Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Mothil, May 5, 2015.

  1. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    It makes me very happy to hear you liked it! I'll try adding a shudder to the turtle soon, I just have my hands full with Xcode and mac port bugs at the moment. I just can't seem to fix it for the life of me.

    I'm also looking into the Facebook SDK at the moment, cause I really, really want to add mobile leaderboards. :)
     
    RavenOfCode and MoonJellyGames like this.
  2. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    I FINALLY got the xcode build working yesterday, so I've sent it's in for review at app store again. I've been waiting anxiously, I'm hoping for a reply tomorrow.

    After that, I'll try to fix leaderboards and facebook sharing (as well as the already fixed shrimp size). That'll come in an update some day in the future. :)
     
    MoonJellyGames and RavenOfCode like this.
  3. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah! I got into iTunes Store! Feel free to check it out if you have an iPhone. :)

    Google Play:
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.MothilGames.Akiro

    iTunes Store:
    https://itunes.apple.com/no/app/akiro/id1135384074?mt=8

    Depending on user feedback, I might end up making the start a bit easier. I've increased the shrimp hitbox, but I haven't launched that update yet. I'm also working on implementing facebook sharing, as well as friend leaderboards. I might also try to sneak into the Microsoft Store, let's just see! :D
     
    MoonJellyGames and RavenOfCode like this.
  4. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    It's time for the scary part: Marketing. This is a whole new experience for me, but I'll just start the same way I do with most other things: dive head first.

    I also managed to update the google play build with a build that crashed at startup Monday night. I couldn't for the life of me find out what was wrong, so I had to go to bed (extremely tired) with a build on Google Play that crashed. Needless to say, I had nightmares about bad reviews and 1-stars all night long. "Thankfully" I haven't been active on the marketing, so I don't think anyone noticed it. :p
     
    RavenOfCode and GarBenjamin like this.
  5. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    @Mothil That's great! Hopefully you can build up a good mount of noise about your game so people at least realize it exists! And great job on just moving naturally from the development to the marketing instead of just releasing it and then complaining that you're getting no or few downloads.

    Have you put up a web build updated with the bigger collision area on the shrimp? I know you said you hadn't released that yet on mobile but I'd like to try it out in web. I should be able to survive longer and see more of the work you have put into the game. :)

    Of course, if you're too busy with other work no worries.
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2016
    Mothil likes this.
  6. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Yeah, it seems like learning to market our games are something that could hugely benefit in the career.
    I released that update on mobile yesterday, but unfortunately I started getting some bugs with the gamejolt API, so I've removed it from the project for now.

    I'll be honest, fixing the gamejolt build is not on the top of my list at the moment, but I'll try to get around to it. Right now I'm struggling with something scary: conversion rate.

    I've had 26.000 impressions on iTunes Store, and 'only' 23 downloads. There's also 305 page views.

    305 out of 21,176 unique devices have clicked on the Akiro page. That's 1.5%...
    23 downloads out of 305 page views, that's 7.5%...

    Of course there are various factors, like robot scans (as someone told me) and friends downloading. This scares the crap out of me. I know I've tried to make a game that doesn't follow the typical naming convention in app store, and pixel art isn't the most popular thing there, but that's a scary low percentage.

    One thing's for sure, I need to create a better logo, and I might have to change the title to something more exciting.
     
  7. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    I wouldn't pay attention to the impressions. The page views makes more sense to me to use as a metric. And 7.5% well I don't know about mobile but overall for conversions online in general that is great!

    Of course, like you said it's down to testing now. Try different logos, different headlines whatever. There might be some magical way people around here know of but I only know of experimentation testing and tracking. Keep what works and use that as the control unit and test it against something else. Go down the line on each piece and only ever test one thing at a time so you know for certain it was that one specific change that increased or decreased performance.

    EDIT: Oh wait a second. If you mean the 21,176 unique devices are the total number of folks who have seen the icon for your game listed among the icons for other games and out of those 305 people clicked on it then yeah I'd focus on that. Because it is the weakest point in the chain. You always want to focus on the weakest link in the chain. That's the one you can usually get the most "bang from your buck" with.

    Again this is just from my general Internet Marketing experience not game specific but marketing is marketing. If you can boost that up to 3% while keeping the same quality level of the targeting you've doubled your downloads. I have no idea what average click-throughs and download conversions are in Mobileland though. That would be good to know so you don't waste time optimizing things that are already above average.
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2016
    Mothil likes this.
  8. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    I'm definitely going to experiment a lot with logos, designs and such in the coming future. I bookmarked about 20 links about marketing for indies, marketing in general and marketing books. I'm sort of looking forward to getting more educated about this, cause it's kind of fascinating how the whole thing works. :)
     
    GarBenjamin likes this.
  9. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    Awesome. Yeah it's fun. I used to hate the idea of marketing most of my life. Then once upon a time many years ago I made a game and set up a website for it trying the shareware model. Despite it being rated very good at various download sites I only made like a dozen sales in 6 months. It was then that I realized making a good game is only 1/2 of the battle. So I started learning about marketing and ended up focused on that for 7 to 8 years. Quite a rabbit hole I went down. ;)

    It's fun to do the tests and track the results. I've always liked doing experiments. Hopefully you do too. Good luck. I'll stop spamming your thread now. lol
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2016
    Mothil likes this.
  10. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Yeah, I think I can really start to like this. I have also always loved experiments, so I'm looking forward to doing all sorts of crazy stuff with my future games. The iTunes Connect App Analytics is very intuitive as well, so it's going to be very exciting watching how the impressions, page views and downloads change as I make adjustments.

