Wow, thanks for the free game! Its sad to hear your game didn’t sell.
I didn’t even hear about it until now. I guess the lack of visibility (marketing) is really a problem for most people.
Add in app purchases? I think you quit too soon, something many indies do, instead of seeing what the market wants. This is a mad, mad indie game and I’m not sure if I love it or hate it. I also think while the promo video was good, it had nothing to do with the game. We received lots of criticism for that our end.
Quitting selling it so soon seems to be a crime. You could even add ads that refresh all the time as you play, and a single iAP to remove it. While this isn’t always a big income, its a steady income for nice titles.
I think it bombed because you haven’t figured out how to market it.
To be perfectly honest I never intended to sell Olly in first place. It was more like experiment: what if I try to sell it? How much I can possibly get not knowing anything about marketing? Well … not much. But I’m planning to sell my next game better and I’m trying hard to at least make new game easier and fun to play and with more original mechanics. Hopefully I’ve learned enough developing Olly to make better game this time.
The strangest thing is it actually feels great to just give away this game for free. This “Wow, thanks for the free game!” alone was well worth it, thank you! Thanks for support guys!
Btw I’m not sure if in-game ads and iAP is something I would do in my game. I don’t really like it in other games. I prefer to pay 1$, click download and play right away. Maybe I’m wrong tho… On Olly’s “sales” I learned that usually what you like and what you think is right is not the same thing most people want.
i plan on making my first release free but not for a year, maybe have a free week here and there to try and get some sales out of it, have to wait and see what happens
Hopefully this weekend I will try to change iPad Olly’s control system (it will be joystick-based), also Olly will never fall from the edge of the tower again, also you will be able to kick zombies in front and back. So if you still have this game on iPad don’t erase it just yet, it is quite possible it is going to be more enjoyable to play after some adjustments.
As for free/paid thing… well my guts telling me that best way is to go with free version with nice demonstration of gameplay inside and “unlock full version” button. Or just 2 versions - free and paid. And link to paid version inside free version. I mean I had like around 35 downloads maximum with 1$ version. Next day after I made it free it turned into 3K downloads instantly. Now it is 3K downloads / day for 3 days already.
Why not make two versions, a free version that contains limited levels or features, and a full 1$ version.
If people think the game is good they’ll definitely look for more and go for the 1$ version I guess.
