How I learned from my mistakes or how to make the second game better.

Hi, Habr!



I want to share with you the experience of developing two games for Android, their promotion and talk about the mistakes that I made, and how I decided to avoid them in the future. A year ago, I started making my first game on Android. It all started with an idea. Plain, unremarkable - to memorize the figures on the screen. For the sake of experience and my first project on Google Play, I began to work diligently with my brother.
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Mistake number 1 - Reluctance to listen to the opinions of others

A week of work - and we already had a little bit of a working prototype. Well, of course, I showed it to friends, talked about plans, asked for an opinion. Many said that the idea is not new, not interesting, but I did not want to hear it and we continued to develop. In the end, we ourselves understood that there is not much to expect from the game, but the desire to finish the job has surpassed everything.



Mistake number 2 - I wasted time on permanent releases of the release, just because I wanted to fix something else, add

Constant discussions of ideas, the development process, changed the idea of ​​the game in front of our eyes, which even led to a complete redesign of the project, as well as changing the name of the game from Memory with balls (I only later realized the funnyness of the possible translation: “Memory with balls”) to Pur Monsters (I still do not know why “Pur”), which eventually grew into Space Monsters.

We constantly postponed the release of the game due to the fact that there was a desire to add, correct or improve something, to draw differently. Now I am moving according to the principle - to make the first stable version with minimal capabilities, show people and, if I get good feedback or the project has potential, then you can continue to maintain the product with constant improvements.



Error number 3 - Completely changed the design of the application, its name, at a time when it could be put in a separate project

As a result, 2 months of development showed the world of PurMonsters (in this version I did not use the game engine, but simply statically displayed figures). After that, we began to think about how to teach the monsters to move (fly), add music, correct old mistakes and quickly roll out the update. It took me another whole month. AndEngine engine was built in, music was added, but I made a mistake. I completely changed the subject and the name of the project towards space design. (Now I sometimes doubt the correctness of this decision, because it seems that the old design in bright colors was more attractive.)

PS The design of the application, the monsters and all the buttons were drawn independently (except for a couple of trifles), which took a lot of time.

Mistake number 4 - Not prepared properly for the first release.

Now I understand how important this is. First of all, it is important to build analytics into your project, without it it is very difficult to get high-quality and timely statistics. Google Console is generally updated once a day, if not less. And it is also important to know about each player, regardless of where the project was downloaded from.

The second important thing is the description of the project, its name. When there are different keywords in the description (not a list separated by commas, for such a Google may ban, see the placement rules ), your project will often appear in the search for such words. With this, of course, it is worth playing around, experimenting. Icon (the very first thing that can attract a user), screenshots (the user decides on what to do next) - description, video, rating, comments, number of races. All this should convince the person to install your application. Here, who is already on that much.

And it is also important to know in advance the list of the main forums where you will advertise the project. It is important to remember that when the application appears in Google play, you have a month, while you can be in the top of the new freeware. Therefore, the sooner you can attract an audience, the faster you will get the effect.

Simple idea, simple implementation or how I learned from my mistakes

Mistake number 5 - did not learn from their mistakes

Only six months later I made a second attempt. One evening and already a simple version of a mathematical game was ready (only addition and random numbers are no more than 10). After that evening, I now and then showed it to friends. I was surprised. Such a simple game could hold a person longer, liked it more (even more than Space Monsters).

But I made “Error # 1”. I did not return to the game for 4 months.

One week and everything is ready: “gameplay, graphics, Play services for records”. I, without hesitation, “draw a simple icon, write a description as I go, invent a name” and let it float ... That's right - I made “Error # 4”. But still I take the old list of resources and forums and start to run through each one, leaving the description and where you need apk (w3bsit3-dns.com, trashbox, xda, etc.).

There were attempts to spread through AdMob, but the effect was very low (maybe one of you can tell you about the experience of using AdMob as a PR application?) The number of users in the new game far exceeded the old one, as well as my expectations. I even saw my game in the top of new free ones in the tutorials section. I constantly watched statistics every day, tried to convince every friend and even the first comer from Android to install and make an assessment.



Results: “Quick Brain with its simplicity showed at times the best results. What can we say, if the average session length was 3 minutes compared with 30 seconds. All together made itself felt. The last days the number of active users exceeds 500 people per day, which is good news. But the trouble is that the main stream of races comes to unknown resources. And Google play bypasses the majority. "





Conclusion

I made a conclusion for myself from several key points (mistakes):

• Before starting development it is worth making sure that the game (application) is liked by people and they are ready to play (use);
• Concentrate on the release of a working prototype to test the performance of the idea;
• Prepare the material and the ground for the advertising campaign;
• To be able to complete the development of a unpromising project in time and start something new;
• And Google posted instructions for creating successful applications. I think it's worth reading ;
• The most important thing is to learn from your own and others' mistakes.

Conclusion

Error number 6 - do not postpone the first article on Habré

I have long dreamed (a whole year) about my first article on Habré. Each time I put it off until later because of ignorance of what I would write there, how they would react to it. Today, a year later, I overcame my fear and took this first step. I had a desire to share experiences, talk about the mistakes made, how they can be corrected.

Your opinion, comments, and advice are very important to me.