Congrats on the first (?) app regardless! It's an achievement on its own. I released my first app one week ago. To the day it has made $16.64 and has been downloaded 29 times. I don't what I was expecting. In the beginning I was psyched because it was out there and it was being downloaded even by people I didn't know personally, but in the past couple days I've been bummed because the downloads rates are not holding up. It has actually had only 1 paid download in the last 4 days. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=244272 I'm glad I didn't quit my day job before starting.
Gotta wonder if he worked from scratch or reused some assets or even a basic code frame. The advantage is that they largely copied the Clash of Clans system, the Star Wars wrapping is the only plus element with the two factions (two skins). The rest is CoC with even less features. So it's very safe to clone that, but the product in the end is rather good. SW games rarely disappoint anyway. I wish I could say the same of some other franchises...
We had exactly the same with our first game Jungle Climber. We've got a very loyal following but the download total isn't great. From experience we know we did certain things at the wrong time. Didn't do a lot of pre-release marketing, releasing shots of the game in development etc. Like the guys say, learn from the experience so you can make your next game even better! Think of your first few games as a way of growing your following, build a community, treat them well, get them excited and eventually it will all fall in to place.
It was their first game in unity and yes it has a lot of elements from CoC and I really like it in general (but i don't play CoC). I would be interested to see the prototype but obviously it won't ever see the light of day. I am sure art wise there would of been lots of assets reused/placeholders in the prototype(although perhaps they had some from other SW projects since that studio does a lot). I also assume it was single player with none of the social/online aspects.
On iOS its been dreadful. Star Wars Lego is the best one i've played, the rest have been terrible, Force Unleashed was pretty poor, Pit Droids dire etc. That shoot em up released recently was terrible. Would rather play any of the 90's Star Wars games than practically any of the iOS stuff.
I did look at yours a few days ago but as its a card game i didnt go further. Plus it seems to be more a traditional finnish game so i think that'll put some people off as its not a 'worldwide' type of game. Some people will read that title and move on i think Tried Roller Runner the other day, i think it 'could' have so much potential (Reminds me a bit of some of those sonic levels) but one hit one death put me off and the controls i thought worked poorly. Graphically it could be so good, make the controls better, give the user lives or energy and a jump button and you've got a good retro style endless runner. But as it is i think its poor gameplay wise (sorry)
Thanks for the thoughts, I may try changing the title at some point. I figured Finnish would be interesting, but you're quite right it can also be off-putting. That said, majority of downloads so far are not from Finland.
You're not the only one. My app did get a few hundred downloads for the first 2 weeks which isn't bad and made a few dollars with Chartboost but I didn't do much marketing because I went straight to developing my next app. I rushed because I wanted to make this one specifically for this month (a zombie game). The other problem was making a thread on here. I used the itunes embed code but it just kept on saying "app info processing." So that was a fail and I posted a video of the gameplay but no one really cared If anyone is interested, here is the itunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chasing-john-doe/id910131603?ls=1&mt=8
Hey, I'm a believer in honest feedback. I think the screenshots look good, I just don't immediately understand why I should play it or what's fun about it. That said, the genre is not really my cup of tea. Regardless, based on looks its a fine job! Good luck with the Zombies, I'm also looking forward to Walking Dead Season 5.
By the way, I'm making it a point to leave app store reviews on everyone's games I check out from this thread .
