Overview

A long-term partnership leading up to an outstanding launch campaign for an indie title that we had supported from early access.

Each campaign beat was activated with a curated list of creators that reflected the multi-platform nature of the game.
Fourth Floor worked closely with Fireshine Games to match the campaign’s cadence to the game’s release schedule, maximising the effectiveness of their Steam Free Weekend and their first-ever Game Pass launch.

The Challenge

Core Keeper had a pre-existing community off the back of a strong year-and-a-half Early Access period, driven by an extensive creator program we helped build and run up until launch. But this presented the new challenge of recapturing lapsed players.

Each beat in the Early Access campaign brought new players in and old players back, but the 1.0 launch needed to create a big and loud event that caught the eyes of both target audiences – and beyond.
With the sandbox nature of the game, it was essential that each phase of the partnership not only brought in new players, but also engaged and consolidated the existing playerbase to foster a healthy and active long-term community.
After a Steam-only Early Access period, the 1.0 launch brought accessibility across all major consoles for the first time, which raised the challenge of expanding interest beyond the established community and breaking into console content spaces.

Our Approach

Our aim was to establish a multi-platform launch campaign that both leveraged and honoured the existing community whilst building momentum during Steam Free Week. With a focus on converting the buzz into a wide awareness campaign, this allowed us to onboard on launch day across console audiences, whilst reinvigorating the lapsed PC user base.

By targeting creators who were themselves lapsed players with 10+ hours in the early game builds, we were able to create a genuine and authentic narrative around the game’s growth from Early Access into 1.0.
With the game newly accessible across all major consoles, we partnered with established console creators that regularly played similar games to raise awareness within a new audience segment on launch day. We knew they would have an affinity for the title and would pick it up immediately.
Strategically planned-out engagement tactics for both paid and organic creators created, we were able to create the sense that ‘everyone is playing Core Keeper’ on the day, which was true! The game broke into the top 30 most played games on Steam, with a peak of 46,000 concurrent players within a few days of launch.

Paid

Curating the perfect creators across Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok

Fourth Floor identified creators that had a natural affinity for the game and ensured a coordinated release of content at key beats throughout Aarly Access, creating a momentous feeling at launch.

The campaign not only created a mass community-moment on launch day, but provided structured build-up content in the week before on YouTube with purposeful keep-warm content on TikTok the following week

Trailer

Explosive Alan – Fourths Floor’s in-house production company – edited together Core Keeper’s full 1.0 exciting launch trailer.

RESULTS

We saw a huge overperformance in KPI targets across all three platforms we activated:

Nearly 500k views on YouTube and counting - already double the expected performance on this platform.
Creators on Twitch streamed overall for nearly double their contracted times, showing that we picked the right creators who resonated with the game and were keen to continue playing beyond the sponsorship.
Boosted TikToks exceeded our reach KPIs by 70%, while also driving excellent click-through rates: the most successful TikTok in reach also generated over 80,000 link clicks to the Core Keeper Steam page.

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“Fourth Floor truly understands influencers and consistently selects the perfect creators to fit our campaigns. For Core Keeper, each creator has become a true advocate for the game, providing feedback during early access as well as making great content. Many of the paid creators even streamed for extra time because the game was such a good fit for their channels which contributed to the game's success on launch!”

Sarah Hoeksma
Chief Marketing Officer, Core Keeper