I agree with peak Sudoku. I search for Sudoku on Google Play and get 1000 responses. That is a search limit, who knows how many Sudokus there are. Someone starting out with Android might want to go for something a little more niche that has potential demand at first.
Also, the app is only in English as far as I can see. So they are competing in the most crowded market. Not that foreign languages save you with competition always. I tried to do an Android app in another crowded market, flashlight apps. Doing it in several languages did not help.
There are so many lacunae on Android, I have ideas all the time, yet so many people do yet another Sudoku app. They said they spent a lot of time on it. An MVP would have quickly told them what the demand was.
In terms of lacunae - only one app handles Microsoft Access files on an Android device AFAIK - my app. I based it off a popular LGPL Java library, the MVP took about two days or so of work, and did very little. I got a response, and suggestions, and built it up a little. I only have one competitor that I know of, and their database works off-device, and charges a fee after a trial period. There are gaps all over like that yet everyone goes for another Sudoku app, another flashlight app etc.
> We may have reached Peak Sudoku on mobile devices.
That's a nice and clever way of saying what I intended to say.
Absolutely no one is sitting around saying, "man, I want to play Sudoku on my phone but I can't find any games!". There's so much Sudoku to choose from, anyone that has wanted a Sudoku game has at least one on their phone, and has probably tried multiple ones before settling on that one.
Is this honestly the Sudoku game to end all Sudoku games? If so, great, but it's going to take a lot of effort to get people to recognize it, as it's no doubt buried in the search results, and game reviewers are not going to be jumping out of their seat over seeing a new Sudoku game hit their inbox. And if it's not the be-all end-all Sudoku, then forget it.
I disagree. Yes there are a lot of Sudoku apps out there but most of them are ugly. I bought the only one that I think has a decent design. And I would probably buy one that came out with really nice graphics and nice ux.
You'll need more than pretty graphics to convince people to try yet another sodoku app.
Yes, those pretty graphics are important, and people getting their first sodoku game on the phone may switch to your game because of them. But almost everybody that likes sodoku already has one installed, and they still have to find you at their search results.
The OP here
Yes, the Game is indeed free, but only with basic feature to get excited about the app. Then the user should upgrade to get access to the other cities and unlock level.
The real issue is not only the big 0 income, but the fact that after 3 week we barely pass the 100 downloads.
Google advertise everywhere that there are more than 1M new android activations everyday.... Those are potential users of any game right.
What is not quite right I believe is the discovery of new app on the market. It took us 13 days to start appearing on the 20th page of the search "sudoku".
So your app that just got released and has 100 downloads should appear before an app that has been out for a longer period of time and has more downloads? I don't really think this makes sense from a user perspective, maybe fiddling with the search results once or twice to show recent apps, but it doesn't make sense to permanently move an app like yours up the list. Sorry if this comes off as harsh.
Fair enough @xshoppyx
I don't mean that a recent app should appear before others. But at least give opportunity to "users" (not apps) to discover alternatives to the apps they have been using or games they've been playing.
For example, on IOS, when you launch your app, you have a section where only the newest apps appear, at that give them enough exposure to sufficient traction if they worth it.
I totally feel your pain. It seems a very well done game.
Unfortunately there are already hundreds of sudoku games, so a user will hardly find i.
I can give you a couple suggestions anyway: send it to the guys over androidpolice.com every 3 weeks they make a list of the best games that just came out like this one http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/01/15/40-best-new-android-... so I think you might have good chances of getting in there more than a fully featured article.
Post it here. I think HN is more than willing to review your game.
Post it on reddit.com/r/android it's a very open community and they often try apps for people that ask nicely.
It's yet another sudoku game. No matter how good it is, or looks, you compete with the multitude of free sudoku games out there.
Try something more vertical niche, and hunker down. A fill-in-the-blank game is not super-profit worthy. Even Rovio took a decade before they hit it with Angry Birds.
Well here's some advice: since you've written an article about your game, link the name of your game to the app store or a review or something. Also, mention that it is free since it is free. And explain what the game is and why anyone should care. In other words, you are always advertising and the biggest mistake people make is to not remove the roadblocks from all the roads. Marketing is easier when you realize, by default, no one cares. Not in a rude way, but no one will put in effort to care about something for no reason. Give them a reason.
