I'm co-founder of MinoMonsters. We launched our game on iOS but spent a lot of time prototyping on the Android market. Our android prototype has 250k+ downloads and 2k+ reviews. Here's some steps you can take today to try to move the needle.
* Test your screenshots! Assume that 50% of the people in the market will never read your description. Right now, your screenshots communicate "Samurai game". Try a different direction, maybe one more Sudoku focused.[1] Test lots.
* Test your app icon. Test lots.
* You should have a purchase already. Review your monetization strategy. Most developers err on the side of under-monetizing their game, in the hopes that they won't "make players mad" or some other nonsense. Spoiler alert: you're wrong. Start your re-education here: http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-w...
* Doing games is hard and a lot of what works in games is non-obvious. Be very skeptical of advice you get from anyone that hasn't done games.
* There is only one "tried and true" marketing channel - getting featured on the platform. Outside of that, you need to hustle hard to get your app featured in other places. You've reached out to "a few" sites and forums. Expand your reach to 10x as many sites and forums. Point to your past reviews as social proof for potential future reviews. No one site is going to bring in all the downloads - it's about building buzz and the snowball effect.
I shall repeat: It is very very very hard.
We were featured on CNET, AllThingsD, Kotoku, 148Apps and even reviewed on TV.
Result: You get a nice bump in downloads for a couple of days then it drops back down.
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day.
There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.
Regarding getting featured, this is another thing one can aim for. The Android team has written about how to be in the running for getting featured, as have others.
For example - Android introduces new features with new OS releases. In Gingerbread, Android introduced NFC. A well-designed app implementing NFC in an interesting way back when it was introduced had a very good chance of being featured, as well as a chance of getting publicity, and also usage by people who wanted to test their phones NFC capability. Of course, you want to be viable even if you are not featured, but some apps have a better chance of being featured than others, and being featured helps a lot, especially for a paid app.
is there any way to test your icon other than to change it once per week and see if downloads change (meanwhile hoping nothing else changes to confuse the data)?
Besides that, great points. Marketing takes a lot of A/B testing. I have to say, I like the graphics and whole idea behind Empire of Sudoku. The screenshot does indeed scream samurai more than sudoku, as mentioned by teej.
You're going after the wrong target market. Sudoku apps are for middle aged women (Yes, I generalize, but it's pretty much the only game my mother plays on her Android phone).
Stop targeting your ads at Android related users (Android forums, games review sites). Go find a place where the people who will actually play your game hang out and then advertise there. Mothers group forums, parenting forums, business traveler hangouts, school teachers - whatever.
I agree with peak Sudoku. I search for Sudoku on Google Play and get 1000 responses. That is a search limit, who knows how many Sudokus there are. Someone starting out with Android might want to go for something a little more niche that has potential demand at first.
Also, the app is only in English as far as I can see. So they are competing in the most crowded market. Not that foreign languages save you with competition always. I tried to do an Android app in another crowded market, flashlight apps. Doing it in several languages did not help.
There are so many lacunae on Android, I have ideas all the time, yet so many people do yet another Sudoku app. They said they spent a lot of time on it. An MVP would have quickly told them what the demand was.
In terms of lacunae - only one app handles Microsoft Access files on an Android device AFAIK - my app. I based it off a popular LGPL Java library, the MVP took about two days or so of work, and did very little. I got a response, and suggestions, and built it up a little. I only have one competitor that I know of, and their database works off-device, and charges a fee after a trial period. There are gaps all over like that yet everyone goes for another Sudoku app, another flashlight app etc.
> We may have reached Peak Sudoku on mobile devices.
That's a nice and clever way of saying what I intended to say.
Absolutely no one is sitting around saying, "man, I want to play Sudoku on my phone but I can't find any games!". There's so much Sudoku to choose from, anyone that has wanted a Sudoku game has at least one on their phone, and has probably tried multiple ones before settling on that one.
Is this honestly the Sudoku game to end all Sudoku games? If so, great, but it's going to take a lot of effort to get people to recognize it, as it's no doubt buried in the search results, and game reviewers are not going to be jumping out of their seat over seeing a new Sudoku game hit their inbox. And if it's not the be-all end-all Sudoku, then forget it.
