Ok, imagine all of the innovative games concepts on the AppStore. Tilt to Live? Fruit Ninja? You name it. Now imagine that game but without the quirky design and character. Tilt to Live - You would be an arrow and you would have to avoid randomly floating dots. If you hit a dot, you die. Your score is taken. You start over again. Fruit Ninja (would probably not have been called Fruit Ninja) - random 2d shapes are thrown up in front of you and you have to slice them. See? If you take away the character, the personality of each of the best selling games, then they wouldn't be best selling. They would be bland and boring. And that's where I think starting developers are going wrong these days. You may have an amazing concept (I think yours is actually pretty unique), but they do nothing with it, apart from putting into its simplest form and expecting people to latch onto it. Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way. You need to put something more into it to make it varied, exciting and overall a more enjoyable game. Don't give up. Learn from your mistakes for next time. One day a game by you will be reviewed by Touch Arcade!
Ha! Enjoyed those Hemingway-esque one sentence reviews of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope! A decent press release really, really is of the utmost importance when submitting reviews to smaller sites in particular. Bear in mind, indie review sites have much less man power, so can only cover games they reckon will appeal to their readers. Most every site out there is inudated with requests on a daily basis, so you gotta stand out from the crowd! Be sure to include a snappy description of your game or app (cover it's uniqueness or main selling point!), along with screenshots, a video, and, of course, a promo code. Beyond that, you could try establishing a rapport between yourself and the site's writers by commenting on articles, joining forums, following 'em on twitter, sponsoring a contest, enquiring as to their advertising rates etc, etc - basically anything that'll get your name out there and your game noticed by the powers that be
