Alex Curelea’s Dev Log

I released my first iPhone game, Whack-a-Kitty, on Dec. 20, almost 3 weeks ago. People have been asking how it went, so here are some numbers and first impressions.

First, if you missed it the first time, here’s a neat timelapse video of the game being made:

And a shameless plug for a friend: if you like the artwork in Whack-a-Kitty, and need an illustrator for a project, get in touch with Willis: http://itstheburbs.blogspot.com/

The Numbers

Nothing outstanding - we only ever read about the breakaway successes, but I suspect most game launches are a lot closer to this (or worse). The app is free, so 2000 downloads isn’t anything to get too excited about.

The first spike - on the 21st - was “launch day”, most of the traffic came from Reddit. I was hoping the “making of” video would also get some attention on Hacker News, but it languished with about 7 votes and a few positive comments - bad luck/timing, I guess.

The second spike - 25th to 27th - is the famous Christmas effect. I didn’t do any special promotion - as far as I can tell, that is simply organic growth from increased activity in the app store over Christmas. I’m definitely happy I managed to get the game on the App Store before the holidays.

I don’t have any numbers from other games to compare it with, but I’m happy with the 6 minute average session length. That seems reasonably immersive for an iPhone game.

Some data breaking down user activity:

What went right

The making-of video

I thought the video would be a useful promotional tool, and I was right. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd, the video is a good way to offer something different to people. It got about 4000 views in the first few days, and probably more compliments than the game itself

Endless mode

The game features two play modes, “Story Mode” - finite levels with brief intros that tell a short story - and “Endless Mode”, where you play uninterrupted until you lose. Endless mode was almost an afterthought (I think Issy convinced me to include it), but it seems to work much better than story mode.

In retrospect, that should be obvious: endless mode lasts about 5 minutes, at the end you get immediate feedback in the form of a score, you can compare that with friends, and the feedback loop is short enough to allow for friendly competition on the spot.

The stats seem to confirm this: about 87% of Endless Mode games were finished, while only 27% of Story Mode games were.

This seems like a natural area to emphasize and expand in future versions - it IS fun to play and somewhat addictive, so it makes sense to push it more.

High Score leaderboard

GameCenter support was also almost an afterthought - I mostly wanted to learn how to work with it, and lots of games include it, so it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Since the leaderboard is global, this has spawned some serious competition at the office - two friends have been going head-to-head competing for the top spot for “Endless Mode” for a week now, playing a few games every day and occasionally leapfrogging each other. I wasn’t expecting this level of competition, and it’s really fun to watch.

Integration is still really basic - the leaderboard seems like another area to expand. There is no feedback if you get a new high score after finishing a game, unless you open GameCenter and look it up (which is sometimes very slow). Also, sharing scores on Facebook or Twitter, and the ability to challenge friends, could be good.

What didn’t work

Story Mode

As I mentioned above, only 27% of Story Mode games were completed, and only 8 (that’s roughly 0%) were actually won. That’s terrible. The pacing is too slow, and it takes too long (about 15 minutes) to finish, with no easy way to save progress and resume later. The last level may also be confusing, although I suspect few people even got that far.

Getting reviews

I submitted the game to a few iPhone game review sites, I haven’t heard anything back from any of them. Not too surprising, but disappointing nonetheless. I haven’t even come close from reaching all the review sites yet, so I’ll keep plugging away at this.

“Release Date” traffic / getting into a top 100

I made a big deal of having all my promotional material ready for release - the plan was to do a marketing push (to the extent of my abilities) on the day the game hit the app store. The theory was that I had one shot at combining traffic from my release announcements with natural traffic from being on the “Release Date” list on the iPhone, to get enough downloads to maybe sneak onto the bottom of a top 100 sublist.

Turns out, I shouldn’t have bothered. I released the game on the app store the evening before I made the announcements on Reddit etc. In the approximately 12 hours between, the game got a grand total of… about 20 downloads. So much for the “Release Date” list. The fact that the list is alphabetical, and “Whack-a-Kitty” starts with a W, probably didn’t help. I don’t care if it’s absurd, my next game is starting with “A”.

Understanding traffic

Coming from the web world, this is the hardest to get used to: I have no idea where my downloads are coming from!

I can guess at the reasons for the Christmas spike, but other than that I’m in the dark. Are people finding the game through searches in the app store? If so, for what terms? How many downloads are based on word-of-mouth? Is the leaderboard driving any downloads? Am I still getting residual traffic from the sites where I posted on release day? If so, which ones?

Without knowing any of this, it’s hard to understand where my audience is coming from, and how to reach them better.

Inconclusive / What’s Next

Donations model

I’m trying a slightly different model than most games - rather than charging for the game, or slapping some ads on it, I’m asking for donations (”Buy our eternal gratitude”). Basically, pay what you think the game is worth, by choosing one of several in-app purchases. I got 4 or 5 donations so far, two of them from people I know - but overall traffic is still low, so it’s too early to tell how effective it is. I suspect it will be slightly better than advertising. This also seems like an obvious target for A/B testing, if I ever find enough time.

Promotion

This is my main challenge right now - figuring out how to promote the game. I’m mainly a developer, and I know my stuff when it comes to writing code, but I don’t have much experience with promoting an app.

Whack-a-Kitty has been a learning project from the very beginning, and promotion seems to be the next learning stage - I need to try out different things, and learn what works and what doesn’t. There’s still some purely mechanical work I need to do - keep submitting to review sites, post on iPhone forums, etc. - but beyond that I’ll need to get creative.