Behind the Build: How ‘Ghosts of Tabor’ Found Success on App Lab on Its Path to the Meta Quest Store

From tactical, strategy-dependent shooters to run-and-gun battles across sprawling maps, first-person-shooters (FPS) have captivated audiences for decades. At their core, most FPS games are similar in nature—if you’ve played one, chances are you can pick up the basic mechanics of a new one pretty quickly—but over the past 20-plus years, developers have still found ways to create an increasingly wide variety of FPS games that give players a fresh perspective on a classic genre.

One prime example of a game putting a new spin on the FPS genre for VR is Ghosts of Tabor, an exhilaratingly fun extraction-based survival game in which players find themselves fighting through a mix of player-versus-environment (PVE) and player-versus-player (PVP) combat. Despite these unique gameplay elements and more, the developer teams at Combat Waffle Studios and Beyond Frames Entertainment knew they had their work cut out for them in order to successfully grow an audience in a crowded FPS market.

Thanks to the teams’ dedication to building a community through consistent communication, active listening, and an eagerness to share fun content, players have quickly connected with Ghosts of Tabor as the snowball effect of their efforts gains momentum—like jumping up the leaderboard from an item-fueled killspree. Since its release on App Lab in March 2023 and supported through Oculus Publishing, Ghosts of Tabor has already surpassed $3 million USD in sales on its way to launching on the Meta Quest Store next year.

We caught up with Combat Waffle Studios CEO Scott Albright and CDO Reinaldo Vieira along with Beyond Frames Entertainment Head of Publishing Maeva Sponbergs to learn more about the development process behind Ghosts of Tabor and dive into marketing strategies that other developers can use to grow an audience on App Lab or the Quest Store.

Scott Albright: A lot of our inspiration for Ghosts of Tabor came from non-VR games that we really enjoy and felt were missing in VR. The thrill of survival in the PvPvE' setting is our favorite aspect—especially seeing what happens during the unique social interactions it creates. The reactions that players have while trying to figure out if an encounter is between friends or foes are priceless, and these social scenarios add to the suspense of every encounter in the game.

Maeva Sponbergs: We believe it’s been core to the viewership and spread of Ghosts of Tabor through word of mouth. People are getting into the game with a perception of how real-world social interactions should work, but then they face players with a dash of malice that might bend the rules a bit. It makes for interesting interactions that add a bit of flair to the core game and make it enjoyable to watch—almost like a reality show.

Creating a game for viewership is a very difficult formula to specifically and successfully design for in my experience, but when it really works, you hopefully have a game that is both enjoyable to play as well as being enjoyable to watch for others—thereby increasing the chances for the game to be broadcasted to a much larger audience.

To put it simply: Making sure that your game streams well can be key to success with any organic marketing campaign, but beware of trying to force this. It should come naturally within the context of the game itself.

Reinaldo Vieira: CPU and GPU bottlenecks were our biggest hurdles during early development, but proper profiling using in-engine stats (Ghosts of Tabor runs on Unreal Engine) and external tools like RenderDoc helped nail down the trouble areas and address them. We specifically used RenderDoc because it allows you to see more in-depth rendering data.

RV: I would strive to get your product into the hands of testers as early as possible. It wasn’t until we had an early release in the hands of a few hundred testers that we started realizing some blocking issues in the game’s development. We also recommend profiling constantly during every stage of development, especially as new features are added. This will ensure you can catch performance issues as soon as possible and makes it easier to pin-point what changes may have caused them.

SA: Getting the game into the hands of players early in closed tests has been the very foundation of our efforts to gain traction. Even initially, we noticed that there is a stickiness to the game and people were enjoying themselves, and from there we made sure to connect with influencers to get their perspective and spread awareness.

By giving people an early hands-on experience, we hoped that they would see the game for what it was and enjoy it as much as we do, despite it not being completely polished or finished.

Thankfully, most people trying the game in those early days really got into it and started posting videos on social media. It didn’t take long to find out that people have a lot of fun watching game clips, and it’s been super exciting to see people’s reactions in the comments. With attention increasing on social media, peoples’ expectations for the title are also starting to build, even before the launch.

SA: Being present with our community and truly listening to feedback is one of our core and fundamental pillars of how we took the game from early pre-alpha and onwards into where we are today. We’re still in Beta/Early Access, so we have some ways to go before full launch. We would be nothing without our community, and the game would probably look very different without the feedback we’ve received so far. We’ll continue listening to our players and cater to them as the audience grows.

SA: Like many other developers, our main platform of choice is Discord. It’s truly been an amazing journey where the Discord server has rapidly grown, from around 10,000 members at the time of launch on App Lab to now housing over 50,000!

Of course, growing an audience isn’t without its challenges. We’re really trying to make sure we’re present where our players are. We create content and communicate across most social platforms, but our Discord is the main hub and where our players know they can interact directly with the developers.

As we’ve grown, we’ve been employing community managers to help manage the communication so our developers can focus more on development while still keeping an ear to the ground in the community.

MS: Due to the growth and the attention it requires, the team has opted to prioritize Discord above others, and all other channels follow that platform. With Combat Waffle being a relatively small team, there’s a necessity to focus on what feels native and natural to the studio and its players and do that really well. It’s easy to try to jump onto every platform, when really only one or two matter. Grow from there, if and when needed.

That being said, as general advice: Keep an eye on your community on your platform of choice vs. sales and retention in the game. If you notice that the bulk of players aren’t present on your main platform, consider adding easily accessible channels like a website with news updates, and make sure to keep that up to date as well.

SA: We use in-game assets to create our trailers, which are generally a mix of gameplay and cinematics. We make sure that we portray things that players can actually do in-game, or show a feature that is definitely going to be implemented at a later date.

We believe what sets us apart is the passion that we all have for VR gaming, coding, and making art, as well as our studio’s unique culture with members from all over the world. We all have a really strong work ethic and usually go above and beyond what traditional studios can do while collaborating remotely. Our hope is that this energy and drive translates over to our marketing materials as well.

MS: Find your audience and what platform is most important to them, then communicate, communicate, communicate. Try to post videos and content as early as possible on relevant channels—even if the game is still in development. This can help you build momentum and keep people engaged before launching on App Lab. It might seem fruitless at times, but keep at it for a while before giving up. We also recommend checking in on your content metrics often to make sure you understand what draws higher engagement and what doesn’t drive excitement.

Since App Lab apps don’t appear in the Quest Store, it’s even more important to post direct links to your app’s product detail page (PDP) in your messaging, and be super clear in all communication when explaining how to search for your app. For example, Combat Waffle has posted videos specifically aimed at addressing this challenge to make it easier for players to find Ghosts of Tabor.

SA: We would have employed an in-house content marketing team that specializes in VR instead of contracting an external team that was more general marketing-focused. We saw tremendous impact in terms of user reach by having our internal content team focused on Tabor versus deploying an external general team with less familiarity with VR and our game’s audience.

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Ghosts of Tabor is available to purchase on App Lab.