The OP here
Yes, the Game is indeed free, but only with basic feature to get excited about the app. Then the user should upgrade to get access to the other cities and unlock level.
The real issue is not only the big 0 income, but the fact that after 3 week we barely pass the 100 downloads.
Google advertise everywhere that there are more than 1M new android activations everyday.... Those are potential users of any game right.
What is not quite right I believe is the discovery of new app on the market. It took us 13 days to start appearing on the 20th page of the search "sudoku".
I disagree. Yes there are a lot of Sudoku apps out there but most of them are ugly. I bought the only one that I think has a decent design. And I would probably buy one that came out with really nice graphics and nice ux.
Maybe try making a game there isn't already 50 million ways to play it.
Sorry, but Really!? You expect a game that is also in every single newspaper in the world and has a puzzle book on every single book selling stand to do really really well because why? You launched it and sent it to a few app review sites? That's not all it takes to advertise something, there has to be a reason for someone to choose your game over the 50,000 other Sudoku games. And looking at it, there really isn't.
While I enjoy Sudoku, the overhead of entering numbers is challenging on a phone. I've liked none of the ones I've used, and so far the best Sudoku interface I've used is the one that was stock on my Nook Color.
Even with that, I find still I often find it refreshing to do on paper, as there's less interface annoyance in most cases.
This is the perfect example of a why many devs here on HN need to stop undervaluing the benefits of a non-technical co-founder that can seriously rock the marketing side of stuff.
What I see here is a pretty good looking app. Sure, it lacks things like scratch marks, but a solid version 1.0. However, you have really not done very much to promote the app. Emailing press and posting on forums won't get you far. The press get hundreds of review pitches a day - you can't expect to email them out of the blue on launch day and get them to cover your app - especially when it is not exactly noteworthy (it's not the first app of its kind).
Learn to hustle. The newspaper ad under the sudoku puzzle was a good idea.
I think there's a more fundamental problem here: entering a market where there are already literally 1000s of other competitors. It doesn't really matter how much he promotes his app - the people who like to play Sudoku probably already have a Sudoku app installed. And there're limited ways to be "better" than existing entrants.
Perhaps a non-technical cofounder could've helped here, but really what he needed is courage and the ability to take risks. People who strike it big - in any market - do so by providing what other people are not providing; you have to be willing to say "I'm going to do what other people are not doing, because they're doing it wrong" and then be right about that.
I was going to say the same thing. Marketing and awareness are not easy, and they are especially not easy when the market you are in is full of people trying to be heard. Good marketing can get your message heard above all the noise.
Right now this app can't be found above the noise floor. So how much is it worth to you, as a developer, to actually have people buy your product. 10%? 20% ? 50% of your interest.
Now for the OP (not sure if they are reading here or not) but the advice to hit up folks who would use your app and where they hang out is a good one. If there is a shopping center or other area where a large number of people congregate near you, consider setting up a table and offering a free App for feedback. In the best case you can tie analytics for app use back to user 'type' (age/gender/socio-economic status/interests) which will let you find other people who might like your app more easily.
I'd love a non-technical co-founder, if I could only find one. Most business-oriented people I meet like being employed. The only people I meet that are interested in startups (interested in building one, rather than having built one, successfully) are engineers with less panache for sales than I have.
I'm in a similar situation as the OP, and to be honest I'd be willing to give a lot away to have someone handle the sales & marketing end.
Well here's some advice: since you've written an article about your game, link the name of your game to the app store or a review or something. Also, mention that it is free since it is free. And explain what the game is and why anyone should care. In other words, you are always advertising and the biggest mistake people make is to not remove the roadblocks from all the roads. Marketing is easier when you realize, by default, no one cares. Not in a rude way, but no one will put in effort to care about something for no reason. Give them a reason.
If your game is a cool evolution of Sudoku, then focus your initial marketing efforts on places where people discuss that game.
