I really don't know how you missed reviewing the Voice Acting on that game... It sounded like a 12 year old kid got hold of a voice modulator and was reading discarded He-Man The Cartoon scripts as his voice dubs. I need to find a way to record the voice over and use it as an achievement sound in a future release. It is priceless.
It's getting really frustrating that the big successes are putting stuff out for free now. Like seeing that Jetpack Joyride is free... HOW does one compete with that? Freemium is a great idea but I'm really frightened of those damn patent trolls who are bullying devs who use in-app purchases. My most recent game is a 'Mario clone' - actually it's a tribute to classic platformers with a graphic design style attempting to remind people of their old NES game boxes and things but people have decided to dub it a 'cheap clone' without playing it. Everybody who has played it seems to have liked it, everybody who hasn't is angry. I'd say this is pure proof that people think 'this LOOKS good' rather than 'this SOUNDS good' about games. The idea of the Mario references in the artwork was in order to make people remember their old NES cartridges and smile, then try the game, but it's also caused people to judge the game instantly without playing it. It's made some sales though, it's been up for 2 and a half days and it's made me back the time I spent creating it worth in wages. I did use Crazy Mike's Apps and paid for expedited video creation to make sure it was up at the weekend. I am concerned about the low number of views the video seems to have gotten, but they do publish that video in several other locations and tweet about it repeatedly. I'm not sure if I've gotten any sales through them, but I'm sure it can't have harmed. The best thing for me was delaying the release to a Thursday (instead of just 'when Apple approve it') and getting people talking about it on the forum. Gave promo codes to a few of the more popular members who write the best reviews so that they got the game not only free but also early, and quoted them in the app description. The 'hype' generated knowledge of the game and sites started reporting it as an upcoming title etc. and I think that has helped a lot.
We tried social media, submitting to review sites and offering the game for free. These are the experiences with these marketing approaches for our game Turntales up to now: - social media: Our facebook page brought a lot of initial sales with the release but that's it. We should have started with our Twitter page earlier - review sites: We put a lot of effort into our press release, created a media package for the press, had the english version checked by a native speaker and so on. Less than 5% reacted with a review or at least a note on their website. The biggest success in that area was a big norwegian gaming website that published a very positive review. That brought us about 40 sales in Norway. - offering for free: After sales dropped to 0, we decided to go free for a day without telling anyone. It was an experiment to see how many free app sites and twitter bots would react. The results were amazing compared to the minimal effort. We got as much notes on website and tweets as we got with our initial press release. The game was downloaded about 3500 times. There were just a handfull of sales in the following days but we also got an "art asset request" email from Apple and got featured in the "new & noteworthy" category in 111 App Stores worldwide (unfortunately not in US & Canada). Sales in the following week were not as high as we expected it from a feature but it was way better than it was before Since 3 days Turntales Lite is out in the App Store and we will see how well it's going to perform in order to increase sales. But we will definetely try the offering for free option again!
The 'free for a day' thing does seem to bring a lot of success stories... I'm seriously considering it. My fear is that the, say, 3000 or so who download it that day might have been 3000 people who would have paid for it over time, and that's a lot of money lost. However the word of mouth from those 3000 people seems to be priceless. I might give it a go... [Edit: Giving it a go. Haven't announced it anywhere, pretty much doing what you did, TorbenFugger]
Am in the middle of the 'freebie day', it got extended to two days because most people couldn't download it on day 1 due to a 'being modified' error. iOS gamers crack me up though... Seriously, what kind of skinflint gets something completely free, then takes the time out of their day to write a negative review of it?
