Is there some special way to get your app featured and reviewed on the front page of touch arcade? Does it help to buy a lot of advertising space?
A good game which is unique enough will be your safest bet. Also, I'm more than sure buying an ad space doesnt guarantee you a review.
I am sure that it does not "guarantee" a review, but I guess it would help... Maybe I am just being too cynical. Forget the thread. Having one of those mornings!
To be honest I prefer a review of a new original but advertised game than another headline about doodle jump or angry birds. JC
The "trick" is obviously to have a product that sparks enough interest so that the T.A. guys will notice and take a look. The second part of the equation is obviously to have a product that's actually good enough that they'll bother to review it. Advertising will probably help with the first part, as it improves the visibility/recognition of a game, but if it doesn't live up to the second part it probably doesn't help much...
The "tricks" are these 3 things: A remake of Karate Champ An emulated Sega game Anything retro - preferably with lots of neon vector art Failing that, they have said many times that they report on anything that is "big", and games that they like.
it's the usual across any of the big sites now. you need something visually engaging (screenshots really need to be attention grabbing), with maybe something very novel to offer gameplay-wise. If it doesn't look "money" and/or the app is a well-worn game type by a dev who is pretty no-name, then odds are fairly good that it'll never be on the front of TA or a similar website. Other sites like pocketgamer.uk will be pretty upfront about the fact that you'd better be ready to spend some advertising dollars if you'd like to get some coverage from them. But to be honest, getting front page coverage on any of these sites, while helpful (and a nice feeling of pride), is no longer even a guarantee of "the big time" anymore. Plenty of games get (repeated) coverage on the splash screen, and might enjoy a nice little (relative) "burst" of sales.. and yes very possibly even lead to some kind of iTunes feature, for a time.. but any of this is no longer any kind of guarantee of being "Made" akin to being asked by Johnny to sit over on the couch. Those days are over, amigo! What can you do to succeed, then? Well, it's a topic of pretty heated debate around here.. __________________ twitter - HeadcaseGames.com Puzzling has Evolved - Enter the 180 Hi-score Facebook contest! FreeAppTracker.com Win ANY app you want, daily!
I look at "more diverse apps" every day. No joke. The first thing I do when I wake up is look through every new game on the App Store, and I download any that look like they could vaguely even be remotely interesting. This includes apps/games that don't look "money", whatever that means. In fact, I generally download/try basically anything that looks like it might be a functional game. If your iTunes description and screenshots don't make that clear... well, you've got bigger issues than TouchArcade coverage I'm afraid.
It looks like getting a popular thread going in the iPhone/iPad game forum is a good way to get noticed as well. Post plenty of in game pictures, videos, information, and tips. They often refer to threads in their forum, and it gives Hodapp and the other writers a nice amount of information and game assets to work with in their articles.
I actually have a push alert set up via Boxcar so my phone makes obnoxious noises whenever a thread gets posted and it gets popular... So yeah, generating interest on the forum is a great way to get your name noticed, and not just for the sake of making my phone beep.
There are a lot of people shamelessly bumping their own threads. Personally, I hate bumping my own threads (even with new content/announcements) unless there's been at least one unsolicited response. Personally, I just wish there was a way for developers to get feedback on things that get passed over, even if this was a pay service, i.e. "consulting by Eli." Right now, the vast majority of communications to TA staff simply get silently ignored - not even a robo reply.
Just curious, but did you ever get a chance to check out "BridgeBasher"? It's been out for a while, but I love the game, and theres nothing else on the app store that offers the same gameplay. I've been on a bit of a crusade to get the game some attention, because the dev is kind of "meh" about self-promotion. It took some cajoling just to get him to do a FAD promotion. I mentioned the game to arn a few days ago, and he said he'd see if any TA reviewers wanted to take a look. Did the game already come and go, or is none of this even on your radar yet?
BridgeBasher plays like a game prototype. It seems like a really cool little bridge building physics simulator, but unless I'm missing something major, that's it. I guess if you were a physics student or something and wanted to see the differences in bridge designs and how they handle weight it would be cool, but it needs something else. Looking at a game like World of Goo, a similar physics engine and building mechanics is at the core of everything. However, what makes World of Goo is everything 2D Boy piled on top of that. Widely varied objectives which substantially mix up gameplay, a great art style, a cute story, etc. BridgeBasher has none of that. It kind of reminds me of when I saw Imangi's Max Adventure at GDC last year. It was barely anything more than a dual stick control setup that allowed you to move a little dude around and shoot a single kind of alien. They took that solid framework, spent months building on top of it, and it shows in the game they released. Seems like it has potential. I kind of thought the whole oil thing seemed a little too topical, and the game really needs some kind of character. Maybe if you were bombing different types of sea monsters instead, I'm not sure. I think a large part of what makes Angry Birds so appealing is that the birds and pigs all seem to have their own personality. I've had quite a few people reference the smug little smile that the pigs give when you lose a level as the reason why they hate the pigs and keep playing. You don't have any of that in Boom Boat. You play as a basic looking little ship bombing inanimate oil leaks. When I lose at a level I'm not like "arrggh I'll get you damn oil leaks" like I am with the pigs in Angry Birds. Instead, I'm just like "eh, well that's kind of lame, that thing is barely leaking anymore." The lack of character didn't make me feel at all invested in the game and eventually lead to me losing interest in the game before I completed the 30 levels it came with.
Thanks for the feedback. It's a shame you didn't finish it as I feel my best stuff is towards the end. Although that is my fault for not re-injecting the earlier levels with some of the personality I introduced towards the end of the game. And I agree with you about the smug pigs in Angry Birds... it's the little things that really create the magic.
This Pinch Media report is totally out of date now, but I imagine the findings are still mostly the same. You've really got to capture the player in the first launch of the game if you ever expect them to play it again... Much less get invested in it and telling their friends to check it out. Boom Boat seems like a cool concept, but totally drops the ball in grabbing the player's attention early on. You should really shift stuff around so it starts out cool instead of building up to be cool.