Find where your customers are, then spend your time and effort there. Go to those specific forum boards/google groups and be helpful and cool. Don't just barge in and spam everyone with new topics. Help people out first. Ask senior members to review your game and give you direct feedback. Take their concerns/comments seriously.
Trying to market to everyone simply dilutes your effort.
Make sure you have a good keyword rich domain name like sudoku-pro.com or sudoku-evolved.com or something (I have no idea if those names are taken). Highlight how your product stands out from "generic" soduku games.
Setup a simple landing page (e.g. from a wordpress app template) with more information that details how great your game is specifically for Sudoku fans.
Add google analytics or kissmetrics to the landing page.
List your landing page in google for indexing (be patient it takes a while).
Then buy a little traffic on adwords when people search for the keyword Sudoku (like 50-100 clicks). Limit your budget at first. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot. Just a little.
Check google analytics to see the keywords that showed up on your page. When people click on an adwords ad, it shows the keywords they searched google for.
So, if someone clicks your ad for "Bacon-flavored Sudoku", you will
see in your logs their search term of "delicious tasting sudoku"
You can learn a lot about what people are looking for this way and then fine tune your messaging and even your product to fit what people are looking for.
You released a free app in a crowded market. You are going to need something exceptional to stand out.
Searching for "sudoku" in the Play store returns "at least 1000 results" for Android apps. Potential buyers are unlikely to discover yours on its merit alone even if it is the best in the field.
Review sites are unlikely to want to review "yet another sudoku app". Your 1000+ competitors are all asking for reviews as well. Unless you can offer a compelling narrative or give them an interesting reason to write about this app in particular you should not be surprised that there seems to be little interest.
Your app also requires significantly more permissions than some of the other most popular sudoku apps. I don't know if most users care but given a choice between several free sudoku apps that might make a difference.
I totally feel your pain. It seems a very well done game.
Unfortunately there are already hundreds of sudoku games, so a user will hardly find i.
I can give you a couple suggestions anyway: send it to the guys over androidpolice.com every 3 weeks they make a list of the best games that just came out like this one http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/01/15/40-best-new-android-... so I think you might have good chances of getting in there more than a fully featured article.
Post it here. I think HN is more than willing to review your game.
Post it on reddit.com/r/android it's a very open community and they often try apps for people that ask nicely.
Go buy an ad in the Newspaper right under the Sudoku puzzle.
So many freemium models invest hundreds of man hours into development then expect to pay $0 for advertising. It doesn't work like that. If you invested 100's of hours into dev, then get ready to spend 1000's of hours marketing, or alternatively buy your way into the market which is expensive.
Curious what your 'freemium' strategy is for this app. Crafting a strong freemium strategy seems to be a very difficult task which is probably why many companies struggle to find that perfect balance.
Rocketcat games had a huge problem selling their game "Punch Quest", which was stunning due to that game's high quality. They ultimately realized that the money drops were too generous, that links to buy stuff were lost in the UI, that not enough compelling upgrades existed, etc. What you have built seems to be very polished and I think it's a very interesting take on the genre, but I think you might be in similar territory here.
I'd also guess that the lion's share of people that pay for sudoku games are not the type that would want RPG elements mixed in. They are probably an older demographic that values simplicity over everything else. When the game "10,000,000" integrated rpg elements with "match 3" style gameplay, the masses loved it because it was a convergence of two types of gameplays that had similar demographics.
Not all the feature are free, there is in app purchases to unlock levels and cities. It also allows the user to take notes while playing and use hints (only for paying users).
On top of ALL the comments here, which all have very valid points - even if you had a brand-new, innovative game concept, it's still damn hard to get traction and visibility in the app store(s). Nobody knows why this game is so good or that he needs to have it, and for some of those games, it's really a shame. The situation is comparable to web sites a few years ago. There's basically the SEO way - sideline promotion, forums, reviews, people skills etc. and there's the SEM way. If you invest enough to push your way up in the store through advertising (Trademob, the company that I'm working for, estimates around 10-100k, depending on category and target market), you'll eventually be paid back through the resulting organic installations coming from the visibility once you get into the top charts. TL;DR: In 2013, even for killer apps, there's no way to the top except through the hardship of promotion on all possible channels. Viral campaigns, PR, spreading the word, posting, blogging, and often pure money investment as well.
