Marketing · July 6, 2026

Building a Press Kit for an Indie Shmup: What Journalists and Curators Actually Need

A journalist deciding whether to cover a game gives it seconds, not minutes. If the assets they need to write forty words about your shmup aren't sitting in front of them, they move to the next email in the inbox.

Published July 6, 2026

A press kit exists to remove friction, not to sell the game. The pitch already happened in the email subject line or the tweet that caught someone's attention; the kit's job is to hand over everything needed to actually write the piece — screenshots at usable resolution, a short and a long description, basic facts, and a way to get a review copy — without the journalist having to ask for any of it. Every additional step between "interested" and "has the assets" loses a percentage of people who were willing to cover the game but not willing to chase down a Discord DM for a screenshot.

Screenshots need to work without the game running

Capture at native resolution or higher, never upscaled, and include a mix that reads clearly as a static image — a mid-boss fight with a readable bullet pattern communicates more in a thumbnail than a screen filled edge to edge with projectiles that just looks like noise to someone who's never played the game. For a bullet-hell shmup specifically, this is a real tension: the screenshots that look most impressive to an existing fan (maximum bullet density) are often the least legible to an outlet's general audience. Include both — a handful of chaotic high-density shots for genre-specific coverage, and a handful of cleaner, more readable ones for general audiences and thumbnail use.

A short video clip, even fifteen to thirty seconds, does more work than any number of screenshots for a genre defined by movement and timing. It doesn't need production value; a clean capture of a representative stage segment, with the HUD visible and no commentary track over it, is exactly what most outlets want to embed directly.

Write the descriptions at multiple lengths, not one

A one-sentence description, a one-paragraph description, and a longer few-paragraph description cover the range of what different outlets need — a roundup post might use one sentence per game, while a feature review wants the longer version for background. Writing all three in advance means a journalist copies what fits rather than editing your single paragraph down themselves, which they often won't have time to do and will instead just skip the game rather than rewrite the copy.

Facts belong in a scannable list, not buried in prose

Release date (or "TBD"), platforms, price, genre tags, engine, team size, and links to store pages and social accounts should all be findable in under five seconds, ideally as a labeled list rather than woven into marketing prose. Journalists on deadline are frequently just fact-checking a roundup entry, and a press kit that makes them hunt through paragraphs for the platform list is a press kit that gets the platform list wrong or skipped.

Structure it as a page, not a single downloadable file

A press kit as one large zip file is friction on its own — it forces a download before anyone can see whether it's worth using. Rezoso Games' open presskit() tool popularized the now-standard approach of a browsable web page with individual downloadable assets, and following that convention (or something close to it) means journalists already familiar with the format know exactly where to look. Host it at a stable, permanent URL that survives past launch — coverage often comes in waves well after release, and a dead press kit link at that point costs a mention that would otherwise have been easy to get.

Keep a review-copy request path that doesn't require an application form

A simple contact email, checked regularly, beats a formal review-copy request form for a small team. Keys sent late are keys that miss the coverage window entirely, so plan to turn around requests within a day or two around anything resembling a launch window. The same outreach thinking applies whether the target is press coverage or wishlist growth more broadly — see marketing an indie shmup on a zero-dollar budget for the wider picture of where a press kit fits into a low-budget marketing plan, and how it pairs with direct outreach rather than replacing it.

None of this guarantees coverage — a well-built press kit removes obstacles, it doesn't create interest that isn't already there. But a genuinely interested journalist who bounces off a missing screenshot or an unreadable description is a lost mention that cost nothing to prevent, which makes the kit one of the highest-return few hours a small team spends before launch.