Release on Play Store - Experience with publicity?

Hi.

I'd like to know if some of you have experience with releasing in play store, and how much downloads you got after the first few days. I am a bit disappointed by now. I released my game about 48 hours ago, and it has 18 downloads. Considering that I showed the game to some friends, nearly nobody else directly downloaded it from play store.
And I got to say: I am not that surprised about that. Why? Because I know the name of the game, and I know how the icon looks (obviously) and even I have problems to find it on google play. It never showed up somewhere in the "new games" section, and by typing the EXACT name of the app, there are about 20 apps before it (even a calculator.. how can a calculator have more in common with a game name than the game itself..?)

So I'd like to hear your experiences, and I'd like to know if I maybe did something obviously wrong.

Is it relevant at which time of the day I release it?

 

Well reading your post I have no clue about your game maybe leave a link or games name?

 

Welcome to mobile world. There are hundreds or thousands apps released every day. If you haven't done any social media sharing/hype for months, advertised the game or etc. then the only ones who will find it are random users that manage to click it from some pre-made list at lucky time or possibly random search results.

Above post is also correct, you did not even link it here for possible downloads

You should have been storming on twitter, youtube, reddit, facebook etc. for months if you were planning to market it without paying anything.

 

Sorry about that:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dl2.dontletgo

@Ostwind
Yes, I did not expect much from it (it is my first mobile game, mainly to gain some experience by myself in that sector), but the result is still less than I expected.

 

Without marketing it's normal to get almost no downloads unless it's super good and/or gets featured by store staff.

 

I thought every app would land on the "new apps" section for a small amount of time, giving the chance for it to be found.
Do you have any examples of own releases, how it looked there?

Greets

 

They are there for probably for short moment but given there are apps flooding in almost every minute it's easy to get pushed off. I don't have any examples to show and the way those store listing work have changed over time. Pure new apps without any special addition are not shown to users as much as other listing today and probably never been that popular.

 

As @Ostwind pointed out, no one will download your game if you don't market it.
I also released my first game on the play store some weeks ago and I currently only have 10 downloads which are mostly friends.
I'm currently trying to make a trailer on youtube and then I will make a press kit and write to several app review sites ... maybe it will work .
Btw this site is really good if you really want to dive into marketing without spending a dollar http://www.indiegamegirl.com/no-budget-marketing/

PS: If you want to check out my game, the link is in my signature.

 

1000% agree with fissll - indiegamegirl is a great resource for indie marketing.
Also - (I don't know the answer to this) can you apply google analytics to the game page to have some additional knowledge? You know only 18 people have downloaded but how many have been on the page and passed on the game without downloading. That might also be helpful information to have.

Not to be discouraging because I think it's a success to just release a game - however I passed on downloading your game because it doesn't sound fun. I don't think holding your finger on the screen for as long as you can sounds like fun.
If the game is more involved than this - maybe updating the description might help a little - and/or showing a finger on the video - what the player actually has to do. Maybe a ghosted finger.
And the game lacks juice - but that's a discussion that should of happened during development - not now after release.

Anyway - great job on release! It's an accomplishment regardless how many downloads the game gets.

 

Thank you for all the answers! I will definitely take a look at google analytics & indiegamegirl.

@theANMATOR, Like I said, it was mainly to get a start in mobile development.
Sorry if I have to ask, what does "the game lacks juice" mean?

Greets

 

It means that it's missing all the sexy elements and looks boring

For example when your ball picks up something it could wobble, particles should be flying like fireworks and have nice sfx same time. The ball could also have bounce animation when it hits the screen edges. The background is currently static with some dust particles but it could also be more interesting. All the +1 coins etc texts should have nice appear anim and so on.

I know there is not much to work with since the game is pretty simple but your game trailer only shows few seconds of gameplay at start while it should show it a lot more. It says 2 game modes at one point and 50 levels but it's hard to tell what they actually do or levels look like.

 

Thank you for the feedback I guess I focused too much on the mobile-game-aspects itself. At least I know now what I could've done better.

 

Juice
Formal Juice