Bohemia Interactive started in 1999 in Prague and released its first game, Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, in 2001. The Czech team quickly established themselves as experts in the military sim genre, going on to create the acclaimed Arma series. Mainstream success arrived in 2013 with the release of the popular Arma mod, DayZ, as a standalone game. DayZ became a phenomenon, selling two million copies in its first six months of early access. Today, Bohemia continues to develop hardcore FPS games and has ventured into publishing with its Bohemia Incubator label.
Game overview
Imagine Minecraft and Valheim had a sky-born baby: Everwind is an open-world, first-person survival RPG where you and your friends build a floating island-ship (your home/base/Swiss army knife in the clouds), scavenge and craft everything from humble tools to mystical staves. Tackle dungeons and baddies in melee or magic, and sail between procedurally generated islands while upgrading steampunk gizmos on your airship. It’s PvE-focused, destructible and proudly leans into exploration and base-building fun. Developer Enjoy Studio ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to get Everwind off the ground, with Bohemia Incubator backing the project as publisher.
Products used
Paid Quest, Creator Program
The Challenge:
What if Minecraft, but players each piloted their own giant airship? That’s the elevator pitch behind Everwind, the new open-world multiplayer survival crafter from Polish devs, Enjoy Studio. In their corner, taking on publishing duties? Bohemia Incubator, the publishing arm of Bohemia Interactive.
The game’s full launch is currently on the cards for 2027. But there’s already loads to love here. Gorgeous voxel visuals, extensive crafting options, co-op support for up to four players, farming, combat and dungeon raids.
Right from the start, Enjoy and Bohemia have worked hard to build Everwind’s community. An enforced name change earlier this year (it was originally called SkyVerse) became a marketing opportunity. A chance to let media know about the new game.
A Kickstarter campaign followed this summer. Again, the teams viewed this as a marketing beat rather than a money spinner. It was about building awareness. As Bohemia’s marketing specialist, Lawrence Tauzia says, when we caught up with him:
We said okay, let's do a Kickstarter because the most important part for us is to make the game known, because it's a game very focused on its community and co-op multiplayer.
The campaign succeeded in its community-building ambitions. By September, the airborne survival game had reached 500,000 wishlists on Steam. Incidentally, the game also smashed its Kickstarter goal by over 50%. Not a bad bonus.
Everwind reached 500,000 wishlists by September
Everwind is now charting a course for Early Access, currently slated for early 2026. But before that excitement, Bohemia lined up October’s Next Fest as an opportunity for the world to get hands-on with Enjoy’s game.
Why Next Fest? According to Tauzia:
Two reasons. Firstly, for us, getting a demo out there was important to gather player feedback. And to make sure that we have something good. Secondly, the best way to do a demo is at Steam Next Fest, especially for an indie game. Participation allows you to be on the front page to be promoted through the Steam algorithm and so on.
Hard agree from us on that second point. Valve’s thrice-yearly demo showcase has seen its popularity balloon over the last five years. Next Fest now regularly features around 3,000 demos, making it a discovery no-brainer for most games.
But going head-to-head with thousands of other games is no joke. Especially when you’re a plucky new IP. But Bohemia managed it, and Everwind became one of the event’s most-played games. Let’s get into how they pulled it off.
The Solution:
Before we get into the strategy, here’s Everwind’s Next Fest timeline:
10 October
Early demo access for creators
12 October
Demo live for everyone
13-20 October
Next Fest
24 October
Demo taken down
Content creators were at the heart of Tauzia and co’s Next Fest plan. And giving them early access to the demo meant content could be live in time for the big day on the 13th. There were other benefits:
Offering exclusivity for creators is a good way to get their interest, and it costs us nothing. Also, if lots of smaller creators play the demo, that can get the attention of bigger creators organically.
Good thinking. Originally, Everwind’s demo was set to go live for everyone on day one of Next Fest. Instead, late in the day, they opted to bring the release forward to the 12th and extend the demo’s life to the 24th, four days after Valve’s event finished. What was the story there?
There were two reasons. Because creators were already playing, we knew things were going well. Releasing on Monday (the 13th) is not ideal because people have less time to play. So we decided to push it out on Sunday evening. It was a very quick decision.
Extending the demo was the same. A lot of people on our social media were saying, ‘Hey, I love the game, but I won't be able to finish everything.’ We realised that players were taking way more time to play, which is a good sign. So once again, we said let's extend it so you can share more feedback and have time to finish your base.
Engaging creators
To get creators on board, Tauzia worked with several agencies, Lurkit included. The strategy revolved mainly around gaining traction organically. As well as making extensive use of Bohemia’s own network, Everwind’s Lurkit-powered Creator Program played a key role here.
The creator program was a great way to drive awareness of the demo. We would not have been able to do without Lurkit. Time-wise and admin-wise. I worked alone on this, and it was impossible for me to manually reach out to every single creator. That's why we went with Lurkit, because you just have to do it once. Set up the criteria, and then it's just a few clicks to accept people. So yeah, that was great.
Click the image for a look at Everwind's Creator Program
Although organic was the focus, the team put some budget towards a Paid Quest. 23 Lurkit-activated Twitch creators went live, along with one YouTube and one TikTok creator. And the strategy for selecting the creators was pretty simple:
Basically, we targeted creators who played similar games: Minecraft, Valheim, Raft - all those kinds of survival games because they resonate with our audience. And when we checked stats from previous campaigns, we saw that it was the same audience. People who played those games are very likely to want to play Everwind.
