.io/

2. Your cover image is your game's trailer

Most jammers take a screenshot of your in-game title screen, slap it as the cover image and call it a day.

Rookie mistake!

Imagine if the official Star Wars movie poster is just the intro crawl, and not a cool collage of the main characters, the Death Star, and lightsabers!

Make sure your cover image showcases your game's features.

Ideally, it should be the best, most beautiful frame (or most chaotic for action games) from your game.

If your game is a shmup game with powerups and explosions, make sure your cover image looks like a shmup game WITH powerups AND explosions, and not just two lines of text.

For my game, Starhauler, I used the most action-packed scene in my game, and overlayed the title and subtitle on top of it.

It's also actually a GIF, which leads us to our next tip.

3. Use GIFs as cover image and screenshots

If you didn't know, you can upload GIFs as your game's cover image.

Ideally your screenshots should also be mostly GIFs.

Here's how I usually do it: I take a screen recorder app, record a few minutes of gameplay, highlighting as many features and visuals as possible.

I then make 3-5 second clips of the best ones, and convert them into GIFs using ffmpeg.

My screenshots are usually then taken from these recordings.

Also note that GIFs must be under 3mb. If that happens, try to reduce the resolution or the fps (24-30 should be fine).

But now you probably wonder, what makes a good GIF? I'm glad you asked!

4. Stage your recordings and screenshots

Here's a top secret tip!

When trying to take a good clip or screenshot of your game, you do not need to use a normal scene from the actual gameplay.

Remember, you want to pack in as many features, visuals and effects as possible to your main poster.

To do that, you can set up a special scene just for recording your "trailer."

For example, temporarily exaggerate your enemies' spawn rates, or bring multiple enemy types onto the screen at once.

Just make sure not to falsely advertise some elements that the player won't actually experience in your game.

5. Talk about your game or experiences

The message boards is full of rate-for-rate threads. Set yourself apart and talk about something else!

Write a post-mortem of your game: what went right? What went wrong? What would you have done differently?

Was there a cool mechanic or shader that you wrote for this jam? What were annoying bugs and issues that you encountered and how did you fix them?

Sharing what you learned during the jam can help other developers, while also giving you a chance to show off your game.

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Other quick fire tips to get more exposure to your game

• rate other entries and leave a decent review
• share your game in the jam's Discord or appropriate community channels and subreddits (just don't spam hehe)
• when sharing your link, always include the GIFs/screenshots you've prepared

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That's about it!

Since we're talking about promoting games, feel free to share your games below and I'll review them. I will prioritize those with fewer ratings.

Here's my submission if you're interested: /jam/brackeys-16/rate/4952847

Good luck! 🫡

this is helpful, thank you!

Thank you! We will definitely explore using GIFs, as they seem like a valuable addition to the game page!

However, given the lack of moderation on this forum, a post-mortem is likely not worth the effort. We posted one previously, but it was quickly drowned out, just like your thread (also the editor in the forum is a real pain in the ass).

Great post! It's a bit unfortunate that posts like these are being buried by the rate-for-rate spam

bumping this post because it is great and more people should see it!

I think, of course, that the right way to move your project forward in the future depends a lot on your marketing approach and which platforms you use. At least for me, I recently tried posting my game on other social media platforms, like Facebook and Reddit. A lot of people told me they didn’t really understand it and that it still needs more work, you know?

After going through most of the feedback, I’ve realized that, at the stage the game is currently in, it’s probably not ready to be presented as a playable experience that gets people interested. You also have to learn these kinds of things along the way.

I think my game still has a long way to go before it feels complete, but I don’t feel like it’s heading in the wrong direction. And your advice will definitely be useful to me.

As for your game, I had already tried it before. I even left you a comment a few days ago.

Thank you very much!

Fake Body: Roba craneos bonaparte

Enjoyed your post! Great points, and I appreciate the inclusion of visual examples. People rarely write in detail these days (I feel), so more of this is always better, as someone who enjoys reading about the experiences and learning lessons of others. 
I was the artist for our submission. We plan to expand the game further and we could use more players and feedbacks to make it even better! If you wanna try and leave a review (so that my fellow teammate could see it too!), that would be awesome! Much appreciated! :) https://cohzach.itch.io/mental-trap