I thought I'd mention too: Our number 1 download market for the game is China right now (by a large margin), but we don't have a Chinese Language version. I completely did not expect this, and we should probably do a language patch soon. I don't know if it's too late to worry about it or not.
Are you ever going to tell us what game you released planetman ? You constantly ask questions but never seem to answer anyone elses.
I think his left the house since his app didn't deliver millions of downloads which is no surprise considering the way he handled things.
I was very much expecting to find out the name of this app today, a three page thread! It must be like my earlier unfinished games where they're really cool but few have seen them, I couldn't get a thread going so this seems such a waste.
This is a great game! The artwork is a bit rough but it has an indie charm. How many downloads did you get in total so far? Also I've seen your ad banner in Touch Arcade before. How much downloads did it generate if you don't mind sharing with us?
AppAnnie is suggesting you are featured in Australia (#127), Canada (#173), Lithuania (#21). Just curious, but how do these sources affect your downloads? About China, I think you are late already. Except when you specifically targeted it, China is a unique market where Android dominated and your game doesn't have the specific charms for this market, so it would be just a mini-boost for a short time. Our app Jumpi Jumpo is once in this similar situations (featured in small markets, mini-boosted downloads from China). We are from Vietnam, though
Yeah, we looked at the same sources (AppAnnie) Being <200 in small markets didn't affect the downloads at all. We had an OK first couple days (~1000 downloads) then we fell off a cliff and are tricking along at around 2 or 3 downloads a day. We have sold a couple of dozen copies and have seen almost nothing (a few pennies) from ad revenue. We just got a Touch Arcade review, so hopefully that moves the needle a little although probably not enough to get us into any sort of discoverable position on the app store. I'll let you know tomorrow . We put an ad on the forum and the side bar of the main page here - traffic from those were minimal, and conversion was even lower. I'm sure I know what the problems with the game are (hard to explain, less than stunning art). But we didn't expect it to do this badly . Ah well - if you guys are curious about any other numbers I'd be happy to share.
Personally I think your art is more than sufficient. Your apple screenshots are a bit over the top and make it hard to show gameplay. The physics one coming first made me guess it was a slingshot game. The unlock price is kind of high but I have also read more and more that mechanic isn't great for getting IAP (which is sad because it is a really great way for gamers IMO. It how classic games like duke, doom and keen became big).
Congrats on getting it reviewed and the score of 4 stars! Well deserved. I'm really interested to know how much downloads it will generate in the next few days. I'm looking forward to your update!
The first day after the review did generate a little bit of traffic to the game ~400 downloads yesterday, and a handful of purchases. It will be interesting to see if it's possible to keep any sort of momentum.
Yeah, we were hoping that having a reasonable price and 'being totally fair' wasn't a detriment. Haha, I know how to make games - I have no idea how to sell them .
Sounds like you are getting about 1% based on what you said, which is actually a pretty conversion rate from what I have read. I don't really know either, which is why i keep my day job and always will
Yeah, our conversion is right around where we expect it to be (~1%). Frankly, I'm happy people are enjoying it enough to pay for it (which was the plan all along). I'm trying to get in some leaderboards now to encourage people to finish the game. We either get people who play for hours a session or drop off after the first couple levels. But I guess that's expected too for a game like this.
Sorry to hear your Star Saver launch experience wasn't great. The app store is pretty brutal it seems and many quality games fall through the cracks. My kids are loving it, so that's one extra sale at least.
I appreciate the support! I thought making a "big game" would get press attention, but it's looking like we should have put more work into a consistent and unique style to better stand out for reviewers. The touch arcade review got us more sales and movement. Ad revenue so has been about one dollar, and conversion has still been around 1%. Our breakeven, just on 3rd party sourcing and marketing spend is around 6K sales, which I thought we would reach no problem. (If you want to add in the thousands of hours we worked on the game, it's much, much higher). So far, we probably won't even come close unless something drastically changes. We're going to concentrate on the port to console and PC, and hope we can do this quickly and cheaply enough to recover some money. Heh, it's painful to lose MORE money on this project .
Does that mean you spent 30K on that or that you need 6K in profits from sales (so like 1200 sales?) What do you think will be different on PC?
Interesting, about your chinese downloads. We made our app, (in my sig) free for a couple of days and the top downloads were from china as well (Nearly 3000 in 2 days) When paid, we're lucky to get one DL. Our app is an adventure game with over 600 lines of dialogue in english. Go figure. I don't know if they set up automated systems to download when something goes free, and check it out later, after they have snagged it, during the sale. We have also had very minimal sales, Almost made a days wage in first 2 months of sales on app store. 16 months full time dev, living of an equity loan against the house! No less. It's a very tough market. Released Android this weekend, we'll see how that goes!
16 months? Crazy! Foolish! That's to be left to larger studios that can invest more than a million in marketing already. I simply refuse to work on projects that require more than a year's quarter of development time before release.
You will found sales on google play harder to come by than itunes. I agree it is crazy and foolish especially when you have no reason to think your game will succeed, especially when you can develop while doing a job easily for a mobile a game.
Yeah hindsight is a wonderful thing. I got lured in by the success of other similar apps that had done well, with not so good quality graphics, and thought I'd do something new and different with better graphics, not churn out the same old rubbish that ends up on the store a lot of the time. Sorry for trying, Initially it was supposed to be a 6 month project, but you know how it goes. This is a huge product for an indie to develop, I've spent 3 months alone just implementing user feedback, to make the app better. Oh wait theres room for another flappy bird on the store, I'll just do one of those in 2 weeks and make it rich, now were getting back to the OP's assumption, with his drawing app.
