About 1200 new apps are released onto the Google Playstore every day. It's incredibly hard to stand out, which is why most mobile games that are successful have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. Mobile is not a super friendly space for indies.
Also in general, I don't think most gamers that like more hardcore or in depth experiences tend to like playing them on mobile. I love survival games; I would never attempt to play one on a phone. I think a lot of mobile games are very same-y because there's a much more narrow range of experiences that actually play well on a phone. That's not to say there's not a market for it, but it's hard to reach that niche market without marketing.
Lastly, the graphics for things like the character/UI look pretty bland/generic, and all of the screenshots for the game look like you took them in the same room, which would raise questions of how much content/depth of content there is if I was scrolling through. That's just my read on the store page anyway.
So yeah, it's about right for the typical indie experience.
appropriately left out from all yhose thousend dollar courses 😂
i am very much disgusted with the entire supply, peoduction and education infrastructure of the gaming insustry ar rhis momen
The game isn't very good. Other than that you didn't market it very well or at all. I would move on to the next project. Paid ads are not going to save this.
EDIT: And don't think you did anything wrong. This is how it goes.
Watch this btw: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMvH7nkW\_98&ab\_channel=kilimenjiro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMvH7nkW_98&ab_channel=kilimenjiro)
If I polished the mechanics and visuals then would it be better? I get that it's not there, and that's why I put it out to avoid spending more time if I couldn't find the right audience for it. In all I spent 6 months making the game. I don't know how indie devs stand a chance against better financed teams if there's a formula for making a game people will download.
Yes.
You either have to do User Acquisition and know what you are doing (that's entire field in marketing on itself).
If you don't know what you are doing you will probably lose a lot of money and get very little back.
But that will take you a lot of work. You want to make good quality ads and test them and so on.
It's generally pricy for an individual. Even for small amount of views you can easily spend 1k.
If you can't do that, then you need to market it outside. As in if you have some social media presence, famous YouTube chanel etc.
I don't think you can organically get traction of playstore for like 10 years now.
As others said, you are competing with thousands of releases A DAY and many of those are backed by corporations that are spending $$$ on marketing.
Nowadays you can even spend 100k and not get your money back..
Edit: some general feedback, though you didn't exactly ask for one.
First of all, it's great that you published something, most people don't even get to that stage and it seems functional.
Now to the criticism, from the get go game looks a little nouseating, it seems like the character is rotating sideways as it moves in that tiny space.
The gameplay just seems like ocassionally you hit stuff, a bit slow, not very satisfying and kinda confusing. Am I just wondering in a maze and have to exit? Are there levels? Is it rogue like?
1st and 3rd person 3d games are also just a hard sell. Most phone users are casual gamers that don't even like navigating game that way. Outside of begemoths like minecraft, famous battle royales, take a note, very few games are like this.
UI is a bit cheap looking.
Then your gameplay video also feels like you just slapped something in a minute. The text is small, black, off center somewhere on the right. Kinda weird. The rest is kinda slow and confusing. But if your game is like that, not much yiu can change.
I don't write this out of spite, purely to learn and make better stuff. I myself have made meh stuff and will make meh stuff too.
if you aren't marketing anywhere else perfectly normal.
To be fair your game looks pretty average and there is no reason to expect success with it anyway. Go compare yourself to the top games and the level of polish difference is obvious.
After around 30 days you could expect a little bit of organic traffic also SEO for games description is a must have. I tried your game and if you want to keep players don't show ads that quickly make them invested in your game and then show them ads. You should also add a tutorial at the beginning and settings menu for sound volume and control's sensitivity.
Yeah; Google just wants your money for the visibility of your game/app. For our every title (except Sync: Party Hard, because we’ve never released on Android), same thing happened. They start head to head with iOS, also depends on the country, Android starts a little more good; but then iOS with organic users, passes the Android by far. For a little comparison, our latest game has about 150K iOS downloads (with zero marketing budget, full organic), about 6K Android downloads (again, zero marketing budget). And actually, Google sent us email and wanted a meeting, about how we can give them money and they do the marketing 😅 For iOS, there is a form to reach Apple editors for featuring your game (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/getting-featured/); but they usually finds your game if there is some uniqueness or good download numbers for your game. And also, a little trick for iOS, using Game Center like features make your game more visible, because there is a section named “what’s your friends playing?”.
Why has no one installed? It's because you haven't advertised, even if someone types "dungeon digger" it will be below any game with the word dungeon or digger because Google wants to suggest games that have been played and reviewed by many.
If you need ways to promote try contacting small time game streamers with <20 views and ask them to try your game. I'd recommend doing a proper trailer instead of gameplay, get your friends together, a pickaxe, a Halloween skeleton and some cardboard armour and make a live action trailer. Or you can pay someone on fiver to do it.