Content & communication
Let’s look at the demo itself. Great comms should be an ambition for any new game. It’s especially important when you’re making a game that will live or die on its community. Bohemia and Enjoy made it clear in advance that the demo was to be a preview and was by no means the final product:
This isn’t the full game. What you’ll be playing is a vertical slice - a polished snapshot designed to give you a real taste of the world, mechanics and vibe we’re building. It’s not final, but it’s enough to give you a clear idea of where we’re headed.
Source - Everwind Kickstarter page
Importantly, the demo included co-op functionality. That gave the community an opportunity to try out one of the game’s USPs. But it also meant creators could team up to produce content together.
It's very MMORPG oriented. You have different classes; everyone in the team needs to do something. So we really wanted to have co-op. And that's why, when we contacted creators through Lurkit, we gave them two keys so they could invite friends or another creator.
The demo’s multiplayer wasn’t rock solid, and Enjoy were clear about this ahead of time: “co-op mode is experimental, and we’re actively testing its stability”. Setting expectations = smart.
On that note. Demos, by their nature, will have rough edges. It’s your response as dev or publisher that’s important. Bohemia and Enjoy nailed it on this front, releasing several updates during Next Fest.
As much as we want to do the perfect demo from the get-go, we are realistic and we know that it's not going to happen. We were ready for this. Within the first 20 minutes of the demo, there was already a patch to address a few issues.
We wanted to address critical problems as soon as possible, especially since the demo is time-limited and we know a lot of our players have limited time to play. Fixing the game and communicating the fix was super important.
The Results
Everwind soared during Next Fest, finishing as the sixth-most-played demo of Valve’s event.When you’re a new IP up against 2,960 other games, that’s an incredible feat. Fans also loved what they played. 86% of the demo’s 1,400+ Steam user reviews were positive. Looks like Enjoy and Bohemia have a hit on their hands.
Data shared by Enjoy tells the same story. According to the team, the Next Fest demo was played by over 355,000 unique players, contributing more than 246,000 hours played combined.
As well as attracting a lot of players, Everwind went great guns in a couple of other key metrics. Analysis by GameDiscoverCo estimates that the open-world crafter added over 135,000 wishlists and almost 9,000 followers on Steam. That’s the second most of any demo at Next Fest.
Everwind added the second highest number of wishlists at Next Fest
Content creators helped spread the word. And Bohemia’s organic focus turned a chorus of small channels into a magnet for the bigger names. Tauzia:
We actually had quite a few big guys jumping in. I think we had a peak concurrent of 15,000 viewers on Twitch and YouTube. So yeah, it performed very well.
The Lurkit-powered Paid Quest did its job, too. 23 Twitch creators brought in over 9,000 hours watched. Here are the rest of the stats, along with the standout performances of those who took part.
25
creators activated
9,190
streaming hours watched
16,449
short-form video views
Top Creator Performances
Top Creator Performances
xth0rek
Average CCV: 1,233
Hours Watched: 2,669
Airtime: 2 hours 9 mins
ElPelotasssss
Average CCV: 890
Hours Watched: 1,068
Airtime: 1 hour 20 mins
Stealthygolem
Average CCV: 380
Hours Watched: 697
Airtime: 1 hour 50 mins
It’s not all about the stats, though. How well Everwind performs at launch and beyond will depend on its ability to keep its community engaged and involved. If Next Fest is anything to go by, Bohemia and Enjoy have few concerns. The audience is on board and ready to keep the engines humming.
We had a Google form set up for player feedback. For the Western audience only, I think we had more than 15,000 responses, which is absolutely a blast in terms of numbers. It's amazing.
Top work by everybody involved. So, what can we learn from Everwind’s stellar Next Fest? And can you do the same? A tough ask, but here’s what we think worked:
Have a great game! Everwind certainly ticks this box. If you’re making a bad game, please think again. More seriously, although the demo was far from the finished article, it was fun, content-rich and showcased the game’s USPs, including online co-op.
Go organic and offer a demo-exclusivity period to creators. That’s a great carrot to offer the smaller channels, and their content can bring in larger creators gratis.
Great comms and expectation management. Enjoy and Bohemia were clear about what the demo was and wasn’t before it launched.
Don’t be afraid of last-minute changes. When they saw things were going well, Bohemia opted to bring the demo forward and extend it beyond Next Fest. It showed respect for the community’s time.
Update your demo during the event. Quick patches show the audience you’re listening and responding.
Make it easy for players to provide feedback. A simple Google form provided the teams with a wealth of data they can use for Early Access. It’s also another reassuring sign that you want your community involved in development.
What’s next? Everwind is on course for Early Access in 2026. Full launch is pencilled in for sometime in 2027. It’s going to be big, so strap in. Before we leave you, how does Tauzia sum up his Lurkit experience?
I really appreciate the collaboration because this organic campaign would not have been possible without Lurkit. It's definitely something that saved us time and allowed us to connect with our community.
Congratulations to Tauzia and the rest of the Bohemia team, the Enjoy crew and everyone involved in making Everwind fly. If you’re looking for content creator marketing support for your next game, why not get in touch?
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