How we made a free Balda for iOS and how we plan to make money

Since the beginning of this year, my friends and I have been making a well-known multiplayer word game for iOS - Balda Online . For those who have not played Baldu: the game takes place on a field of 5x5 cells. There is a starting word of 5 letters. Players take turns adding one letter at a time until the cells run out. The course is given 2 minutes. The longer the words, the more points. In the game such qualities as erudition, quickness of mind, memory, composure and calculation are important.

We have set ourselves the task of making the best in Baldu world and we are trying to consistently move towards this goal, constantly bringing in new and new "chips". Interest in the game is also quite large: 12 thousand people play every day in Baldu Online (up to 1000 players at a time at peak time), spending more than 25 thousand games every day. We are confident that we will be able to further increase these figures at times.

By the way, information about the current number of players is displayed directly on the main page of the game. Download the game and check how many people are playing right now.

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Features of our baldy

• Definitions of words
The game has built-in definitions of the words used. It really helps to learn and memorize new words and improve your game.

In Baldu, you can play in English, while you can customize the display as definitions of words also in English or their translation into Russian.

• Prize cell
For the sake of diversity and increased interest, there is a prize cell in the game, which adds 1 or 2 points to the set word.


• Play online and with computer
You can play both online with real opponents and with a computer on 4 difficulty levels: Beginner, Junior, Connoisseur and Sensei. Sensei can beat only a few players.

• Rating
The player has a rating and place among other players, which is influenced by online games. An interesting feature is that you can increase your rating by playing offline with a computer. Information about the result is transmitted to the game server to calculate the rating as soon as the Internet connection appears.

• Division into leagues
Despite the fact that the Game Center in theory should connect between more or less equal players (based on its own rating), it does not do very well. Therefore, in the game, with the help of Game Center groups, division into leagues is introduced: "Major League" - players with a place from 1 to 5000 and "First League" - all the rest. In each league, players play among themselves. Players can move between leagues when their place changes. The division into leagues helps to hold matches between more or less equal rivals.

• Design
From the very beginning, given that the game was made for iOS, we paid special attention to design. In Balda there are 4 very beautiful built-in skins: grass, sand, space and ice.

• Other
In Balda there are built-in tasks, chat and statistics. The Russian dictionary contains about 20 thousand carefully selected nouns with definitions. English dictionary - 44 thousand nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs with definitions and translation.

Will appear soon

• Auto-tuning
Adjusting the power of the computer to the results of the game with the user: the computer will evaluate the results of the last 12 and 4 games at this level of complexity and slightly strengthen or weaken your game.

• Adding words
The ability, without leaving the application, send a request to add or delete words from the dictionary of the game.

• Parallax
Very nice parallax effect on the main screen (under iOS 7) - for each of 4 types of wallpapers.

• Bomb
Cell with a bomb: an explosion destroys letters in adjacent cells.

• iPad
Adaptation for iPad.

• Multiplayer
From the realm of fantasy, but still: a game of three and four.

• Go West
The presentation of the game in the West. Balda (Blockhead Online) is now available on App Stores around the world, but is still popular only in Russia and the CIS countries.

• Monetization
Paid functions (about them below).

Some statistics

The game is implemented using the Apple Game Center for multiplayer (which makes it impossible to cross-platform at this stage), plus its own server for storing the user profile, calculating the rating, location and statistics. The most resource-intensive operations on the server are made in cron, which allows you to service a large number of players without delay. Currently there is an iPhone only version.

Interesting distribution of players by time of day. The minimum point is 2-3 in the morning.
The number of players. X axis - seconds since the beginning of the measurement.


The maximum number of people playing Baldu from 22 to 23 pm. Then after 0 o'clock there is a sharp decline. On average, one player plays 2 full games per day (more than 1 turn), i.e. spends about 30 minutes in the game.

Promotion

The game did not immediately come to such good performance. This was facilitated by 2 paid reviews with a total cost of 14 thousand rubles.

First review

October 8 at 19:00 a paid review was published on the website appleinsder.ru worth 10 thousand rubles. That day the game was set by 1400 people. (+1100 people). Within 1 week, the game was released on 3,600 daily setups.

Second review

On October 14, the second paid review in the VKontakte group , worth 4 thousand rubles.


Obviously, the first review was for the game "kick ass." Further growth was due to an increasingly high place on the App Store charts. Not the last role was played by the worked out gameplay and game design, confirmed by high user ratings (4.5 stars).
As a result, almost 2 weeks after the start of the promotion, the game ranked 28th in all free applications in the Russian App Store, 10th place in games, 2nd in puzzles and 1th in verbal! Now Balda has rolled back a bit from the maximum positions.

Monetization

Frankly, the purpose of creating the Baldy was not and is not the desire to earn money. For us, bringing the game to perfection is a kind of hobby in which we put the soul and which gives a lot of pleasure, especially when you see that people like the results of your work. However, to spend their own money endlessly, incl. advertising is probably wrong, so you have to think about monetization.
Having spent so much time on design, “licking” every pixel, we are strongly against built-in advertising. In our opinion, banners significantly spoil the look, blurring the application’s own style.
We want the large number of players who enjoy our game to continue to enjoy the game without any restrictions. Therefore, the closest for us was the model free to play .

In the near future, we plan to offer players the following in-game purchases:

• Hint
The hint will be the letter put on the field and the definition of the word:


• Add. time
An extra 2 minutes to think about when playing with a computer.

• Play with leaders
Opportunity for players from the "First League" to play against strong players from the "Higher League".

• Rating Actions
Zeroing the rating and statistics, rating as a gift to another player.

• Watch games
The ability to watch other people's games in real time (!).

• Other
Extended statistics, etc.

Conclusion

Taking this opportunity, I would like to turn to the habr-community:

• How do you find a game? What are the advantages and disadvantages? What could be improved?
• What paid features could be offered to players, while not limiting the core gameplay?
• Do the native Russian game Balda have any prospects for English-speaking players, where they are more accustomed to playing Scramble (Scrabble)?

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Link to the game Balda Olnayn in iTunes: link