Experience in developing and promoting a game on Android

Hello! Recently I published my first serious project, so I decided to share my experience, because such articles were very useful to me when I developed my application. But after reading dozens of similar articles, I noticed that almost nothing has been written about things that at first glance seem not very important, but which in fact greatly affect the promotion of the application. I will divide the whole topic into 5 points, which turned out to be important, but they are rarely mentioned. Let me remind you that this is not a tutorial, but the story of my personal experience. I also note that so far I have not achieved stunning heights, which helped me analyze my mistakes and made me try different methods of promotion, from which I chose the most effective.

1) The choice of genre and style. From the very beginning, I knew what I wanted - a minimalist logic game without reference to time. The standard for me was the “2048” genre, but the further I went deeper into mechanics, the more boring the game became. As it turned out, this problem is in all such games, namely, the same type. During the hour of the game, you can develop an algorithm by which you collect crazy records, looping around performing the same actions. Later, I settled on the genre of "4 photo word." Yes, the genre is hackneyed and absolutely not original, but it has a number of pluses that just fit into my scheme:

  • Frequency of updates. This allows you to keep the same users in the game for a long time.
  • There are no "GIANTS". Those. there are no such developers and publishers as "Glu", "Gameloft", etc. Which makes it easier to get into the top, in which, by the way, there are no obvious favorites. The top is always the game that is often updated.
  • A minimalist design is great, which greatly simplifies the task.

I immediately figured out how the game would stand out among the same - drawn icons instead of photos (which also solved the problem with the rights to pictures).

2) Test the application on friends! Just without explaining anything, give them a device and see what happens. During the development process, some things become obvious to you, but not understandable to people who see this for the first time. In this way, I identified the first problem: no one could understand how to get a hint. I decided to use less text in the interface, so the tooltip needed to be dragged down. At first I wanted to add training, but decided that in such a simple game this would only push away, so I replaced the mechanics of the button, after which everything was fine. In the future, they helped to catch more than one bug, but I think you caught the essence, so I will go further.

3) Choice of date of publication. As it turned out, this stage is the MOST IMPORTANT in promoting the game. The fact is that the first 3 weeks your application is considered new and during this period it is easiest to enter the tops and gain an initial audience. When I posted the game, I picked up the most unsuccessful time for this. A day after publication, my girlfriend spilled tea on a laptop, after which it was safely cut out, the next day I took it for repair, but completely forgot that the project remained there, so for 3 days I could not fix the errors that occurred. I did not want to promote the application, because I would like to promote a good game without bugs and shortcomings. Repair of the laptop cost half the cost of the laptop, despite the fact that the numbers do not work on the keyboard and the battery is covered, which also had to be bought. As a result, I did not have money left for advertising and all kinds of promotion.

4) Name selection. Initially, I planned to call the game “Logic”, because I didn’t find such a name in the top, but my application didn’t even get into the top 500 by such a request, given the complete coincidence in name and the description crammed with this word. So I changed the name to “Just logic”, which also did not produce results. In the end, I decided to give a unique name that will not have competitors. So the name “Logi” was born, which perfectly approached the original icon.

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After such frauds, I managed to get into the top with just one download, which I needed.

5) Proper promotion. The reality of Google Play is such that without a publisher, honestly breaking into the top is very difficult, even almost unrealistic. Now even overt slag breaks into the top if money is invested in it. But if the game is good, then at low cost you can achieve success. Here are a few observations that I will share with pleasure.

  • Order advertising in the social. networks by paying clicks and selecting the desired targeting. Thus, the ratio of clicks to installations will be almost one hundred percent and you will receive installations cheaper than ordering installations directly.
  • Ordering installations is a very dirty move, but now the GP is a swamp in which almost everything is dirty, so this is the main tool for getting into the tops.
  • Share the game in other parties. This gives a big increase to the general statistics and settings, but does not affect the GP absolutely. If possible, do not upload your APK, but simply leave links to the GP.
  • Thematic forums are the most energy-intensive and difficult, but the most effective free way to promote.

Please note that the most effective time for promotion is the first 3 weeks after publication (not A, B tests).

That’s all, some stages are no less important, but so much has been written and told about them.
If you read it to the end, then I hope you found the article useful and you will help me get a little closer to my goal by downloading my game.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sinqueen.logic

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