We had recently launched this game https://itunes.apple.com/app/id722772595 To our surprise this has been our worse app launch ever!! We didn't cross 50 downloads on the first day and the following days was never better either. Our downloads began to fall from the second week on to 1-2 daily. Honestly we do not know what went so drastically wrong. We didn't expect our app to be the number one app out there. We were looking for numbers between 1000 to 2000 daily. To get more info you can check our app annie page as well. If anyone out there is looking for more numbers please feel free to PM me. May be some insight from the other devs here would be really helpful. We know that the endless runner concept is slowly fading out. But such low numbers didn't justify it one bit. Moving on we have started working on our new unity 3d project. I will come back with more details soon.
This post is in the wrong forum. It belongs in the Dev Discussion. You need to move it it ask a moderator to do it for you. Good luck with your thread
I think it's solely because it's very difficult to find new games in the AppStore anymore, unless it was featured. It gets buried beneath the rubble of the AppStore immediately. If almost no one can find your game, of course no one can download it. :/ Looks like a great game though, perhaps try some other means of marketing like iTunes cards contests, requesting reviews from review sites, making trailers, and etc. Like they say, after you finish developing a game, you are only 50% finished! the other half is MARKETING. and marketing is tough with little or no budget. Goodluck. Ill check out your game
I saw the game. I love shooters but this seems as you said an endless runner. Seen so many if those so I didn't bother with it (sorry)
One of the best ways to get your game noticed is by giving it a price drop... If you were absolutely desperate, you could make your game 99c for a day, then make it go free. It'll get a big boost in sales since it'll show up all over the apps that notify users of games on sale... I think it's probably your best bet, without spending money. While it's paid for a day, give out promo codes on the forums here, people will literally step over their own mother to redeem a promo code, even if it's a game they'd never normally play. So I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS! Just gave your game a little play, it's actually awesome. I love the scratch cards after each round, but it's a bit abusable since you can crash immediately and you still get to scratch a card.. I love the 3dish graphics while shooting through space. It's a very well made game! I tried searching it in the AppStore and I couldn't find it, can only seem to find it with the link you provided.. Better keywords might be something you should look into as well.. I also worry some people may overlook your game due to the company name... when devs use their first name instead of a company name, it seems a little amateurish, I worry people might bypass your game thinking it's some amateur teenagers first go at making a "game salad" game..
Sorry i have to say, i don't like the tap to shoot system, i made a upgrade on some of my weapon, but didn't know how to use it or i need to take weapon item during level?? That's my impression for your game. Otherwise, you need make some Marketing for your game to raise game visibility, there have thousand game on Appstore, people hard to find a new game on Store now, so Marketing is a very important part for any indie game devs. Try to make thread about your game on some Game ios Forum, find review website to review your game, adding social system for game, advert your game on other game website, ... Still a long way to fame, but i bet you can reach it, just patient and hard work
Well I gave it ago and I loved te scratch card thing, I can see how that could become addictive. But as others have said trying to tap to shoot with the same finger your trying to steer with is infuriating making the game unplayable. You really need to just auto fire when the finger is on the screen. Having said that its probably not why you downloads are low. The App Store is totally messed up with when it updates the new paid and free games in each section. You maybe top of the pile for a week before it updates or you could be unlucky enough to get pushed right down to the bottom of the list. If I was you relaunch the game under a slightly diffrent name on a Monday or Tuesday. Fix a few issues(auto fire). And do a bit more marketing this time around. I've still added a good review on the uk App Store for what it's worth. Good luck
How much time did you spend on marketing? I think the rule of thumb is to expect to spend around the same amount of time marketing as you do developing. A third of success is a great game, a third is marketing...and the last third is just plain luck.
This. I actually think your game - app icon and screenshots - look pretty good, though i haven't tried your game yet. Judging by your numbers, I don't have much hope for my forthcoming shmup! :/
Speaking of Visibility and SHMUPS, this article seems rather apt. It talks about Social messagin networks like Line and Kakao and how they're integral to getting into the top 10 in countries like SK. One of the games they featured in this article is a SHMUP. So indeed, it really is about visibility.
