What was this project about?

Checkpoint ’38 is a historical roguelike narrative sim from indie studio Genesis Dawn (Romania), inspired by Papers, Please and Beholder. You play Franz Weber, a border guard stationed at the Nazi-Swiss border in 1938, inspecting papers, enforcing impossible laws, and deciding how far to bend the rules to save a life.

Game Marketing XP has worked with the studio for close to a year, handling Steam store positioning and copy, community building on Reddit and Instagram, a full content calendar, creator outreach, and the push toward Steam Next Fest.

Results so far: 1,500 wishlists in the first month of the campaign alone.

Steam page positioning that survived a Nazi-symbol content review

The Steam page was rejected three times over Nazi-symbol content in a game also distributed in Germany. We rebuilt the positioning around the document-inspection loop and moral tension, got it through Germany’s USK case-by-case review, and turned the rejection story itself into content that resonated with other developers.

A reveal reel that passed 100K views on Instagram

The reveal reel introducing the game, “we’ve been working with the developers for almost a year,” reached 106,169 views, 84,038 accounts, 8,963 likes and 5,579 shares at a 17.65% engagement rate. Full campaign build-out: social templates, a 30+ post content calendar, Reddit community setup, and Keymailer creator outreach ahead of Steam Next Fest (October 2026).

What did we do?

We took Checkpoint ’38 from an unannounced project to a Steam Next Fest selection: full Steam store copy, a grayscale document-themed social identity, a 30+ post content calendar, Reddit community setup, a Keymailer creator campaign, and the Instagram launch that passed 100K views on its reveal reel. The campaign has driven 1,500 wishlists in its first month. The demo goes live ahead of Next Fest this October.