Like others, I would have to point to the choice of making another sudoku as a critical flaw. When a game is the same game as every other, it gets very little buzz or word of mouth...unless it has some overwhelmingly strong new feature to add value.
Content items like art, storytelling, quantity of levels and pre-scripted events are mostly reflective of how video game development budgets tend to be proportioned against marketing budgets, where as the marketing budget gets bigger, more money is spent on making a lavish production that slightly outclasses the competition. These things help when a game has an existing audience that needs to mature into a more elaborate experience, but they have strongly diminishing returns on investment.
Software features like multi-player, solvers, hints and tutorials, puzzle generators, are all good incremental extensions that can get people's attention, and many of these features are relatively cheap compared to additional content. Unfortunately, all of the big, obvious features for incrementally extending sudoku have been covered - there's no chance of gaining a lot of new users in this market when it's so thoroughly saturated.
Monetization has also been saturated. Game monetization follows a pattern typical to innovative technology: Innovators can go pay-to-play if they're selling the privilege of a new experience. A good number of niche games can slip under the radar, making good profits for the innovator, but not enough to get attention. If the game is so profitable that it attracts a lot of attention, clones will appear and add incremental improvements, which pressures both price and quality. Eventually price collapses as free-to-play versions appear. However, free-to-play is _not_ the last step - open-source is. When people are hacking together polished, open-source versions of the game design, it's usually well past profitability, and sudoku is definitely in this category. (Exceptions to open-source as the last step exist, but are mostly related to the relative costs of content vs. technology)
Which leaves you with "create a new, sudoku-inspired game design." Game design is the underlying source of both profitability and popularity in the videogaming sector, but it means having design skills in addition to production skills - formulaic processes for making original, marketable designs don't exist. The vast majority of people in the sector understand either original(but unmarketable) or marketable(but unoriginal), but have trouble recognizing when a design decision and a marketing decision are related, and what the implications are. And since maximizing marketability is more likely to keep you in business, industry consensus always biases around it.
This is what's wrong with your game:
- It's on Android. In my experience Android apps don't monetize as well as iOS.
- It's Sudoko. There are a lot of Sudoku apps out there.
- It's free. You probably need to change the pricing model.
Try soem of the suggestions given in the comments above and let us know what happens.
Hi. I play a lot sudoku and I will not try your app. All the fancy you added to the sudoku game may be interesting, but the first thing I noticed is that your sudoku game is not ergonomic: on a touch screen, you MUST make the grid as big as possible. Personally, I use a sudoku game where I can put remaining possible digits in cases. If the purpose of your game was to improve my sudoku level, there would me more than 4 levels. I do not know who are your clients. I think that if I had a good free sudoku game (better than the one I am using), I would accept to pay (not too much) to have one more feature: the possibility to play a photographed grid.
One of the things you're doing wrong is that social sharing bar which, besides bring completely tactless, overlaps the content on mobile devices such that reading the article is impossible—even when scrolling due to it being fixed.
[+] [-] teej|13 years ago|reply
* Test your screenshots! Assume that 50% of the people in the market will never read your description. Right now, your screenshots communicate "Samurai game". Try a different direction, maybe one more Sudoku focused.[1] Test lots.
* Test your app icon. Test lots.
* You should have a purchase already. Review your monetization strategy. Most developers err on the side of under-monetizing their game, in the hopes that they won't "make players mad" or some other nonsense. Spoiler alert: you're wrong. Start your re-education here: http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-w...
* Doing games is hard and a lot of what works in games is non-obvious. Be very skeptical of advice you get from anyone that hasn't done games.
* There is only one "tried and true" marketing channel - getting featured on the platform. Outside of that, you need to hustle hard to get your app featured in other places. You've reached out to "a few" sites and forums. Expand your reach to 10x as many sites and forums. Point to your past reviews as social proof for potential future reviews. No one site is going to bring in all the downloads - it's about building buzz and the snowball effect.