I see that you are getting it posted on Facebook pages and G+. Why not give it its own facebook promotional page? Ask all of your friends to like it, use bufferapp, etc.
Curious what your 'freemium' strategy is for this app. Crafting a strong freemium strategy seems to be a very difficult task which is probably why many companies struggle to find that perfect balance.
Rocketcat games had a huge problem selling their game "Punch Quest", which was stunning due to that game's high quality. They ultimately realized that the money drops were too generous, that links to buy stuff were lost in the UI, that not enough compelling upgrades existed, etc. What you have built seems to be very polished and I think it's a very interesting take on the genre, but I think you might be in similar territory here.
I'd also guess that the lion's share of people that pay for sudoku games are not the type that would want RPG elements mixed in. They are probably an older demographic that values simplicity over everything else. When the game "10,000,000" integrated rpg elements with "match 3" style gameplay, the masses loved it because it was a convergence of two types of gameplays that had similar demographics.
Not all the feature are free, there is in app purchases to unlock levels and cities. It also allows the user to take notes while playing and use hints (only for paying users).
You released a free app in a crowded market. You are going to need something exceptional to stand out.
Searching for "sudoku" in the Play store returns "at least 1000 results" for Android apps. Potential buyers are unlikely to discover yours on its merit alone even if it is the best in the field.
Review sites are unlikely to want to review "yet another sudoku app". Your 1000+ competitors are all asking for reviews as well. Unless you can offer a compelling narrative or give them an interesting reason to write about this app in particular you should not be surprised that there seems to be little interest.
Your app also requires significantly more permissions than some of the other most popular sudoku apps. I don't know if most users care but given a choice between several free sudoku apps that might make a difference.
If your game is a cool evolution of Sudoku, then focus your initial marketing efforts on places where people discuss that game.
Find where your customers are, then spend your time and effort there. Go to those specific forum boards/google groups and be helpful and cool. Don't just barge in and spam everyone with new topics. Help people out first. Ask senior members to review your game and give you direct feedback. Take their concerns/comments seriously.
Trying to market to everyone simply dilutes your effort.
Make sure you have a good keyword rich domain name like sudoku-pro.com or sudoku-evolved.com or something (I have no idea if those names are taken). Highlight how your product stands out from "generic" soduku games.
Setup a simple landing page (e.g. from a wordpress app template) with more information that details how great your game is specifically for Sudoku fans.
Add google analytics or kissmetrics to the landing page.
List your landing page in google for indexing (be patient it takes a while).
Then buy a little traffic on adwords when people search for the keyword Sudoku (like 50-100 clicks). Limit your budget at first. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot. Just a little.
Check google analytics to see the keywords that showed up on your page. When people click on an adwords ad, it shows the keywords they searched google for.
So, if someone clicks your ad for "Bacon-flavored Sudoku", you will
see in your logs their search term of "delicious tasting sudoku"
You can learn a lot about what people are looking for this way and then fine tune your messaging and even your product to fit what people are looking for.
On top of ALL the comments here, which all have very valid points - even if you had a brand-new, innovative game concept, it's still damn hard to get traction and visibility in the app store(s). Nobody knows why this game is so good or that he needs to have it, and for some of those games, it's really a shame. The situation is comparable to web sites a few years ago. There's basically the SEO way - sideline promotion, forums, reviews, people skills etc. and there's the SEM way. If you invest enough to push your way up in the store through advertising (Trademob, the company that I'm working for, estimates around 10-100k, depending on category and target market), you'll eventually be paid back through the resulting organic installations coming from the visibility once you get into the top charts. TL;DR: In 2013, even for killer apps, there's no way to the top except through the hardship of promotion on all possible channels. Viral campaigns, PR, spreading the word, posting, blogging, and often pure money investment as well.
As others have mentioned, Sudoku is a rather crowded market.
Still, your take on it looked interesting so I clicked over to the Play store intending to install it. I then saw that your app wants the "phone status and identity" privilege, which is an automatic no-go for me. Perhaps your potential customers do not want you to know what their phone number is, or the phone numbers of the people they're calling?
