I'm somewhat skeptical of Facebook advertising. Conventional wisdom I've seen on advertising is: - Good for maintaining awareness of a strong brand (ads for Angry Birds) - Poor for build brand awareness for a new app Just my 2 cents.
Actually, Facebook mobile ads for app installs are currently one of the most effective and cheapest tools for user acquisition. This is performance marketing, not a billboard campaign. There is nothing like awareness, just pure installs.
Word Warfare was approved today! Check it out at the following link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-warfare/id580234229?ls=1&mt=8 I will let you guys know how it fares over the next few days and then later down the road as well
Downloaded This thread really helpful for us, learnt a lot from here. Personally, i really hate in-game ads, feel uncomfortable while playing the game instant delete or rarely reopen it, yeah ads may help developer in profit but just let user enjoy your game first then they will pay for it.
I tried to balance that because I hate them as well. There are a lot of games that have them all over the place
Sure it is, to doing this maybe you need a long time to building user data base by: - Building a long, large content for your game, more update = keep your user stay longer in your game - Challenge player to player - Invite friend to playing with or ask helping from player - Give daily, weekly, monthly event in game, on facebook, social network, ... Not too much but there something learnt from other top games on appstore
So far downloads are not looking so well. Day 1: 43 Day 2 :47 Hopefully it will pick up some but who knows. Has anyone taken a look at it? Any comments/concerns?
I'll check it out and report back. Make sure to contact reviews sites with a quality personalized email along with a press kit. That's what will get your game noticed ultimately. Can't hurt to post on Reddit about it as well.
Here's my feedback: App Store presentation: - 1st screenshot is by far your most important one. It's a bad idea imho to use it to show the main menu as you are. You should use it to have an attractive shot of the game itself. - While the icon is good it doesn't feel "word game" at all. Not sure if it's a huge deal though. - Another random thought: ever considered the military theming could repel the typical word game crowd? - (Very Minor) I'd not show a "You lost" screen in the screenshots - Video of the game on Facebook is shallow and should show the gameplay in near real time instead of the wait screen, interstitial, shop and credits. Game itself: - Polished feel. - No crashes, runs smooth on my plain iPhone 4. - Dragging letters should be a bit more easy - if I drag a letter above a slot and it still touches it should land on it. It should play fast - had letters warping back down while easily touching half+ of the target tile. - Could be a good idea to have reminders of the % values of the bullets/grenades/nuke on the icons. - The tutorial does an overview of the power ups but I'm still confused about how the game works with the life/time totals and am stuck waiting for an automatch player turns. I used a grenade for -50% of opponent's time.. is the time calculated real time when you choose letters? I'd expand the tutorial to do a sample "bot" round. EDIT: Got to play a round after my opponent and my time was decreasing.. but when I start a game and do my initial round my time does not decrease at all? Misc: - Store purchases seem to queue up when you press them multiple time which you tend to do since your purchase confirmation window takes a while to show up. You should disable the interface when a buy push is done. - Store offers a "Pro" upgrade with no description. Not explained in the app store description either. - Store could be more colorful and inviting. Have icons of the powerups for example instead of verbose description. Hope this helps. Good luck with the game.
Thanks for the great feedback! I couldnt have asked for a more in depth analysis. I have contacted a ton of review sites and also posted on Facebook/twitter/reddit as well. Screenshot - I agree, that will be changing today. I didn't really think about it when I set that up (although I should have) Icon - I agree it doesnt fit a word game, but I was hoping for it to be eye catching and get people more interested in finding out what it is. Video - The video does show gameplay in the beginning, I just decided to go through the rest of the stuff as well. Dragging Letters - That is one of the bugs I am working on fixing right now Reminders of % values - Not sure what you mean by this. When you use them in game, a box slides up and shows what the one you have selected does. Did you try using one in-game? The power-ups calculated based off of their current time left and before your word is played i.e. if you opponent is showing 80 and you use a grenade (-50% of their time) it will drop them to 40 then subtract whatever word value you played. Your time decreases based off of what your opponent plays. So if you start a game and you are the first person to play (i.e. your opponents name is "Automatch Player" and not an actual username) then yours will stay at 100 until they have played their first turn. Store Purchases - The time window thing is something I did not realize was going on until earlier today. It is being fixed as we speak and will be incorporated into the first update. I will also be changing the store screen up a little to make it look a little better. Thanks for the input again, and if you have any other advice please let me know!
It does but after consuming the powerup. Ok it's really not obvious. I thought that my time was based on the time I was spending building up my word. Was pretty confused when playing my turn and was seeing my opponent's time decreasing. Hence why you should expand the tutorial part on that I think. And yeah the sliding letters is irritating atm - will be important to get that sorted out. Problem though is that your game will be reviewed (or decided to not be reviewed) for what it is as of now. Gotta get that update out quickly.
If you tap on the power-up again it goes away and is not consumed Yeah I am thinking there are some more things I need to put into the tutorial.... Update is almost finished. Ive spent 28 of the last 36 hours cranking out bug fixes, adding facebook integration, changing things up a little bit etc.... should be submitted tonight and I am planning on asking for an expedited review (there is currently a bug if you are using an iphone 5 that crashes the game every time you play a turn)
Also another big part of the update IMO is that you will now see what word your opponent played and what (if any) power ups they used
Yeah that'd be nice. Right now I had a "you lost" screen for one of the game that was my turn without having a clue as what happened. I had another one that indicated as being my turn and was just bringing me back to the main menu when selecting it. Closing off the application in the taskbar and relaunching (please have the monkey / metal door thing skippable ) fixed it. The lost game is appearing as "Won" in the Game over.
Yeah ive seen that bug a few times, its somewhat odd. The "Won" in game center will always say won, its how game center does it for some reason. If you actually won the game it will say ME with Won under it, if you lost, it will say the name of whoever you were playing, and then the word Won underneath it