That's all I can think off the top of my head.
=======================================================
[1] - No one can tell you what's going to work best. The only way to know is to test.
[+] [-] mirsadm|13 years ago|reply
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day. There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.
[+] [-] Ologn|13 years ago|reply
For example - Android introduces new features with new OS releases. In Gingerbread, Android introduced NFC. A well-designed app implementing NFC in an interesting way back when it was introduced had a very good chance of being featured, as well as a chance of getting publicity, and also usage by people who wanted to test their phones NFC capability. Of course, you want to be viable even if you are not featured, but some apps have a better chance of being featured than others, and being featured helps a lot, especially for a paid app.
[+] [-] spot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewtbham|13 years ago|reply
I also suggest:
-changing the price (price reductions shows up on app tracker apps and twitter feeds).
-get good reviews from your friends.
-you might look into app store keyword optimization also.
[+] [-] cageface|13 years ago|reply
I wonder if that's going to become more and more of a differentiator vs Apple as the Play store catches up in overall app quality.
[+] [-] dutchbrit|13 years ago|reply
Besides that, great points. Marketing takes a lot of A/B testing. I have to say, I like the graphics and whole idea behind Empire of Sudoku. The screenshot does indeed scream samurai more than sudoku, as mentioned by teej.
[+] [-] alanbyrne|13 years ago|reply
Stop targeting your ads at Android related users (Android forums, games review sites). Go find a place where the people who will actually play your game hang out and then advertise there. Mothers group forums, parenting forums, business traveler hangouts, school teachers - whatever.
[+] [-] Lewisham|13 years ago|reply
http://www.edge-online.com/features/success-on-greenlight-is...
[+] [-] starik36|13 years ago|reply
Advice similar to yours helped me rethink my marketing message once upon a time and the results were pretty darn good.
[+] [-] angersock|13 years ago|reply
Also, your price is "Free". That may be why income is 0.
[+] [-] Ologn|13 years ago|reply
Also, the app is only in English as far as I can see. So they are competing in the most crowded market. Not that foreign languages save you with competition always. I tried to do an Android app in another crowded market, flashlight apps. Doing it in several languages did not help.
There are so many lacunae on Android, I have ideas all the time, yet so many people do yet another Sudoku app. They said they spent a lot of time on it. An MVP would have quickly told them what the demand was.
In terms of lacunae - only one app handles Microsoft Access files on an Android device AFAIK - my app. I based it off a popular LGPL Java library, the MVP took about two days or so of work, and did very little. I got a response, and suggestions, and built it up a little. I only have one competitor that I know of, and their database works off-device, and charges a fee after a trial period. There are gaps all over like that yet everyone goes for another Sudoku app, another flashlight app etc.
[+] [-] Legion|13 years ago|reply
That's a nice and clever way of saying what I intended to say.
Absolutely no one is sitting around saying, "man, I want to play Sudoku on my phone but I can't find any games!". There's so much Sudoku to choose from, anyone that has wanted a Sudoku game has at least one on their phone, and has probably tried multiple ones before settling on that one.
Is this honestly the Sudoku game to end all Sudoku games? If so, great, but it's going to take a lot of effort to get people to recognize it, as it's no doubt buried in the search results, and game reviewers are not going to be jumping out of their seat over seeing a new Sudoku game hit their inbox. And if it's not the be-all end-all Sudoku, then forget it.
[+] [-] gumbo|13 years ago|reply
The real issue is not only the big 0 income, but the fact that after 3 week we barely pass the 100 downloads. Google advertise everywhere that there are more than 1M new android activations everyday.... Those are potential users of any game right.
What is not quite right I believe is the discovery of new app on the market. It took us 13 days to start appearing on the 20th page of the search "sudoku".
[+] [-] Supermighty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubcanada|13 years ago|reply
Sorry, but Really!? You expect a game that is also in every single newspaper in the world and has a puzzle book on every single book selling stand to do really really well because why? You launched it and sent it to a few app review sites? That's not all it takes to advertise something, there has to be a reason for someone to choose your game over the 50,000 other Sudoku games. And looking at it, there really isn't.