    July 25, I had 21,176 unique impressions, and the statistics for yesterday just arrived as well:
    July 26, I had 4,969 unique impressions.

    I would guess that I maybe, possibly had my game on a "new games" list or something along those lines, at the first day.
    But yes, this is fun, and I'm going to love playing around with this. :)
     
    RavenOfCode and GarBenjamin like this.
  11. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Why didn't I think of this sooner, I can just throw my icon-tests in the devlog!

    I think my favorites are the one in the bottom left, and the bottom right.
    If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to share them. :)

     
    RavenOfCode likes this.
  12. RavenOfCode

    RavenOfCode

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2015
    Posts:
    869
    The upper, right, middle is my favorite, the others look nice too but I like the darker colors and hows its filled up with shrimp. :)
     
    Mothil likes this.
  13. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    I like the same one as ^^^^ top row 3rd one over.
     
    Mothil likes this.
  14. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    I sort of agree, it was my favorite at first as well. But after viewing it on my phone, I found it to maybe be a bit too... chaotic? I think I've decided to go for the lighter circle without shrimp, but not entirely sure yet. :)

    img.jpg
     
    RavenOfCode and GarBenjamin like this.
  15. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    I don't know what the mobile mindset is but all of the other icons look boring to me. Too corporate (to me corporate stuff = yawn). The Akiro icon at least looks interesting. Also looks like you put way more effort into it than the other logo creators did. Just my impression.
     
    RavenOfCode and Mothil like this.
  16. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    I have no idea either, ahhaha. I think my best option is to just try different stuff and see what the most positively to. I'm working on update 1.2 as we speak, which is mostly just a big store visual update (and some balancing).

    Also, while I'm already posting, here's a look at my 5 days of impressions:



    It's pretty depressing, hah. I had that 26k views 'the first day' and then it just plummits. I need to get the visual update out asap, and promote the **** out of it.
     
    RavenOfCode and GarBenjamin like this.
  17. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    Yeah it's a sad reality. You worked hard and made a great game. Very solid and interesting as well. But with so many people throwing games out there it takes hardly any time at all and your game is knocked off the Recent Additions / New (whatever it is called in any given place) list.

    You've got the right mindset (IMO anyway). Just test stuff and see firsthand what your audience likes and yes promote the heck out of your game. Even just one hour per day dedicated to nothing but marketing is probably 55 minutes more daily than most people releasing games are doing.
     
    Mothil likes this.
  18. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    It doesn't bother me that much. I'm here to learn! :)
     
    RavenOfCode and GarBenjamin like this.
  19. QFSW

    QFSW

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2015
    Posts:
    2,906
    Hey for some reason I got un followed from this thread, thought you had stopped
    Congrats on releasing and hopefully you can make some noise
     
    Mothil likes this.
  20. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Heya! Yeah, I haven't been posting that much either way though. I guess that while I'm at it, I can throw in the impressions I've had until today.

    That first bump was at release. From there on it just gradually declined, but on the 4th of August, it jumped up to 2000-ish impressions and kept like that until the 7th. After that, it went down to slightly over 1000 impressions.

    Impressions: how often akiro has been seen in the app store.
    There's a small chunk of people who visit the store page, and an even smaller group who downloads it, but considering I haven't spent any significant time marketing yet, I'd say it's decent. I'll promote it more when I've got Game Center implemented. :)

    Screen Shot 2016-08-10 at 8.31.28 PM.png
     
  21. LucarioOfLegends

    LucarioOfLegends

    Joined:
    May 18, 2015
    Posts:
    3
    Dear Mothil:
    I have been following your page for a little while. But I must say, I am truly inspired by what you have accomplished here.
    I have downloaded Akiro for myself and it is a blast to play. You have inspired me so much that as of today, I am working on my own mobile game as well. The only thing I have noticed is that a large majority of your entities begin spawning from the top, and that turtles appear a lot less than expected. But this still one hell of a game. I will continue to follow your work while you drink your coffee.
    With love, LOL.
     
  22. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Aww, you made my day!
    Thank you so much for the kind words, it means a whole lot.
    Regarding the spawning, I haven't noticed that they spawn more frequently at the top. It should be random, but I'll take a look at the code when I can. So you noticed the turtle spawning as well! I had a friend who found out that the turtle is a bit buggy, and sometimes it doesn't spawn at all. I did end up fixing that problem, but then we had a flood the next day, resulting in a destroyed apartment.

    Due to that silly flood, I can't use my computer for while, so I'm not able to add Game Center and fix the bugs - but it's coming! Maybe not soon, but... slightly soon! :eek:

    If you are going to make a dev log, feel free to send me a link! I'd gladly follow it. :)
     
  23. QFSW

    QFSW

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2015
    Posts:
    2,906
    Damn, you okay? How bad was the damage?
     
  24. Mothil

    Mothil

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    434
    Yeah, there was like no risk at all. We had a basement apartment, so the water gathered under the floor, leaving around a centimeter of water in the kitchen and the small bedroom which I used as an "office".

    We were renting, and thankfully both our pc's was safe from water, so there's really not that much harm done except for the trouble of finding a new place, moving all the stuff, etcetera. :)
     
  25. QFSW

    QFSW

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2015
    Posts:
    2,906
    Phew, glad nothing too bad happened. Of course it sucks, but could have been a lot worse
     
    RavenOfCode and Mothil like this.