Things do not add up. It's funny that other games that are more simple than ours get a very high traction during the first week itself. We didn't even get this. We know that the game play is good because we did do a real live user test before going live and people loved it. Even on this forum, no one has really complained about the game. May its the end of the "Endless Runner"
I am trying the strategy that was mentioned. I have raised the price to the tier 1. Will make it free later today. Lets see how this works out for us.
Well, besides release the game what marketing did you do? Before release of my latest game and even now I'm still finding ways to get the word out. I've personally emailed 100+ sites asking for a review, provided promo codes, I've talked to users on here about what they like, don't like, etc, I'm on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc Here is the website I made for Boom Boat 2 (http://www.boomboat2.com/). I made a trailer and a press kit for the media to easily grab stuff if they need to. This was all in my plan from day one of game creation. I was mapping out the trailer half way through development. Even with all that, results have been only decent so far. I imagine if I just released the game and did nothing I would have the same result (1-2 sales a day). I think one thing to remember with this indie dev stuff is there are 100,000+ developers trying to do the exact same thing you are and the iOS store is being flooded with apps all the time. You have to let people know your app exists and convince them to give it a shot. Just my 2 cents...
It could just be that style of game is saturated. There are a lot of good games in that style. This means you need to find ways to stand out/market.
For starters its SD only. This is 2013 -- you've basically taken a large percentage of your potential customers and scared them away before they had a chance to investigate the game further. Next, it appears to me your character animations really clash with the art style of the game. I just downloaded it for free, and it is a) very fun; and b) it seems to have a freemium feel, with its nagging to buy stuff and to share the game. Was it like this before it went free, or is this your new marketing move? Also, the controls don't feel responsive. This game appears to be perfect for a tilt option, or at least auto-fire and easier touch handling. At the end of the day, I think you've released an average game in a crowded genre that just isn't standing out. Now its your job to do things like provide content updates and marketing to get noticed. If it were me I'd create a proper thread for the game, with gameplay footage, and give away at least 20 promo codes. This will catapult the game into the hot new games category. Edit: Also it doesn't help how general your apps name is. Even in the App Store, there's a ton of other games with "space quest" in the title. What do you think happens when someone searches for your game? They see all of your competitors. What about google? They probably won't even get your game on the first 10 pages unless they add something like "iPhone game" to the search, and even then they will still get all of your competitors too. For Instance: I just searched "space quest" using the TA App search function. There were exactly 9 other games ahead of yours with the name Space Quest in the title. I had to actually scroll down to find yours. I know your game is actually "Space Quest: ______", but that's just it...I don't remember what the rest of the name is...so most people will only remember and search for "space quest". So, while I may have been searching for your game, I found several other games that are your direct competitors that interested me just as much as (and in some cases more than) yours. I just searched 'space quest' on the App Store - same thing. I actually got 16 games ahead of yours (in the iPhone category, and I had to switch to 'iPhone apps' using my iPad). Your killing yourself with app visibility. This is a huge strategic error.
Hey, Thanks for the input. What you said really made sense. We will consider creating another thread along with some videos and promo codes.
Names Names can be tricky. Our game Elevator Joe was named that way because my friend and I were hoping to make a series of "Joe" games, in which our titular character would star in different time management/sim games. We did this fully knowing that the unfamiliar name and theme would go against us, but we were hoping that my partner's in-house marketing (he cross promotes his games through his apps) would be enough to sway people to look at the game. We were wrong. Looking back, had we named our game "Elevator Tycoon or "Elevator Dash" we might have picked up some more random people searching for the next "Dash" or "Tycoon" game. So it's really a toss up between standing out with an original name and being easily "findable" by the random iOS gamer. My sense (unproven) is that the perfect name mixes the unique with the known. My friend's game "Streetfood Tycoon" was a minor hit on the App Store, scoring 9m+ downloads. The name combines the familiar "Tycoon" genre with the unfamiliar "Streetfood theme" which I feel made it both unique but familiar. This is all theory of course, since there's really no way to prove this, but I thought I'd give my two cents on the topic.