I have 3 sudoku apps on my phone; I can tell you what you are missing: scratch marks. At higher difficulties, it is absolutely necessary to be able to note eliminations or possibilities within a square. Without that, the best you can hope for is casual sudoku player, but soduku is by nature not a game for casual players.
This is exactly true. Soduku players are attracted to words like "difficult," "hard," "impossible," or any other challenge.
The level-up format sends a very strong signal that there are tons of "easy" puzzles and like many of these level-up games, it is going to take a while to get to "hard," and that is a tough investment to make when you are 99% sure the payoff doesn't exist.
It is a nice-looking game, but I don't get the impression the creator is someone involved in the soduku world or understands the market too well.
Think of soduku like you'd think of crosswords. Crosswords have a very quick ramp-up. Those that do well early and like it will quickly move on to the hard stuff, only bothering to do Monday and Tuesday as a speed-trial if they bother at all. They use ink instead of pencil and they get very upset at poorly designed puzzles and bad clues. In other words, you are dealing with a highly finicky crowd.
Go buy an ad in the Newspaper right under the Sudoku puzzle.
So many freemium models invest hundreds of man hours into development then expect to pay $0 for advertising. It doesn't work like that. If you invested 100's of hours into dev, then get ready to spend 1000's of hours marketing, or alternatively buy your way into the market which is expensive.
As an answer to the actual title of the article, yes, it is hard. It can't be any other way.
The answer to the question here: there could be many reasons for this. The one that stands out is the fact that the market is very crowded and thus, to get traction in the early days, you need a lot of marketing. The method you have adopted (blogs, forums, videos, etc.) sound like a good start.
To make money — and since the app is free, I presume you are looking at ads — you will need traffic. That traffic isn't going to come in a month; it may not come at all. It seems you've had high expectations and are disappointed at not meeting them. So, yes, here are some of the things you did or are doing wrong:
* the market and the offer (as a combination, not separate) — A crowded market and a me-too offering. There has to be something distinct, something that makes you stand out in a market as crowded as this.
* the marketing itself — You need to be a lot more aggressive in marketing, get your app out on a lot more places. Even if a few blogs aren't publishing as quick as you'd like — and there's a reason for that — be persistent. With this kind of an app, it will be difficult. But not impossible. Get traffic in as many ways as you can.
In some ways, as far as the traffic is concerned, you are also limiting yourself. Why advertise on just game related forums? You can go anywhere you think there is a good percentage of Android users and post. Build some reputation and you will drive some traffic. Again, the key is to be persistent. You may not meet your expectations but the traffic will go up.
Great job on getting something out there! You have made some mistakes, and set some really high expectations, but you have something that you can learn from, if nothing else.
I think this is the larger factor. Getting people to pay for Sudoku seems like a big ask considering the plethora of existing apps which scratch the same itch (and better) for free. Graphics aren't a big thing for Sudoku to me.
You're going after the wrong target market. Sudoku apps are for middle aged women (Yes, I generalize, but it's pretty much the only game my mother plays on her Android phone).
Stop targeting your ads at Android related users (Android forums, games review sites). Go find a place where the people who will actually play your game hang out and then advertise there. Mothers group forums, parenting forums, business traveler hangouts, school teachers - whatever.
This is the perfect example of a why many devs here on HN need to stop undervaluing the benefits of a non-technical co-founder that can seriously rock the marketing side of stuff.
What I see here is a pretty good looking app. Sure, it lacks things like scratch marks, but a solid version 1.0. However, you have really not done very much to promote the app. Emailing press and posting on forums won't get you far. The press get hundreds of review pitches a day - you can't expect to email them out of the blue on launch day and get them to cover your app - especially when it is not exactly noteworthy (it's not the first app of its kind).
Learn to hustle. The newspaper ad under the sudoku puzzle was a good idea.
I was going to say the same thing. Marketing and awareness are not easy, and they are especially not easy when the market you are in is full of people trying to be heard. Good marketing can get your message heard above all the noise.
Right now this app can't be found above the noise floor. So how much is it worth to you, as a developer, to actually have people buy your product. 10%? 20% ? 50% of your interest.
