“Nearly 35,000 tags and millions of views in the first week,” Artem Koblov from perelesoq on the successful announcement of “The Kiosk on Lenin Street”

"Laryok on Lenin Street"

Alexander Semenov, App2Top: Artem, hi! Congratulations on a successful announcement. 35,000 wishlists in a week is an impressive figure. What were your expectations?

Artem Koblov

Artem Koblov, perelesoq: Sasha, hi! We estimated that we could consider the announcement successful if we surpassed 10,000 wishlists in the first week. So, we’re very pleased with the result.

For context, this is twice as much as Torn Away had before its release: in a week, we've surpassed the result of two years of promo for the previous game.

I'd also like to note that the announcement managed to achieve millions of views.

What do you mean by that?

Artem: We were mentioned by Telegram channels like NN, "The Bakery" (Peckernija), nerds, and "VG/Twoch" (VG/2ch). The post on the "Cyber Axe" channel, which is currently unavailable via direct link, seemed to have the largest reach, reaching over a million.

Additionally, the game was mentioned by all major Russian media, some Western media, and Japanese outlets (the news spread well on their X accounts). For example, the announcement news by Den Famico Gamer in X reached over 140,000 views. Also, there were good views for news posted by AUTOMATON and Indie Freaks.

The news on Reddit did exceptionally well in IndieDev, PC Gaming, and pcmasterrace.

At some point, the media and channels began to independently disseminate the news, making it difficult for us to track all mentions in the information space.

Which channel showed the best results?

Artem: Unfortunately, it's tough to say precisely, as everything happened at once, making it difficult to separate the impact of various tools. In PR activities, creating maximum coverage through widespread distribution is crucial.

Telegram definitely gave us access to a huge number of players. The largest exposure seems to have come from there. I'd note that Telegram is currently one of the main sources of information for the Russian-speaking audience overall.

However, when we talk about organic reach, the best results came from:

• YouTube, where we got into recommendations and now gain thousands of views daily by ourselves;
• Steam, which provides us with its traffic, seeing there is significant interest in the game.

Have you already calculated the conversion from exposure to wishlists? Can you share?

Artem: We still plan to analyze the data in detail, but for now, I can show the following figures:

The graph shows that after the main media boost, Steam itself started providing a significant amount of exposure and transitions. However, the majority of transitions came from external traffic. Pleasantly, the overall wishlist conversion rate from visits is very high. Roughly speaking, every third visitor to the page adds the game to their wishlist. This is partly due to the quality of the Steam page's design.

The main question: how did you achieve this?

Artem: In short — a good idea, quality execution, thorough announcement preparation, and a disciplined approach in implementing the planned strategy.

Luck plays a significant role in these matters, but there’s a funny thing that happened, which I'll explain later. As for the details—we plan to write an in-depth article on this in the coming week, and I’ll be glad to share it.

I'd be glad to read it. Was the experience from promoting Torn Away helpful during the announcement?

Artem: It helped a lot. While promoting Torn Away, we learned to be systematic, established warm contacts with journalists, and learned to quickly gather media and influencer databases.

Torn Away also had substantial reach, but the conversion was much lower. After all, Torn Away is a serious dramatic story released at a most inopportune time.

The fate and release of Torn Away were challenging for perelesoq. Can we say that you focused more on market trends when working on "Laryok on Lenin Street"?

Artem: I would say we started to think more about the player. We didn’t want to jump on trends just for the sake of it, because often it comes off as insincere and unconvincing, and players sense this and may not support it.

Narrative games are largely about emotions. Right now, we want to primarily offer positive emotions; for us, working on such a game is a breath of fresh air after years with a story on a painful theme. Today, we're creating what speaks to us, what delights and amuses us personally. Perhaps, that’s why it resonated with people.

Of course, we look at the market and see which genres are in demand. Preferences change, and creating a classic quest game—even on the same topic—would be a risky choice. A game should meet modern demands and ideally bring something new and surprising.

By the way, your announcement coincided with the announcement of another kiosk seller simulator, "No Change". Is this a new trend?

Artem: Possibly! My friend Kirill Zalovkin, along with Anton Tokarev, recently discussed the topic of simulators in small spaces. It turned out to be quite interesting.

I mentioned above about luck: what were the odds that two weeks before our announcement another kiosk announcement would come out? At first, we were concerned—it seemed important to be first for a successful announcement, but then we realized the other kiosk isn’t a direct competitor.

Our games aim to create wholly different emotional experiences, and emotions are a key deciding factor when choosing. Their project looks great, so in 2025, there will be two kiosk games. Plus, maybe more will join in.

There’s already a feeling that having two kiosks at the same time led to discussions among players, which is always good for a viral effect. Simply put, if one project becomes popular, the other will likely follow. Therefore, we stay in touch with them and might come up with something interesting.

When is your game’s release? Have you estimated what sales you can expect?

Artem: We aim to release by the end of the year, but we’re not making any sales predictions yet. One thing is certain—there will be significantly more sales than Torn Away.