Hello I have been working off and on for about a year on a small game that I originally made for my son. I think I have moved in the correct direction to make this a game for everyone but I only have 350 on average active installs and a large chunk of those seem to be people who did not delete it. I have a total of 3,066 installs on a year and I dont know what I am doing wrong. So I am posting pics and a link to the market https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Quatro_Designs.Balloon_Pop&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5RdWF0cm9fRGVzaWducy5CYWxsb29uX1BvcCJd ITS FREE so please download it and play it and let me know how to make it fun. I have advertised heavily and my endeavors have landed me roughly 400 dollars in the hole. I am not a programmer, I am a mechanic and I just started doing this for fun and decided that I could make a little money on the side but no go. Thank you for any input.
Doesn’t look like it sucks, it just don’t look professional.
Also, marketing is a totally different art, what your game tells me is ‘you-ve used some free images and models and it looks like something made on the 90s era.’
Also, kids get games for free everyday on mobile devices which some are of very high quality; if not for free, pirated…
So, yep, life is hard.
You need more stylized graphics, the models are ugly, the fonts are ugly, TBH its an ugly game and that is what people see at first then they don’t download it… I would suggest a re work of the graphics in a more cartoon style like vectors, this is proven in games like angry birds cut the rope and scoops.
Or diffuse with cartoon graphics like fruit ninja with vector menus and GUI.
I think its fine, it’s just not the sort of thing people will buy because your competition is doing games made with many thousands of dollars. As an effort made by one man, I think its commendable. It’s very easy for someone on the forum to slate you and say “oh this is ugly, that’s ugly bla bla bla” well I’d like them to show what they’ve done.
On a constructive note, I would look at this being something ad revenue driven, that might yield a bit more income, but lets face it, it is a game that’s got very niche appeal, it won’t be a mass market thing, so perhaps the sales are in line with that. Even if it was highly polished it probably wouldn’t garner any great successes.
This is not a bad thing though, but I don’t think you should put more time into it. Making a game for fun for your son, is where it should have ended and it no doubt is a cool thing for that. As a marketable game, for business reasons, it’s not a good choice.
Game definitely needs graphical polish so you could start with that but more importantly you need to know when to stop flogging a dead horse.
You have proven that you can complete a game, you’re a 1%'er now :), perhaps now it’s time to move on and make another, make it even more polished?