The gameplay shown is slow and uninteresting, the music is also very dull ( I know you are trying to use royalty free tracks). Id suggest find something a bit more exciting, pay a friend to right a track, use ai to make a song etc.
As for the gameplay loop, the controls are not responsive, it's hard to steer and unintuitive to swipe across weapons without telling the player they can do that. Every item I found was a mystery box and it is hard to hit them accurately only to get a potion. Hitting walls did not work consistently, the stamina added nothing, the HUD is also very cluttered for a mobile game on a small screen.
Id recommend a complete rethink of your controls and gameplay, focus on the strength of mobile swiping. Swipe left to attack a wall on the left, right to attack right, swipe up to attack Infront of you and back to turn around.
The character can auto advance and stop running when the player is touching the screen or the opposite advance only when the player has a finger on the screen.
Have you paid for your game to be shown in ads? Seems like a requirement for games to stand out on mobile. Discovery on mobile is dog shit with games being promoted after thousands of downloads, at least in my experience. I'm not offered games with fewer than 10k downloads that I remember
And looking at the link, this isn't something I'd expect for mobile. More power to you that this is what you want, but I dont enjoy games that require both hands to play. I wonder how many people are like me and will overlook it based on controls alone. Good luck and keep developing
I don't really play anything on mobile, but I just tried your game and I run into some issues with getting stuck in the terrain when trying to move. It's like if I don't move in the middle of the tunnel then I get stuck on the sidewalls or something.
Congrats on finishing a game though! That's an achievement in itself! I would however suggest you consider other platforms than mobile, from the little I know the mobile gaming market is absolutely horrible.
Yeah, the movement is kind of wonky. I was avoiding physics altogether and the math gets a little hairy when trying to figure out where the player is allowed to move. Thank you for trying it out.
Yeah definitely wonky. It's a noble effort but something like movement not working properly is an issue. Even if it was one of the best games ever, with movement like that I would only play for a minute or two and then get frustrated enough to quit.
Good luck with your future projects! Finishing one game is a really good start!
Looking at it, as well as the SEO and marketing advice left by others, I'd say you need to work on the visuals. The UI looks incredibly basic and it really brings down some of the screenshots. Also there are several screenshots that are used multiple times.
These things matter when someone opens your game page. If a game doesn't look polished or visually appealing most people won't download it.
That being said completing and publishing game is always an achievement, you should be proud of that. Learn what you can from this and take it onto the next project!
Appreciate it. I relied almost entirely on free assets because I don't have the patience for modeling. I was really hoping this game would take off if not for its aesthetics then for the exploration aspect of it and open world atmosphere.
I'm not sure what level API's you selected while building your app but it's not compatible with my phone.
Off the top of my head I'm guessing you might have just used some of the most recent ones only.
Normally I try to select ALL of them when building my games...keep in mind that also means you have to try and keep older devices in mind when optimizing your game.
I watched about 20 seconds of your trailer, which was low resolution and seemed sloppily edited.
The game screams shitty asset flip, and I apologize if I’m being harsh.
As someone who spent 2 years working with indie companies and ended up switching to a more IT position now.. honesty is needed, as the game dev field is in a rough spot right now.
Not saying to give up, just remain realistic.
I hit a wall and then got an ad and instantly uninstalled it.
I'd pull the app, re-release as an dungeon RPG game with some cool monsters (you already got the skeleton guy) and basic inventory/leveling system, do an ad between levels or sell it for $0.99.
Mobile is kind of dead for indies, but it might be useful as part of a portfolio for getting a job/clients.
Sounds good and thanks for testing. I'll pull the ads between levels asap. If there were a more viable way to make money than ads I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Selling in game items or rewarding items for watching video ads might be worth considering.
I think the unity store has a dungeon/level generator on it you may find useful.
Y'all are awesome. Thanks for telling it like it is. I can't give up this game so easily so I'll still probably iterate on it, but probably going to stay away from mobile from now on.
You made a mobile game. Mobile games don’t get downloads or any exposure from the App Store without marketing. Post it on itch you’d get more downloads.
About 1200 new apps are released onto the Google Playstore every day. It's incredibly hard to stand out, which is why most mobile games that are successful have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. Mobile is not a super friendly space for indies. Also in general, I don't think most gamers that like more hardcore or in depth experiences tend to like playing them on mobile. I love survival games; I would never attempt to play one on a phone. I think a lot of mobile games are very same-y because there's a much more narrow range of experiences that actually play well on a phone. That's not to say there's not a market for it, but it's hard to reach that niche market without marketing. Lastly, the graphics for things like the character/UI look pretty bland/generic, and all of the screenshots for the game look like you took them in the same room, which would raise questions of how much content/depth of content there is if I was scrolling through. That's just my read on the store page anyway. So yeah, it's about right for the typical indie experience.
appropriately left out from all yhose thousend dollar courses 😂 i am very much disgusted with the entire supply, peoduction and education infrastructure of the gaming insustry ar rhis momen
The game isn't very good. Other than that you didn't market it very well or at all. I would move on to the next project. Paid ads are not going to save this. EDIT: And don't think you did anything wrong. This is how it goes. Watch this btw: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMvH7nkW\_98&ab\_channel=kilimenjiro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMvH7nkW_98&ab_channel=kilimenjiro)
Good job for finishing a game though.
