Setup: a foggy doorway, a frank postmortem, and a new mandate
The hero image—an ominous doorway in fog, statues standing guard—matches the headspace we were in after shipping The Wickie. The game earned quiet praise in small circles, but the numbers were blunt: fewer than 100 units sold by our accounting. It’s possible some factors were outside our control, yet the clearest lever we owned was marketing. We didn’t have the muscle memory, tooling, or cadence to meet players where they actually discover games.
A sequel prototype (first called The Brass Gate) was on the table, but pushing forward without addressing the go-to-market gap felt like repeating a mistake. We paused game development and prioritized building BrassGate—a marketing system by a developer/artist for developers and artists.
Challenges: when craft outpaces reach
We faced three interconnected issues:
- Timing: Announcements lagged production. By the time we had something cool, the channels had moved on.
- Friction: Posting across platforms, resizing assets, and writing variants stole energy from development sprints.
- Signal: Our materials were lore-rich but not structured for rapid comprehension by new players.
There were also risks in over-correcting. We didn’t want to drown a moody, systemic game in loud, non-diegetic messaging. The image’s tone—mysterious, architectural, ominous—remained the north star.
Process: building BrassGate and wiring it into development
We spent roughly four months on a simple principle: marketing should feel like part of the build pipeline. The WordPress/BrassGate stack now generates articles and multi-platform variants with required assets attached, reducing handoffs and context switches. In practice, the system helps us stage content as we implement features, not weeks later.
Some examples grounded in our docs and conversations:
- Diegetic tutorialization, carried forward from The Wickie: in-world posters, comics, tannoy messages, and documents teach mechanics while enriching lore. The C.A.R.L. units (Cargo Allocation & Retrieval Laborers) will be introduced less like a pop-up and more like an encounter with a haunted machine—players learn protocols by inference and environment.
- Marketing/ops alignment: content scaffolds exist for “Marketing the new asylum rock game,” ensuring captures, text variants, and alt assets can publish quickly without derailing a sprint.
- QR-driven lore pages (exploratory): we’re testing how scannable codes might unlock web-based notes, art, or diegetic ephemera. We’re cautious about spoilers, accessibility, and privacy, so any rollout would follow baseline safeguards (HTTPS, input validation, expiring tokens) and be opt-in. If playtests suggest friction, we’ll pare it back.
We designed around player agency early. Three complementary routes for a key opening segment of Asylum Rock—atmospheric exploration, combat + traversal, and puzzle/mystery—share assets and converge on the same gating. This supports different playstyles without multiplying production cost. Our notes track beats like ambient set tone, Dougie/Peter micro-prompts, conveyor blockade resolution, and a tannoy reveal—plus metrics such as document pickup rate, time to first hint, and combat TTK. Marketing artifacts are planned to mirror that structure: short clips for vertical movement, quiet fly-throughs for mood, and developer notes for puzzle chains.
Lessons: what The Wickie clarified
- Good isn’t enough without findability: We likely underinvested in awareness and consistency. The result was a gulf between craft and reach.
- Diegesis can be a marketing asset: The same materials that teach can also market, if you shape them for discovery. A safety poster that encodes a switch order doubles as a social-friendly teaser.
- Automate the boring things: Asset variants, platform formatting, and metadata should be mechanical. Human time is better spent on narrative, balance, and player empathy.
- Measure early, not postmortem: Document pickup rates or puzzle completion times aren’t only design metrics—they suggest what to clip and explain in public updates.
- Security is part of UX: If web-linked content exists (e.g., QR pages), players deserve secure, accessible experiences with clear privacy signaling.
Process details: how we’re implementing
- Content pipeline: WordPress/BrassGate templates generate long-form posts, executive variants, and image sets. This helps keep voice consistent and reduces last-mile bottlenecks.
- Diegetic learning: For C.A.R.L. units, we prioritize environmental staging—binary broadcast lore, corrupted songs as breadcrumbs, facial recognition stasis, and crisis behaviors explained via in-world ephemera rather than pop-ups.
- Route design: Route A emphasizes mood and slow discovery; Route B focuses on combat and verticality; Route C leans into inference and multi-step puzzles. Intersections and shortcuts let players shift styles mid-level. We log deaths, jump fails, hint usage, and completion times to tune difficulty.
- Playable marketing: We’re exploring safe, opt-in QR “side channels” for expanded lore and behind-the-scenes context. If kept lightweight and respectful, this can build community without breaking immersion.
Forward look: Asylum Rock with BrassGate in the loop
Asylum Rock is the working title now anchoring our efforts. We’re cautious about dates and specifics until playtests confirm pacing and performance, but the direction is clear: a moody, systemic experience supported by a marketing system that respects player attention and developer time.
BrassGate has matured into a SaaS with client separation and a bias toward privacy. We’re careful to avoid sweeping claims—teams vary, pipelines differ—but early use suggests that having content ops wired into development reduces the sense of marketing as a separate, draining job. For some studios, that alone may be the difference between shipping quietly and being discoverable.
The foggy doorway in our hero image isn’t just a vibe; it’s a reminder to make the way forward visible. If our previous project taught us anything, it’s that you can’t rely on serendipity to guide players to your work. You have to light the path—subtly, consistently, and with care.
If you’re a developer or artist who wants marketing to feel like a native part of your build, not a weekly scramble, BrassGate might be useful. We’re sharing what we learn as we go. If you’re curious—or skeptical—tell us what would make this genuinely helpful for your team.
Explore approaches, see examples, and weigh whether BrassGate fits your pipeline at TheBrassGate.com.
