For developers writing their own store page

How to write a 300-character short description.

The short description is the 300 characters a store shows beside the capsule, under the trailer, on the search result and on the wishlist row. It is the only paragraph most people who see your game will ever read, and it has a hard cut at 300: the store does not trim it to a sentence, it trims it to a character. Here is how the sample was written to 293, and the shape that gets there.

What it has to do in 300 characters

Say what you do, as a verb. Drain, flood, hunt, bring up. The store page is full of games; the short description is the one place a reader learns what the hands do.
Say what kind of game it is, in words the store’s tags use: a hand-drawn exploration puzzle game. The reader is matching you to a shelf.
Say the one thing that is yours. Water as the puzzle. Air as the only clock. One is enough; two is fine; three is a list.
Say what it is not, if that is a reason to buy: “No combat, no dying.” Four words that answer the question a third of players are asking before they wishlist.

The shape that fits

A line of pull, a sentence of what-you-do, a sentence of what-it-is-not or what-it-holds. Three sentences, sometimes four. The first sentence is short because it is the one the search result shows whole; the second is the long one because it carries the verbs; the last is short again because it is the one people remember.

The worked example

Dive into a village drowned forty years ago. Hollowmere is a hand-drawn exploration puzzle game where you drain and flood rooms to move what floats, hunt for air pockets, and bring up sixty kept things that tell what happened here. No combat, no dying. Just the water, the bell, and the truth.

293 of 300 characters. The invented Hollowmere sample, written from the developer’s notes on the sample page: the pull (a drowned village), the verbs (drain, flood, move, hunt, bring up), the number that proves there is a game (sixty kept things), what it is not (no combat, no dying), and a close that names the three things on the page — water, bell, truth.

What was cut to get there

The developer’s notes said “three years of hand-drawn art by one person”. True, and in the About section; in 300 characters it is 48 of them spent on the maker instead of the game. The word “hand-drawn” stayed, as a tag word.
“Six to eight hours” — a fact buyers want, but the About section’s job. In the short description it reads as a promise the trailer cannot show.
“Full controller support, tested on Steam Deck” — a feature bullet, not a pull. It is in the five features.
Any other game’s name. The store’s rules say not to, and the notes did not ask for one.

Count it yourself

Try yours here. Nothing you type leaves this page.

0 of 300 characters

Three mistakes that cost the cut

Starting with the studio. “From the award-winning team behind…” spends the first thirty characters on something the reader cannot buy.
Adjectives in place of verbs. “An atmospheric, immersive, emotional journey” tells the reader nothing the hands do; drain, flood and hunt do.
Writing 301. The store cuts at 300 and does not add an ellipsis. A description that ends mid-word on the search result reads as a page nobody checked.

Three questions.

Does the short description have to match the About section’s first paragraph?

No, and it usually should not. The About section’s opener is the story (“The lake rose. The village stayed.”); the short description is the game. The two meet in the second sentence, where both say what you do. Writing the same paragraph twice wastes the one place a reader is still deciding.

Should it mention the price, the release date or the platforms?

No. The store shows all three beside it, and anything in the description goes stale the day one changes. Platforms go in the feature bullets if they are a reason to buy (controller support, Steam Deck tested).

Can I use all 300?

Use what the three sentences need and stop; 240 well spent beats 300 padded. The sample runs to 293 because the close earned its place. A description that reaches 300 exactly usually has a word in it that was added to get there.

Get the sample copy first

The invented Hollowmere page as a PDF, and our one-page list of the eight things a store page needs before you press publish and the four that get pages sent back.

Write my page

The short description, the About section, five feature bullets and an ordered tag list from your own notes, within two days, $49 / £39 / A$75 / C$65. We write it the way this page describes, from what you send; you paste it in yourself.