Construct 2 games run in a browser using HTML5 technology. This means there are many ways you can publish your games. Here's an overview of the ways to share your games with the world. There are also some other tips and points to consider before publishing your game.
Before you publish
Support touch controls
These days there a lot of people browse the web on touch-screen devices like iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets. These devices don't have a mouse or keyboard, so your game will be unplayable if you don't support touch controls! Make sure you support these users. See the tutorial on Touch controls and detecting the input method for more information.
Different screen sizes
HTML5 games can run on almost all modern smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. However, these devices have a wide range of screen sizes, from small to very large. You might want to read the tutorial on supporting multiple screen sizes.
Offline support
Construct 2 games can be played offline. This is important for several publishing options like iOS web apps and Chrome Web Store hosted apps. However, you must set up your server correctly! Your server must be set up to serve .appcache files with the MIME type text/cache-manifest. If this is not done, the offline support won't work and you will be wasting bandwidth! See the tutorial on offline support for more, including how to set up a simple auto-updater.
Publishing options
On your server
You can upload the exported project to your own web site and embed it in another page like a Flash game. See the comments in the exported index.html for tips, or this tutorial by Kyatric. There's also a whole separate guide on tips publishing HTML5 games to the web.
If you don't have your own server, these days website hosting is very cheap. You can probably find a low-cost host easily. There are free hosts as well, but they are likely to show a lot of adverts and may be unreliable. Several other publishing options require your own server, so you should definitely consider having your own hosting.
If you have your own server you should make sure the correct MIME types are configured.
Scirra Arcade
You can upload your game to our own online arcade. There's a few restrictions to make sure you read how to upload to the arcade. You can also embed the game on to other websites, similar to embedding YouTube videos!
DropBox/Google Drive
If you don't have your own server and want a quick way to share games, you can try uploading your game to DropBox or uploading to Google Drive. However free services usually have bandwidth limits which will prevent you hosting a very large or very popular game there.
Chrome Web Store
You can also publish your games to the Chrome Web Store. Games can be hosted on the Chrome Web Store itself (as a packaged app), which can also be charged for. This is also a good way to reach users of Chrome OS.
Facebook
You can also publish your games to Facebook. You can also use the Facebook object to integrate with features like hi-scores. It's another good way to get additional exposure. However, you must have your own hosting - and make sure your offline support is working!
iOS Web Apps
iOS Web Apps are very much like native apps, but they are installed from the web instead of the App Store. You must have your own hosting. See how to make an iOS web app. It's essential your offline support is working! iPhone and iPad users may be offline a lot of the time.
Windows 8 apps
Windows 8 supports touch-screen devices like tablets and allows desktop apps to be made using HTML5. Construct 2 can export your game in a format for Windows 8 - see How to make a Windows 8 Metro app.
Firefox Marketplace
Firefox Marketplace can reach users of Firefox OS, Firefox for Android, and the Firefox browser. For more information see how to export an open web app for Firefox Marketplace.
Android via Crosswalk
You can get on the Google Play store for Android using Crosswalk. For more information see How to export to Android with Crosswalk.
iOS via CocoonJS
You can get in the iOS app store by publishing via Ludei's CocoonJS. This also helps boost the performance of the game. For more information see How to export to CocoonJS.
Native phone apps via PhoneGap
You can build apps for a broad selection of mobile platforms with the PhoneGap Build service. See How to make native phone apps with Construct 2 and PhoneGap. You do not need your own hosting for this. You can publish through the phone provider's app stores, and have the option of charging for the app. However performance is poor on some platforms; you may want to use CocoonJS instead.
Publish to as many platforms as possible
The more platforms you publish to, the better. Each platform will give you a unique and steady influx of users, and this will add up more the more platforms you've published to.
Promoting your game
There's still plenty of work to do to let the world know about your game. Here's a quick list of simple things you can do to promote your game:
- Be sure to update your site or blog if you have one.
- Try sharing it on your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages if you have them.
- Let us know about the game! Sometimes we share our user's games on our official Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.
- Try submitting to Reddit's GameDev (a game developer audience), IndieGaming (an indie gaming audience) or Gaming (general gaming interest) sections.
- Try submitting to Digg's Gaming section
- Email any notable people you think might be interested in your game - you could get featured on blogs or websites and get a lot of hits
- Don't forget good old word of mouth! If you can get people talking about your game, it might go viral.
- Get your friends to help promote your game!
If you want to go even further, check out PixelProspector's link directories:
The Big List of Indie Game Marketing
The Big List of Indie Game Sites
The Big List of Indie Game Sites (global edition)
The Big List of Indie Game Development Forums
There's enough content and advice there to keep you busy for a long time!
There are some websites you might try to target particularly:
The sites IndieGames.com, TIGSource and PixelProspector are larger general indie gaming sites (not HTML5 specific), but may still be interested in your game. You could get some feedback posting to their forums if you don't get featured.
Good luck!