Touch Arcade is a popular site that covers iOS gaming. They have forums where people discuss games. If you’re making an iOS game, the Touch Arcade forums are a good way to build up a buzz about your game as you’re making it.
If you go to Touch Arcade’s forums, you’ll notice they have two forums for game developers, one public and one private. To join the private game developer forum, you must have a game published on the App Store and ask to be invited.
Category: Business
Here are LetterMiner’s October download numbers.
iOS: 11 downloads Mac: 2 downloads The fear I had last month was realized. The download boost that started in the middle of August ended in late September. The download spike wasn’t helpful. All of the iOS downloads were from China, and I did not notice any new people playing LetterMiner.
Here are the download numbers for LetterMiner in September.
iOS: 1744 downloads Mac: 9 downloads I had almost double the iOS downloads I had in August. The downloads started to drop on September 29. I fear the boost in downloads that started in the middle of August has ended.
August was the best month yet for LetterMiner downloads.
iOS: 900 downloads Mac: 10 downloads The 900 downloads for the iOS version is especially good considering I had only 53 downloads from January through July.
I recently checked the download stats for the iOS version of LetterMiner and noticed a big jump in downloads. The following list of download stats shows how dramatic the jump is:
45 downloads in January 8 downloads from February 1 to May 7 0 downloads from May 8 to August 12 7 downloads from August 13 to August 16 331 downloads from August 17 to August 23 I have no idea how I went from nobody downloading LetterMiner for three months to getting over 300 downloads in a week.
Here are the download numbers for LetterMiner in January.
iOS: 45 downloads Mac: 4 downloads
I recently browsed through the word game section of the App Store and discovered something disturbing. LetterMiner does not appear in any list of word games. I navigated my way to the list of word games and found the following categories:
New games we love All-time greats Decipher the word Play against the clock Word battle games Play and learn Free games Since LetterMiner is a free game it should be in the list of free word games.
It’s been almost two weeks since I launched the iOS version of LetterMiner. So far 43 people have downloaded it. I have a smash hit on my hands.
The most surprising data iTunes Connect has shown me is only 10 of the 43 downloads are from North America. 22 downloads are from Europe, and 11 are from the Asia Pacific region. With LetterMiner not supporting languages other than English, I expected most of the downloads to be from North America.
The title of this article is my advice to anyone trying to get started as an indie game developer. If you’re quitting your job to make games full time, make sure you have enough money saved to make your first free game and your second game.
What Do I Mean By Free? I mean a game that is completely free. No ads. No in-game purchases. Provide a complete game that people can play for free.
I decided to release LetterMiner as a free game. The main reason for this decision is I was unable to build up a buzz for the game while I was developing it. Why bother charging for a game when no one knows it exists?
There are three main ways to make money on a mobile game.
Upfront purchase In-app purchases Ads Upfront purchase is the way most people buy console games.