Happy Doodle Sushi Smile - Free for 12 hours
peachpellen
Member Posts: 977
Basically, after the first two days my sales have been AWFUL - I mean I am ashamed of how bad they are >.<'
While this may not help sales (although I sure hope it does), the fact is it's a fun little game (IMHO) and version 1.5 is significantly better as well - so I still want to get it out there.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/happy-doodle-sushi-smile/id404532572?mt=8
That's the link - if you appreciate a little time wasting game for free, or if you know me well enough to want to help me out, please - take the time to rate and review it and consider using the Facebook feature; it's one post, one time, sharing your score. It will never automatically post anything.
Naturally I'd be very sad if the app tanked; a lot of love went into it and version 1.5 is a real improvement as well (it's waiting on review now) and yeah, basically I'd just like to get more people to see it even if in the end it doesn't make an impact on sales.
Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give me
Peach Pellen
While this may not help sales (although I sure hope it does), the fact is it's a fun little game (IMHO) and version 1.5 is significantly better as well - so I still want to get it out there.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/happy-doodle-sushi-smile/id404532572?mt=8
That's the link - if you appreciate a little time wasting game for free, or if you know me well enough to want to help me out, please - take the time to rate and review it and consider using the Facebook feature; it's one post, one time, sharing your score. It will never automatically post anything.
Naturally I'd be very sad if the app tanked; a lot of love went into it and version 1.5 is a real improvement as well (it's waiting on review now) and yeah, basically I'd just like to get more people to see it even if in the end it doesn't make an impact on sales.
Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give me
Peach Pellen
Comments
Peach I will leave a review for 1.5 as soon as I get it. I already left a review for 1.0
Good luck.
@peach
The sales stuff for HDSS is sad to read about - but it does put out a serious message.
There is no guarantee that anything you make will sell. It is always a gamble, even with openfeint/facebook/twitter/iads/URL forwarding etc.
I actually like HDSS - it's a fun little time waster, and I enjoyed the competition amongst people I know on here. It could honestly do with some polish and variety, but other than that it's fine.
The trick is to make a good game and get it seen by people. Peach, you have all of Corona to play with - the system clock, the camera, gps... make something that takes advantage of all that!
Good luck with the free promotion!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
-Josh
Let us know if your promotion has a positive impact on sales. It's a good idea, and I for one am curious to see if it helps.
One of my apps "iSnooze!" was originally 79C then after it slumped i decided to make it free. Got 1800 downloads the day after i did that, and it is currently new and noteworthy in taiwan and colombia. I'm not making anything from it, but it was a experiment app, and im pleased to say it has about 8000 users to date.
Also let us know how many downloads it gets whilst it is free. You can add 1 to that count as I just got it to try it out
Keep us posted!
Don't get discouraged, there is no rhyme or reason to the app store sometimes, and now that it's topping over 300,000 plus apps, and adding more every day, it's getting harder and harder to get recognized.
The only thing you can really hope for is a N&N feature, luck, and a lot of marketing on your side.
Your game is very cute, has a clever title and idea, and like QS said, adding a little variety, polish, and more animations could help sales.
Having those things upon your initial release is very important to get the buzz going on your game too.
Don't give up! Keep releasing more games, but set the bar higher each time you do.
(I'm aware that, reading this line will scare away a potential GS customer that is looking for more info on the tool... But.. Just try the tool, dude
I would gladly buy it but I'm having some problems with my countries iTunes store. But I've downloaded it right now and planning on playing it all the day to kick some GS-member ass!
Get ready QS and LT!!
For this is gonna be your last success!
@LordTarantor - Grats! I saw you in the top spot just now before coming back to check on the thread ^-^; (And thanks for the review, they all help!)
@QS - Version 1.5 is more polished; it isn't perfect, but it's got some more variety for sure. I'm glad you still like it though
@butterbean - Good advice and indeed, setting the bar higher each time is a good idea and something I do try for; I feel like this is my best app yet, but indeed, many things from 1.5 should have been in 1.0.