[+] [-] Macsenour|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gknoy|13 years ago|reply
While I enjoy Sudoku, the overhead of entering numbers is challenging on a phone. I've liked none of the ones I've used, and so far the best Sudoku interface I've used is the one that was stock on my Nook Color.
Even with that, I find still I often find it refreshing to do on paper, as there's less interface annoyance in most cases.
[+] [-] Macsenour|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] n9com|13 years ago|reply
What I see here is a pretty good looking app. Sure, it lacks things like scratch marks, but a solid version 1.0. However, you have really not done very much to promote the app. Emailing press and posting on forums won't get you far. The press get hundreds of review pitches a day - you can't expect to email them out of the blue on launch day and get them to cover your app - especially when it is not exactly noteworthy (it's not the first app of its kind).
Learn to hustle. The newspaper ad under the sudoku puzzle was a good idea.
[+] [-] nostrademons|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps a non-technical cofounder could've helped here, but really what he needed is courage and the ability to take risks. People who strike it big - in any market - do so by providing what other people are not providing; you have to be willing to say "I'm going to do what other people are not doing, because they're doing it wrong" and then be right about that.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Right now this app can't be found above the noise floor. So how much is it worth to you, as a developer, to actually have people buy your product. 10%? 20% ? 50% of your interest.
Now for the OP (not sure if they are reading here or not) but the advice to hit up folks who would use your app and where they hang out is a good one. If there is a shopping center or other area where a large number of people congregate near you, consider setting up a table and offering a free App for feedback. In the best case you can tie analytics for app use back to user 'type' (age/gender/socio-economic status/interests) which will let you find other people who might like your app more easily.
[+] [-] hmbg|13 years ago|reply
I'm in a similar situation as the OP, and to be honest I'd be willing to give a lot away to have someone handle the sales & marketing end.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] t1|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lubujackson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewdubinsky|13 years ago|reply
Find where your customers are, then spend your time and effort there. Go to those specific forum boards/google groups and be helpful and cool. Don't just barge in and spam everyone with new topics. Help people out first. Ask senior members to review your game and give you direct feedback. Take their concerns/comments seriously.
Trying to market to everyone simply dilutes your effort.
Make sure you have a good keyword rich domain name like sudoku-pro.com or sudoku-evolved.com or something (I have no idea if those names are taken). Highlight how your product stands out from "generic" soduku games.
Setup a simple landing page (e.g. from a wordpress app template) with more information that details how great your game is specifically for Sudoku fans.
Add google analytics or kissmetrics to the landing page.
List your landing page in google for indexing (be patient it takes a while).
Then buy a little traffic on adwords when people search for the keyword Sudoku (like 50-100 clicks). Limit your budget at first. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot. Just a little.
Check google analytics to see the keywords that showed up on your page. When people click on an adwords ad, it shows the keywords they searched google for.
So, if someone clicks your ad for "Bacon-flavored Sudoku", you will see in your logs their search term of "delicious tasting sudoku"
You can learn a lot about what people are looking for this way and then fine tune your messaging and even your product to fit what people are looking for.
Hope that helps.
[+] [-] zalambar|13 years ago|reply
Searching for "sudoku" in the Play store returns "at least 1000 results" for Android apps. Potential buyers are unlikely to discover yours on its merit alone even if it is the best in the field.
Review sites are unlikely to want to review "yet another sudoku app". Your 1000+ competitors are all asking for reviews as well. Unless you can offer a compelling narrative or give them an interesting reason to write about this app in particular you should not be surprised that there seems to be little interest.
Your app also requires significantly more permissions than some of the other most popular sudoku apps. I don't know if most users care but given a choice between several free sudoku apps that might make a difference.
[+] [-] Dove|13 years ago|reply
I don't have data to tell you those things scare away users, but they'd sure as heck scare away me.
[+] [-] gumbo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duiker101|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately there are already hundreds of sudoku games, so a user will hardly find i.
