Given some of the very positive feedback I have received, I would have expected it to be more popular. Could you tell me what's wrong with DropZap? P.S. If you have not seen it yet, check out http://dropzap.com
I dunno it looks very nice, although the Background (from NASA <3) it doesn't look very professional.
+1, It would be awesome to use your own wallpapers. But what I see is that it does not have any 12 year old appeals. Doodle/Zombie theme, nope Retro feel, check Explosions, nope Originality, check Not well known, not brand name publisher/brand Not to say you need to do this crap to make it appeal, it just is a tough place for quality, simplistic apps.
you may want to give the blocks a 3d feel.. its all about graphics/actions.. explosions, flames, sounds to match said explosion etc.. for the youth. i would just go with a solid back ground.. or let the user use his wall paper and match the theme or whatever. chris.
DropZap probably appeals more to older gamers, but it's not obvious how I could market it to that group. Perhaps I could make a free Android version and use that to promote the (non-free) iOS version. Would that work?
@amichail I have to agree, while it is a darn fun game, I think its minimalistic presentation won't help it reach much broad appeal. You also are treading on some weird psychological ground there with your frequent generosity. So with the minimalistic presentation and the fact that it appears free so often many could see that as a sign that the game is some sloppy half assed little, "Look, Ma, I made a game for the iPhone!" The other danger of the frequent long stretches of freeness mean that many folk almost interested then seeing it being sold for a more than reasonable $1, might be thinking, "Screw that, why pay when I'm sure in a few days ti will be free again." I can't wait to see what you come up with next but think you might want to add a little more graphical appeal and, ironically, not offer it for free as as often as you had DropZap.
Err, no reason to and those of us that own it will really appreciate the support but, just trying to be honest here, I don't see this ever having any mass market appeal (i.e. the game that will allow you to quit your day job and become a full-time developer). Realize this public you're trying to court are the same ones that make all of the boob and fart apps best sellers. You might have a great game but how would the general public ever know when looking through a huge list of apps and only have your icon and maybe a screenshot or two to go by? Your game is great fun but there is nothing there to grab the average consumer's attention...at the same time if you go the cheesy route of changing your icon to some scantily clad bikini model, while it would do wonders for your sales, I and many others would write you off as a total sell out to the lowest common denominator.
You have posted more or less this exact same question many months ago. Not saying there is anything wrong with that, just noting it. As folks noted then and now, the game doesnt look attractive graphically. You have put a lot of effort into thinking about how to market the game, maybe its worth a resdesign of the shapes to give them texture and depth. For example, look at Chain Link Pro, a nice looking shape-related game. Pretty sure I passed up on dl'ing drop zap when it was free based on looks alone. Probably a mistake, but I try tons of freebies, and I have to make some limiting choices somehow. I dunno whether you'll get enough sales to be worth a graphics boost, but I think you would need it to have a shot.
I will look into improving the graphics, but unfortunately, I'm not an artist. It's also hard for me to predict what others will like. BTW, if you want to check out DropZap for free, there are promo codes here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?threadid=59806 http://www.google.com/buzz/amichail/DF2y9gVaf8K/DropZap-2-3-3-released-promo-codes-Notable-changes
I feel your pain, man. It's frustrating to have an honest, original game out there and the meat of your audience never knows it exists. This is what I have learned in iPhone development - when you finish actually building the game, your job is only beginning. You must spend lots of time, energy, even money marketing it. If you've never done those things before, you have to go through a trial-and-error period (school of hard knocks) to learn why certain things work and certain things don't. We learned a lot with our 1st release iFist, and used a lot of that knowledge in producing our follow-up 180. Even then there was still so much ground we'd not yet covered. With iPhone, it's a finicky market, there's such an oversaturation of product, these days if your game doesn't look like it is worth at least $30 from screenshots alone (and it should look SNES or psOne quality) then the majority of would-be customers will never even give it a look, most likely. If you are doing a puzzle game, consider who plays puzzle games - casual gamers. Girls and kids. (Also hardcore gamers, but then that's gonna be a different look) When building 180, i kept lookign at games like Bust-a-Move for some sort of a visual yardstick to know what I was competing against: Obviously I didn't go that saccharine/detailed with the look of my game, but it was good to at least know the neighborhood I would try to be in. On the other end of the spectrum you have Drop7. Probably a fairly successful game, it's been out for a while now, I have no idea of its sales but it's got plenty of press. Looking at this game, there's nothing to it. If you see the screenshot out of context and know nothing about the game, it doesn't look the least bit interesting. It's a hit, for some reason, but it will likely never reach the kind of mainstream acceptance it should based on it's wonderful gameplay alone (I love it, play it every day.. but it took me 9 MONTHS before even trying it, despite the facts that all my friends raved about it). So there you have it. At this point we are in a phase where games can't expect to be successful on the Appstore unless they have some nice gimmick going for them, or brand, or expensive marketing push, or hookup/etc. Things will still slip through the cracks, for sure, but it is the exception rather than the rule. What to do? Make more games if you can. Make simple one that look like Bust-a-Move or something, and make a "more apps' button on the front page that links to your iTunes page with DropZap available on it. Maybe that's a decent way to get more sales. But don't give it out free anymore.. a lite version could help, but you need to be very careful about how to design it (and even then, it might be too late for a lite version to make any real difference). Good luck! EDIT: Go HERE if you want to see all the marketing I've doen fr my own game, and what it did/didn't do for me.