@cbt - Thank you, and good luck competing for the score :P
I assure you all, 1.5 is going to be a LOT less repetitive, so I hope you'll all keep me on your iPhones/iPods while I wait for it to be approved
Peach
maybe add a 3,2,1 count down before it starts.. just little polish things really..
Some of the additions in 1.5 will make it a bit more intense or "stressful", haha :P
I like the countdown idea a lot! I will add it to my list for 2.0 - thank you
Sigh. It'll be gone by tomorrow as I'm reporting it (if anyone else felt like doing the same, I'd appreciate it) but still - irritating.
Did anyone ever find out why he had a stick up his ass over app development?
@inception - LordTarantor is right; what CBT was saying was that the ratings were better than he sees on GS apps - not that is was good FOR a GS app. Understand?
@CBT - Can I ask what your name stands for by the way? I sure hope it isn't what initially sprang to mind, lol. (I'm sure it's not!)
But, come to think of it, that avatar of mine helps to get wrong impression, doesn't it? I will change it now..
@CBT - Well I didn't think so! I just .... I'm ashamed to say it was the first thing that came to mind. (Don't worry, I'm not into that, lol, I just happen to be well versed in that type of phrase/abbreviation, haha.)
Sadly I think someone said avatars can't be changed currently XD
Sorry I've not replied sooner.
I grabbed your game the other night.
Tis good fun.
I was going to make a few suggestions, but it seems like you have most of what I was going to say covered in the update.
(Animation, weird stuff at the bottom of the play field thing, music etc etc)
I like the OF integration, worked nice and seamlessly. Would be nice to see a few more achievements that are not score based though imo.
The game felt a little slow for me (even though I'm not all that good at it even at this speed), but just feels like you could ramp up the speed to make it a bit more thrilling. Or maybe have it speed up over time and stuff.
Great to know that you went from nothing, to having this game coded in Corona in such a short space of time. great stuff.
I think you may have been a little premature in setting it to free after only a few days poor sales, but that's just me.
Poor sales on something is always a disappointment.
We had a similar situation with our last app "Rodger the Raccoon". Terrible sales really. Fairly average for day 1, but then dropped off much sooner than usual.
We rode it out for a couple of weeks, just to make sure they were going to be consistently bad for the forseeable future before setting it to free.
When we did set to free for a couple of days, it was by far our biggest "free" days for any app we have done. 7500 on day 1 as I remember, which shows at least people were interested.....just not enough to spend $0.99 on it.
Also, rather annoyingly, we didn't really get that bump you sometimes get once it was set back to paid.
On the other hand. One of our games from earlier in the year (Doodle Ski), which did ok for a week over the summer. Was sitting festering selling 4-5 a day.
We doubled the price a couple of weeks ago.
1st few days afterwards, it was selling 8-12!!!
It's still festering at 4-8 ish a day, but at double the price.
What I'm getting at I guess, in a long winded way....is the app store is weird and wonderful place. Try not to get too down in the down times, cos we all have them, and sometimes, there seems to be no real logical reason for them.
Chin up.
Get your updates out, and bosh out some more games
Yeah, it was very much like Castle Climber in wanting something out. Like a rushed first app, heh. 1.5 does fix many issues though; the thing at the bottom of the screen seems gone entirely (it might occur once in awhile but didn't in testing, so we'll see - I /think/ we're good now) and music, a few little animations (more to come) and also a few more things to busy it up. (Rather than changing the scroll speed I felt like adding more in way probably better - we'll see though, perhaps not.)
I wanted to make it free for a little (back to paid now) simply because my sales weren't just bad, they were the worst I've ever had besides a very simple little game that also mysteriously flopped - of 15 odd games, this, probably my best one, did the worst early on.
My total sales for it are around, I don't know, $13? Literally. Like $13.
I got it out there so at least now more people will see it and even if it continues to fail horribly it will at least not be something only < 20 people see, lol.
Thanks for the kind words; we'll see what happens. I'm not giving up and as each game I make typically gets better than the one before, I am no where near giving up.