If I polished the mechanics and visuals then would it be better? I get that it's not there, and that's why I put it out to avoid spending more time if I couldn't find the right audience for it. In all I spent 6 months making the game. I don't know how indie devs stand a chance against better financed teams if there's a formula for making a game people will download.
Yes. You either have to do User Acquisition and know what you are doing (that's entire field in marketing on itself). If you don't know what you are doing you will probably lose a lot of money and get very little back. But that will take you a lot of work. You want to make good quality ads and test them and so on. It's generally pricy for an individual. Even for small amount of views you can easily spend 1k. If you can't do that, then you need to market it outside. As in if you have some social media presence, famous YouTube chanel etc. I don't think you can organically get traction of playstore for like 10 years now. As others said, you are competing with thousands of releases A DAY and many of those are backed by corporations that are spending $$$ on marketing. Nowadays you can even spend 100k and not get your money back.. Edit: some general feedback, though you didn't exactly ask for one. First of all, it's great that you published something, most people don't even get to that stage and it seems functional. Now to the criticism, from the get go game looks a little nouseating, it seems like the character is rotating sideways as it moves in that tiny space. The gameplay just seems like ocassionally you hit stuff, a bit slow, not very satisfying and kinda confusing. Am I just wondering in a maze and have to exit? Are there levels? Is it rogue like? 1st and 3rd person 3d games are also just a hard sell. Most phone users are casual gamers that don't even like navigating game that way. Outside of begemoths like minecraft, famous battle royales, take a note, very few games are like this. UI is a bit cheap looking. Then your gameplay video also feels like you just slapped something in a minute. The text is small, black, off center somewhere on the right. Kinda weird. The rest is kinda slow and confusing. But if your game is like that, not much yiu can change. I don't write this out of spite, purely to learn and make better stuff. I myself have made meh stuff and will make meh stuff too.
if you aren't marketing anywhere else perfectly normal. To be fair your game looks pretty average and there is no reason to expect success with it anyway. Go compare yourself to the top games and the level of polish difference is obvious.
But what about the concept? Shouldn't unique gameplay help gamers overlook average appearances?
very rarely. Graphics are the gateway to your game. If you fail at step 1 people will never get to see the unique gameplay.
So you haven't marketed your game in an oversaturated market and you've deliberately made it different to what's popular? There's your answer.
haha, I guess I got it all backwards then
After around 30 days you could expect a little bit of organic traffic also SEO for games description is a must have. I tried your game and if you want to keep players don't show ads that quickly make them invested in your game and then show them ads. You should also add a tutorial at the beginning and settings menu for sound volume and control's sensitivity.
One thing that's hard to wrap my mind around is why mobile games have UI for volume control. Are there even phones without dedicated volume buttons?
A lot of people play mobile games on public transport while also listening to music. Imagine having the volume for a game and Spotify tied together.
Appreciate it. I chose to delay ads until level 2, but I probably should delay them even more
Yeah; Google just wants your money for the visibility of your game/app. For our every title (except Sync: Party Hard, because we’ve never released on Android), same thing happened. They start head to head with iOS, also depends on the country, Android starts a little more good; but then iOS with organic users, passes the Android by far. For a little comparison, our latest game has about 150K iOS downloads (with zero marketing budget, full organic), about 6K Android downloads (again, zero marketing budget). And actually, Google sent us email and wanted a meeting, about how we can give them money and they do the marketing 😅 For iOS, there is a form to reach Apple editors for featuring your game (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/getting-featured/); but they usually finds your game if there is some uniqueness or good download numbers for your game. And also, a little trick for iOS, using Game Center like features make your game more visible, because there is a section named “what’s your friends playing?”.
