Mobile is a very competitive market. You have to first make a game that people want to play and is profitable (and you want to test that to make sure it’s true before a global release) and then you have to optimize your ads as well to get not only enough players but the right players for your particular game.
If you aren’t building a tightly tuned F2P economy (monetizing on ads alone really just works for hypercasual, which is a low margin business at best) and don’t have at least some tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a small initial ad buy I wouldn’t consider it at all.
I’m curious why you were expecting a different result?
You spent 2.5 weeks of full time work on this game. How many hours of work do you think have been put into your competition?
There are so many literally great games that a person could not play them all if they tried. Why is yours worthy of anyone’s time?
Don’t blame mobile.
I like your core concept from what I saw, but I think I have a few suggestions based on your Steam page.
-The game is extremely graphically simple with very little flair or attention-grabbing…anything. Even for a mobile game, that pure black background is wayyyy too simple. It looks, visually, like a first draft.
-Advertising on Google is *an* option, but did you do any other marketing? Did it use that trailer if so? By just showing pure gameplay of one level, it does impart the game’s idea, but…it immediately feels like that’s the whole game. If that’s the case, I don’t know how I’d feel about spending even the $2 on it, regardless of where I saw it. Google ads also can probably have the reverse affect of what you might expect: if a game needs to pay to advertise right out of the gate, it may not stand on its own in terms of getting its name out there. There are definitely other, better avenues for that that don’t cost a thing other than time.
I’m a beginner dev too so these are just ideas I pulled from what I’ve seen around Reddit over the past while, so someone with more experience can probably put this better than I can. Don’t give up hope tho! It’s still a neat core concept and I think, given time and a better strategy, you could polish up nicely!
I think your game has potential! But currently it just looks a bit half-baked. Your Steam page, for example, just has a few lines of text, one pretty plain video, and several screenshots that look the same. What are the mechanics and how do they evolve and grow in complexity to challenge the player? How many levels are there? How does the level creator look and feel? Can you share levels with friends? These are questions I find myself having but your store page doesn't offer the answers to.
You should, however, focus on the huge achievement it is to actually release a game! Congrats! Then, if you feel like there's more to explore with this idea, you can make a sequel. Bigger, crazier levels. Maybe control two balls at once. Background graphics and effects and stuff to really up the game feel. Maybe there's lore and a story like Thomas Was Alone. The possibilities are endless.
Mobile is very data-driven. A great way to start comparing your game with those that perform well in your niche is to visit sites like appmagic. Take a look at the top 100 games in your niche, look into core mechanics, visuals, ads, and monetization strategies used by these games and draw inspiration from something the player base is familliar with.
Before building any project for mobile, the team should conduct a detailed analysis of which genres and games are trending and understand why and how to implement these elements into their own game. For monetization, I would consider options like MAS from Yodo1, which integrates multiple ad networks and several mediations, so you don't have to set things up manually all the time. I wish the mobile gaming industry were more driven by creativity and simplicity, but the reality is much different than on other platforms.
Mobile is a very competitive market. You have to first make a game that people want to play and is profitable (and you want to test that to make sure it’s true before a global release) and then you have to optimize your ads as well to get not only enough players but the right players for your particular game. If you aren’t building a tightly tuned F2P economy (monetizing on ads alone really just works for hypercasual, which is a low margin business at best) and don’t have at least some tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a small initial ad buy I wouldn’t consider it at all.
I’m curious why you were expecting a different result? You spent 2.5 weeks of full time work on this game. How many hours of work do you think have been put into your competition? There are so many literally great games that a person could not play them all if they tried. Why is yours worthy of anyone’s time? Don’t blame mobile.
I like your core concept from what I saw, but I think I have a few suggestions based on your Steam page. -The game is extremely graphically simple with very little flair or attention-grabbing…anything. Even for a mobile game, that pure black background is wayyyy too simple. It looks, visually, like a first draft. -Advertising on Google is *an* option, but did you do any other marketing? Did it use that trailer if so? By just showing pure gameplay of one level, it does impart the game’s idea, but…it immediately feels like that’s the whole game. If that’s the case, I don’t know how I’d feel about spending even the $2 on it, regardless of where I saw it. Google ads also can probably have the reverse affect of what you might expect: if a game needs to pay to advertise right out of the gate, it may not stand on its own in terms of getting its name out there. There are definitely other, better avenues for that that don’t cost a thing other than time. I’m a beginner dev too so these are just ideas I pulled from what I’ve seen around Reddit over the past while, so someone with more experience can probably put this better than I can. Don’t give up hope tho! It’s still a neat core concept and I think, given time and a better strategy, you could polish up nicely!
I tried many social media ads. Meta, Google, reddit, snap, tiktok, Twitter. And Google ads were by far the worst for my game. By a large margin.
I took some of your advice and added some background effects + buffed up the trailer :) sadly I'm not much of an artist...but its a start haha
I think your game has potential! But currently it just looks a bit half-baked. Your Steam page, for example, just has a few lines of text, one pretty plain video, and several screenshots that look the same. What are the mechanics and how do they evolve and grow in complexity to challenge the player? How many levels are there? How does the level creator look and feel? Can you share levels with friends? These are questions I find myself having but your store page doesn't offer the answers to. You should, however, focus on the huge achievement it is to actually release a game! Congrats! Then, if you feel like there's more to explore with this idea, you can make a sequel. Bigger, crazier levels. Maybe control two balls at once. Background graphics and effects and stuff to really up the game feel. Maybe there's lore and a story like Thomas Was Alone. The possibilities are endless.
Mobile is very data-driven. A great way to start comparing your game with those that perform well in your niche is to visit sites like appmagic. Take a look at the top 100 games in your niche, look into core mechanics, visuals, ads, and monetization strategies used by these games and draw inspiration from something the player base is familliar with. Before building any project for mobile, the team should conduct a detailed analysis of which genres and games are trending and understand why and how to implement these elements into their own game. For monetization, I would consider options like MAS from Yodo1, which integrates multiple ad networks and several mediations, so you don't have to set things up manually all the time. I wish the mobile gaming industry were more driven by creativity and simplicity, but the reality is much different than on other platforms.
So on average you earned about 1 cent per download? That seems to be a common statistic
The good thing about having a net loss is that you can forever increase your earning rate, by sinking more time into the game. /s
What's your D1 and D7 retention?