I can give you a couple suggestions anyway: send it to the guys over androidpolice.com every 3 weeks they make a list of the best games that just came out like this one http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/01/15/40-best-new-android-... so I think you might have good chances of getting in there more than a fully featured article.
Post it here. I think HN is more than willing to review your game.
Post it on reddit.com/r/android it's a very open community and they often try apps for people that ask nicely.
[+] [-] boonez123|13 years ago|reply
So many freemium models invest hundreds of man hours into development then expect to pay $0 for advertising. It doesn't work like that. If you invested 100's of hours into dev, then get ready to spend 1000's of hours marketing, or alternatively buy your way into the market which is expensive.
Good luck!
[+] [-] bstar77|13 years ago|reply
Rocketcat games had a huge problem selling their game "Punch Quest", which was stunning due to that game's high quality. They ultimately realized that the money drops were too generous, that links to buy stuff were lost in the UI, that not enough compelling upgrades existed, etc. What you have built seems to be very polished and I think it's a very interesting take on the genre, but I think you might be in similar territory here.
I'd also guess that the lion's share of people that pay for sudoku games are not the type that would want RPG elements mixed in. They are probably an older demographic that values simplicity over everything else. When the game "10,000,000" integrated rpg elements with "match 3" style gameplay, the masses loved it because it was a convergence of two types of gameplays that had similar demographics.
[+] [-] gumbo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justjimmy|13 years ago|reply
Hard when you are a few years late, in a genre (Sudoku) where there's not much room for innovation in game play.
[+] [-] endymi0n|13 years ago|reply
Sorry, pal!
[+] [-] chipsy|13 years ago|reply
Content items like art, storytelling, quantity of levels and pre-scripted events are mostly reflective of how video game development budgets tend to be proportioned against marketing budgets, where as the marketing budget gets bigger, more money is spent on making a lavish production that slightly outclasses the competition. These things help when a game has an existing audience that needs to mature into a more elaborate experience, but they have strongly diminishing returns on investment.
Software features like multi-player, solvers, hints and tutorials, puzzle generators, are all good incremental extensions that can get people's attention, and many of these features are relatively cheap compared to additional content. Unfortunately, all of the big, obvious features for incrementally extending sudoku have been covered - there's no chance of gaining a lot of new users in this market when it's so thoroughly saturated.
Monetization has also been saturated. Game monetization follows a pattern typical to innovative technology: Innovators can go pay-to-play if they're selling the privilege of a new experience. A good number of niche games can slip under the radar, making good profits for the innovator, but not enough to get attention. If the game is so profitable that it attracts a lot of attention, clones will appear and add incremental improvements, which pressures both price and quality. Eventually price collapses as free-to-play versions appear. However, free-to-play is _not_ the last step - open-source is. When people are hacking together polished, open-source versions of the game design, it's usually well past profitability, and sudoku is definitely in this category. (Exceptions to open-source as the last step exist, but are mostly related to the relative costs of content vs. technology)
Which leaves you with "create a new, sudoku-inspired game design." Game design is the underlying source of both profitability and popularity in the videogaming sector, but it means having design skills in addition to production skills - formulaic processes for making original, marketable designs don't exist. The vast majority of people in the sector understand either original(but unmarketable) or marketable(but unoriginal), but have trouble recognizing when a design decision and a marketing decision are related, and what the implications are. And since maximizing marketability is more likely to keep you in business, industry consensus always biases around it.
[+] [-] jasimq|13 years ago|reply
Try soem of the suggestions given in the comments above and let us know what happens.
[+] [-] michaelhoffman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgelawrence|13 years ago|reply
Using my AppStore SEO tool (still in beta) I see you only appear in the results page of one popular search phrase "amazing sudoku"... http://www.straply.com/app/android/guru-mobile/empire-of-sud...
But some other Sudoku apps appear in the results of hundreds of popular search phrases... http://www.straply.com/app/android/genina-com/sudoku-free/so...
Perhaps you could try expanding your description to include more of the popular phrases related to Sudoku?
But the real problem is what everyone else has been saying. Sudoku is just too crowded.
[+] [-] webreac|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeoxyS|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumbo|13 years ago|reply