Blog

Field notes from making Kegs of Eternity alone. Real numbers, receipts included.

September 2026 · the full write-up · ~45 min

I spent 5 grand learning paid ads for my indie game so you don't have to.

~$5,100 of UTM-tagged wishlist ads on X and Reddit, priced out: the formula, the deep-link quirk that makes one phone click worth five to fourteen desktop clicks, the country data, the decay curves, and every prediction of mine the data ran over with a truck.

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September 2026 · the short version · ~8 min

Your Steam CTR number is lying to you. Pick your capsule with paid ads instead.

The 13-rule advice list and the single most useful trick from the long write-up: a controlled capsule test using paid ads and Steam's UTM report, because Steam's own CTR metric can't tell you whether your capsule change worked.

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May 2026 · game design · ~9 min

Onboarding doesn't have to suck: a design philosophy from the toilet up.

Why Kegs of Eternity starts you in the shitter: strip the player of every system and introduce them one by one, animate UI in instead of prompting, trust players to figure things out, let them die in the tutorial - and the three points on the onboarding-cost spectrum for games that can't afford all that.

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