Peach
first of all congrats on your first corona app!
now about your game.
you really need to check collisions. it seems to be pretty off. im not sure how it works in corona exactly, but it seems like your png has a lot of alpha around your actual sprites. this would result in the collision area being bigger than the actual drawing. its really annoying when the star is at least 5 pixels away from the ninja, but it still registers a collision.
another one that bugs me is when the star gets close to one of the edges of the screen and jumps to the other side. make the star almost disappear on the edge before jumping to the other side. (this will also look better since the star wont "pop" from one side to the other)
(the same applies to items that come from the bottom and go up. they disappear before getting out of the screen)
also, you really should think on making the game go faster as time goes on. like every 1000 points you increase the speed by 10%. also, since the game will get harder and harder, you should make the items give more points.
the way its at there is no other motivation of playing the game(besides the online OF leader board) past 5000 points, since its exactly the same game if you have 5000, 10000 or 25000 points.
@nulo - Thank you.
For collisions, it's a square shape, everything is, just like in GS. I have been trying to figure out how to fix that and I may have a solution, it just needs a tad more testing.
As to it getting to the other side, it's something I'll look at tweaking in 2.0 - you're actually the first one not to like it ^-^; I agree it could be smoother though, yes. The reason I can't have it totally disappear is because then it would be in a zone that was safe to sit in and just pass check points (in version 1.5) and get some insane score just by leaving their phone sitting there.
For the items disappearing before the top I've already rewritten this for 2.0 - but thank you for suggesting it. No one had previously mentioned it but I agree they should be off the screen first.
As to speed, like I mentioned above, I'll gauge what users want for 2.0 - I need to hear what they think after seeing the new items; the screen being a lot busier may effect your opinion too as 10% per 1000 points is a lot of speed very fast based on 1.5s additions.
Also, I'm guessing you missed them due to the order - but there are actually over 35 achievements and not just for high scores (5k) but also collecting a certain number of sushi in a row and hitting score marks with 3 lives
Appreciate all the suggestions and hopefully 2.0 will implement most/all of them
I got 300 downloads of the app while it was still free (so the second part of the 12 hour window) - so about 600 all up.
The part of the day that it wasn't free I got 8 sales.
This may not sound like much but it's actually a large, LARGE improvement over what it was, as pitiful as that is.
At the end of the day, 600 more people have my game on their phones and those who update when 1.5 is released (hopefully very soon) will be happy with the changes. 280ish people made the high score table at some point since the game was made free and I know (thanks to insights) that a few people did share their scores on Facebook in that time.
Anywho, that's my update for now - tomorrow I'll let you all know what sales look like; if I get another day with 8 while that's still dreadful, it means making it free for 12 hours DID work as it still improved sales briefly and I made more than I would have made selling 1 or 2 a day.
*If anyone has the time and felt like helping me out, kindly report the comments made by that douche on my app, we all know who it is and that he has three accounts (he just renamed one "classymom", quite the fail troll ;P) and/or rate them as "unhelpful".
I've reported them already as both contain lies so they do violate the rules, but for some reason they're still there. >.<'
John
I am advertising it in the same ways we all do when we're broke; we send out promo codes, hope to get a review from a decent site (by contacting them with promos), promote on TA, promote on a few other forums, use OpenFeint and Facebook posting, etc.
I have SOME tutorials, although when you say "also do you have tutorials on this app for Corona?" I'm not totally sure what you mean.
If you mean do I have tutorials for some aspects of it, then yes. I have written tutorials for wrapping, scene/screen management, openfeint integration, rating buttons, accelerometer control and a few other things.
If you mean do I have one tutorial explaining how to create the entire app, then no.
If you're interested in seeing my tutorials, my website for them is http://techority.com
I do plan on adding some Corona/Lua noob tutorials soon, so if anyone is interested I'd encourage you to bookmark it or add me on FB or Twitter (I tweet under the name peachpellen) as I post when I do a new tutorial.
Cool..thanks for the update...I am building my first Corona apps now....I am impressed with their ease of use and customer support....but building is more involved (mind work) than GS....your tutorials are great!!!!! Our Pinball Wizard! game was made using the CocosLive servers for scores....maybe the GS folk will do this soon?
John
There will definitely be more in the future.