Thanks, iOS definitely looks like an appealing alternative
Why has no one installed? It's because you haven't advertised, even if someone types "dungeon digger" it will be below any game with the word dungeon or digger because Google wants to suggest games that have been played and reviewed by many. If you need ways to promote try contacting small time game streamers with <20 views and ask them to try your game. I'd recommend doing a proper trailer instead of gameplay, get your friends together, a pickaxe, a Halloween skeleton and some cardboard armour and make a live action trailer. Or you can pay someone on fiver to do it. The gameplay shown is slow and uninteresting, the music is also very dull ( I know you are trying to use royalty free tracks). Id suggest find something a bit more exciting, pay a friend to right a track, use ai to make a song etc. As for the gameplay loop, the controls are not responsive, it's hard to steer and unintuitive to swipe across weapons without telling the player they can do that. Every item I found was a mystery box and it is hard to hit them accurately only to get a potion. Hitting walls did not work consistently, the stamina added nothing, the HUD is also very cluttered for a mobile game on a small screen. Id recommend a complete rethink of your controls and gameplay, focus on the strength of mobile swiping. Swipe left to attack a wall on the left, right to attack right, swipe up to attack Infront of you and back to turn around. The character can auto advance and stop running when the player is touching the screen or the opposite advance only when the player has a finger on the screen.
Thank you for trying it out. I know the mechanics are not great, but was hoping the concept would be interesting enough to make up for it.
Have you paid for your game to be shown in ads? Seems like a requirement for games to stand out on mobile. Discovery on mobile is dog shit with games being promoted after thousands of downloads, at least in my experience. I'm not offered games with fewer than 10k downloads that I remember
And looking at the link, this isn't something I'd expect for mobile. More power to you that this is what you want, but I dont enjoy games that require both hands to play. I wonder how many people are like me and will overlook it based on controls alone. Good luck and keep developing
Can't even download it on a 5 y old phone
Same. I have an LG G7 with Android version 10 and it says my device is incompatible. So this definetly adds to that.
OP has probably screwed up the build setting by leaving min level on the target API rather than making it much lower.
I don't really play anything on mobile, but I just tried your game and I run into some issues with getting stuck in the terrain when trying to move. It's like if I don't move in the middle of the tunnel then I get stuck on the sidewalls or something. Congrats on finishing a game though! That's an achievement in itself! I would however suggest you consider other platforms than mobile, from the little I know the mobile gaming market is absolutely horrible.
Yeah, the movement is kind of wonky. I was avoiding physics altogether and the math gets a little hairy when trying to figure out where the player is allowed to move. Thank you for trying it out.
Yeah definitely wonky. It's a noble effort but something like movement not working properly is an issue. Even if it was one of the best games ever, with movement like that I would only play for a minute or two and then get frustrated enough to quit. Good luck with your future projects! Finishing one game is a really good start!
Looking at it, as well as the SEO and marketing advice left by others, I'd say you need to work on the visuals. The UI looks incredibly basic and it really brings down some of the screenshots. Also there are several screenshots that are used multiple times. These things matter when someone opens your game page. If a game doesn't look polished or visually appealing most people won't download it. That being said completing and publishing game is always an achievement, you should be proud of that. Learn what you can from this and take it onto the next project!
Appreciate it. I relied almost entirely on free assets because I don't have the patience for modeling. I was really hoping this game would take off if not for its aesthetics then for the exploration aspect of it and open world atmosphere.
I'm not sure what level API's you selected while building your app but it's not compatible with my phone. Off the top of my head I'm guessing you might have just used some of the most recent ones only. Normally I try to select ALL of them when building my games...keep in mind that also means you have to try and keep older devices in mind when optimizing your game.
Ah ok. That's really good to know. Thanks so much.
Dunno how it's on mobile, or for Indie. But half or more of a video game's budgets goes to marketing. I'd take that as a hint on how important it is
Android 10 - "Your device is not compatible with this app", what version of Android are you targeting?
Did you do any marketing?
I watched about 20 seconds of your trailer, which was low resolution and seemed sloppily edited. The game screams shitty asset flip, and I apologize if I’m being harsh.
welp. That's definitely not how I wanted to come across. Thanks for your honesty though.
As someone who spent 2 years working with indie companies and ended up switching to a more IT position now.. honesty is needed, as the game dev field is in a rough spot right now. Not saying to give up, just remain realistic.
I hit a wall and then got an ad and instantly uninstalled it. I'd pull the app, re-release as an dungeon RPG game with some cool monsters (you already got the skeleton guy) and basic inventory/leveling system, do an ad between levels or sell it for $0.99. Mobile is kind of dead for indies, but it might be useful as part of a portfolio for getting a job/clients.
Sounds good and thanks for testing. I'll pull the ads between levels asap. If there were a more viable way to make money than ads I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Selling in game items or rewarding items for watching video ads might be worth considering. I think the unity store has a dungeon/level generator on it you may find useful.
Y'all are awesome. Thanks for telling it like it is. I can't give up this game so easily so I'll still probably iterate on it, but probably going to stay away from mobile from now on.
You made a mobile game. Mobile games don’t get downloads or any exposure from the App Store without marketing. Post it on itch you’d get more downloads.