First Game Published: Monster Splash

by Scott Bradley • on 07. Feb, 2012 • in General, Monster Splash, iDevBlogADay

I missed my last post as we were in the final stages of finishing our first game. Now the game has been published so I’m busy putting together all the marketing material before it goes live. There is only a few days left to get everything organised so for this post I’m sticking to the facts :)

Year in Review Post

If you missed my year in review post here are the highlights….

  • I’m making an average of $500 / month from my current apps
  • My goal is to make $50K this year and by the end of the year make an average $5K / month
  • The plan is to do this by :
  • I’m going to publish all download and income stats for all my games here

Monster Splash

Our first game is almost live yeah!! Here are the gory details….

  • Started the project on the 16/11/2011
  • Cost of development was around $3K
  • Expecting to spend about $1K-$3K marketing
  • Published to the app store on 4/2/2012 so I expect it to be ready for sale around the 20/2/2012
    UPDATE: Its live, get it here. It just went live now after only  5 days in the approval process.
  • I’ll announce it through the following channels (some of these are still a work in progress!)
  • Download and income stats will be published here

What Worked

  • Was done quickly
  • High quality game (I’m probably biased!)
  • Very low risk
  • Much better quality than if I did it myself

What Didn’t Work

  • I’m lacking a good story both in the game and for my company
  • Balancing difficulty and progression in a game isn’t easy

I’ll do a proper post mortem once it’s live and the dust settles. Wish me luck :)

  • Anonymous

    All the best this year, I’m sure you’ll accomplish great things! Secondly, kudos for your commitment to transparency!

  • phuong vo

    Good luck! Looking forward to the post mortem.

    Can you go into more detail on what you mean by “Much better quality than if I did it myself”?

    Thanks.

  • http://freefallapps.com/blog Scott Bradley

    Thanks Kyle, fingers crossed.

  • http://freefallapps.com/blog Scott Bradley

    Thanks,

    I am a developer so technically I could do it but the problems I have are:
    o) No time – full time job & a toddler to look after
    o) No experience in game development or game art

    I spent last year doing some non game apps myself but because of the lack of time the results were mediocre apps which were making a few dollars a day. This is fine if I only wanted to do it as a hobby but it was unlikely to make it past that.

    Since I set the goal of $50K this year it was obvious that if I didn’t make some big changes and take a few risks then I would not reach it.

    So I made the decision to invest some of the money and outsource the development & art to people who have the time and experience. I was lucky to find some really nice guys with great experience so I feel confident that it was the right decision.

  • Roman

    You’re highly overestimating retention rate. It would be a half of what you think as a maximum. Here is some info to prove my words ;)
    http://blog.flurry.com/bid/76874/iOS-Android-Apps-Challenged-by-Traffic-Acquisition-Not-Discovery

  • http://freefallapps.com/blog Scott Bradley

    Thats a fair statement, I’m well aware the retention rate will be much lower than that. The spreadsheet was taken directly from gamesbrief without any modifications so far.

    The game will be made free on March 12 so once I start getting some stats I’ll update it.