Ask HN: My iPhone game is out. Now what? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My iPhone game is out. Now what?

39 pointsmikek24 comments

My first game came out yesterday. I submitted it for review at 34 different sites. I sent out an announcement email to a list of people who requested to be informed about the game. The game's artist posted an announcement on her blog. I submitted a Lite version of the app yesterday.

Is there anything else I can do? I feel like I have exhausted my free options. Advertising is a possibility but I only want to spend money earned from the game on advertising. AppCircle is probably out given my game is $.99 and they charge $.75 per install.

Any advice based on your own experience is appreciated.

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1. Send out promo codes to all the major iPhone game review sites. TouchArcade.com is a must

2. Create an account at the TouchArcade forum and give out a lot of promo codes (be sure to mention the promo codes in the forum thread title!). The users who receive the free promo codes may get the game for free, but if it's a great game they will spread the word about it through word-of-mouth. They will also give you valuable feedback. Be sure to respond to their complaints, feedback and praise on the forum thread, they will love you for it. Customers who feel like they are taken seriously will be happy customers who will gladly spread the word about your game for free.

3. Keep updating the game and spread the word about the updates. Constant updates is the reason why old games like Doodle Jump, Pocket God and Angry Birds still are immensely popular.

4. Your website sucks. If a game peaks my interest enough, I'll check out the website. Your page was just a boring support form. I want videos, I want screenshots, I want summaries of reviews (linking to the full review), stats, a blog with updates etc.

This is a good example of a page for an iPhone game: http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds

5. Rotate the screenshots.

6. Shorten the link to the youtube-video with something like bit.ly. It's impossible to copy it and it's much easier to visit a bit.ly-link than a youtube.com-link

I second announcing it and giving promo codes away in TouchArcade. Things have changed a lot since I launched mine a year ago, but I was able to get listed on one of the top 100 category lists briefly due to TouchArcade's interest. Having a free / lite version helps with this of course.

Looks heavily inspired by This Is The Only Level. http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/this-is-the-only-...

BTW, for those who are curious... the game is called Just 1 Level (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/just-1-level/id356619631?mt=8) and its a puzzle/arcade game.

I checked it out and you've got slick graphics, a decent description and a video - that's a good start. From here I'd try and get some interest on the toucharcade forums and see if you can leverage that into a review.

From a potential customer point of view, the idea is interesting, but I don't quite see that it would lead to an interesting game - and the video didn't really change my mind. It seems like at its base is a simple and quite slow game and each level some minor thing is different. It didn't look hard, or exciting. If it gets action packed or tricky in later levels maybe you could put one of those levels in the video.

It does get harder, yes. Some levels are hectic, and some levels are tricky. And there are some surprises along the way. It's a bit hard to capture the difficulty in a video since what's different is, well, invisible. And also I don't want to give away the solutions to the more interesting episodes (or ruin the surprise). To quote Osmos:

"Is there a demo of Osmos I can try first?

Yes, but don’t let it fool you. The game starts gently, but there are some truly difficult levels later on in the full game."

http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/

That said, your point is well taken. I'll think if I can improve the video somehow, or perhaps have an Osmos-like disclaimer around it.

Well disclaimers don't actually mean anything to anyone. It is worth ruining some of your good levels to get customers. If someone plays the game, loves it, and wishes they hadn't had a couple of levels spoiled for them - thats a win for you (and for them mostly, they probably wouldn't have played it otherwise).

Also I just played "This Is The Only Level" as per waxpancake's comment. It's a fun flash game, but it still seemed fairly disposable. The thing your game has all over it is the graphics - but you haven't really given it any character - your dragon and princess don't say anything. A bit of humour and characterization goes a very long way in fun little iphone games.

Character is important! In Plants vs. Zombies there's that crazy guy named Dave who sells upgrades and says ridiculous things. Each plant and zombie has a distinct personality you can read about that's fun and goofy. There's visual jokes as well. And the end-game music video is an awesomely silly reward for all your time spent playing. All of this adds up to an experience people feel connected to.

Let me know if you need help with rotating those screenshots. It is really easy with The Gimp.

Hm, OK, so what is the point of the tilted screenshots?

If you didn't submit pre-release screenshots to sites and post "preview" threads on game forums then you missed some opportunities. Most sites want to review games coming out in the next few weeks, not games that came out in the past.

They also like exclusive content; they're not interested in posting a rehash of your web site. I was actually chided by a UK web site for posting my screen shots on a web forum before sending to them.

You also want some "buzz" going before the game is released. "Ravensword" had lots of buzz based on early screen shots and had many people "waiting in line" to buy it at release. "Eliminate" got lots of press for being one of the first 3D shooters. This is easy for some games due to theme, timeliness, originality, lack of competition, etc; harder for other games that lack these traits.

Unless you click the more link, the iTunes web page displays only the first line of your game description: "Beautiful retina display graphics". Suggest you change the first line to your hook line.

Send promo codes to children's web sites. It seems targeted to younger children (6-8 yrs old) if I'm not mistaken (first impression).

Played the game. It would be nice to vary the sound effects you get from tapping the screen to control the dragon (since you vary the game action).

Make an iPad version and sell it for $2.99-$4.99.

Keep updating the game.

Edit: What kristofferR said, and prioritize players who aren't self-entitled. Persistence will pay off, either in sales for this game, or lessons learned for the next.

I'm going through this somewhat myself, albeit with a website I released last week. I've started to leave thoughtful comments on blogs that relate (with the website as the author name/url), answering relevant questions on yahoo answers and so on with the website sourced. Marketing feels dirty and unproductive, but it is really something I think I'll just need to get over. At my last job, marketing outnumbered developers 4 to 2. At the time I thought it weird, but I'm beginning to see some reason behind it now. My advice would be to put some serious time into a marketing strategy, and give it a budget even if it's a shoestring.

I think this just highlights exactly what I hate about iTunes... app discovery is really freaking hard.

That being said, I guess app discovery is about as hard as website discovery. I mean there isn't really a way to find out about a cool site till everyone starts talking about it and/or recommending it to you.

I just wish there were ways to recommend apps, or a "magazine" style site which would break down the best apps of the month or something.

There's like 4 startup ideas in this comment. Pick one and help change my life. Please.

Get on forums like macrumors.com and post a few promo codes. Sites like that are also great for feedback too.

Do you have an angle you could work? You might be able to get magazines to interview you.

Charge more? Apple charges 1.29 for songs. Your game is both more work to create and longer lasting than one song.

> Your game is both more work to create and longer lasting than one song.

You really discount what it can take to make a good song.

Or how much advertising and promotion it takes to make a successful pop song.

Games have music so if you write a good song for your game you have written a "good song" + some other stuff.

The angle is that the game is backwards from other games... whereas most games have lots of levels but the rules are static, in Just 1 Level the opposite is true.

I'm hoping that game reviewers will take notice of the game for this reason. But I'm not quite sure how to get magazines to take notice.

I'm happy with the price. Anyone who is not a big name publisher will have a hard time selling a game for more than $.99. (The App store only allows certain preset price tiers, so the next price up is $1.99.)

Try to get it on bytejacker ( http://www.bytejacker.com/ ).

You could try to get it featured on http://bigappshow.com/

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