Now for the OP (not sure if they are reading here or not) but the advice to hit up folks who would use your app and where they hang out is a good one. If there is a shopping center or other area where a large number of people congregate near you, consider setting up a table and offering a free App for feedback. In the best case you can tie analytics for app use back to user 'type' (age/gender/socio-economic status/interests) which will let you find other people who might like your app more easily.
The Op here
We have many things we are doing locally to get traction and most of all feedback. And we are also keeping track of analytics.
We've printed ads that we'll be distributing in schools and mall to get some downloads and helpful feedback.
It's a full time job. Some devs think they can spend a few minutes promoting it. There's almost an infinite number of ways you could get out there and push your product 24/7 offline and online.
I think there's a more fundamental problem here: entering a market where there are already literally 1000s of other competitors. It doesn't really matter how much he promotes his app - the people who like to play Sudoku probably already have a Sudoku app installed. And there're limited ways to be "better" than existing entrants.
Perhaps a non-technical cofounder could've helped here, but really what he needed is courage and the ability to take risks. People who strike it big - in any market - do so by providing what other people are not providing; you have to be willing to say "I'm going to do what other people are not doing, because they're doing it wrong" and then be right about that.
"People who strike it big - in any market - do so by providing what other people are not providing; you have to be willing to say "I'm going to do what other people are not doing, because they're doing it wrong" and then be right about that."
That is a seriously good way to talk about indie/startup business.
First, I have a non technical co-funder and he's doing a lot of stuffs to get us traction.
I am not playing it defensive here. I've explained in a previous blog post where the game come from. I admit it should have been out a few months ago already. Nevertheless, what I tried to express in the blog post is my surprise/disappointment the results we are getting from our strategy.
For example of getting featured on two facebook page of more that 200k fans each and not get at least 1k download is still interrogating me.
And to come to the point of "providing what others are not providing", this is the whole point of the app. Our premises were:
- Sudoku can be fun.
- Sudoku can have nice design too with nice ambient sounds.
- You can build a fully featured sudoku game with all the above extras.
I don't think so. I don't want to disclose here the concerned pages. But It is pages of android device manufacturing company. I don't think those kind of company need to buy fans.
I wouldn't expect the majority of those likes to be people who like your type of game, out of 200,000 how many like sudoku? Of of that smaller number how many would want to play it on their phone? Who don't already have an app they like with historical data/saves already?
From 200k your potential target audience drops rapidly I would imagine.
Instead of being featured on device pages you should try and get featured on actual sukoku or puzzle pages where a greater percentage of likes are from people who are more likey to be interested in your product.
The market is telling you that there's no need for another Sudoku game. It's possible that this is because of some missing element in the game design - or it's possible that other people already find the other 1000 alternatives fun, or think they have nice design. Either way, though, wouldn't it be easier to find a less crowded niche where people have real needs that are being poorly met by the existing apps?
I'd love a non-technical co-founder, if I could only find one. Most business-oriented people I meet like being employed. The only people I meet that are interested in startups (interested in building one, rather than having built one, successfully) are engineers with less panache for sales than I have.
I'm in a similar situation as the OP, and to be honest I'd be willing to give a lot away to have someone handle the sales & marketing end.
One of the things you're doing wrong is that social sharing bar which, besides bring completely tactless, overlaps the content on mobile devices such that reading the article is impossible—even when scrolling due to it being fixed.
Maybe try making a game there isn't already 50 million ways to play it.
Sorry, but Really!? You expect a game that is also in every single newspaper in the world and has a puzzle book on every single book selling stand to do really really well because why? You launched it and sent it to a few app review sites? That's not all it takes to advertise something, there has to be a reason for someone to choose your game over the 50,000 other Sudoku games. And looking at it, there really isn't.
While I enjoy Sudoku, the overhead of entering numbers is challenging on a phone. I've liked none of the ones I've used, and so far the best Sudoku interface I've used is the one that was stock on my Nook Color.
Even with that, I find still I often find it refreshing to do on paper, as there's less interface annoyance in most cases.
I haven't touched a sudoku in a few years, but I went through a phase where it was interesting.
I developed a system with dots and sometimes little numbers (I think? I don't even quite remember it now) to track the possibilities that worked really well -- I could do advanced puzzles in pen, without ever guessing and being forced to backtrack.
Sudoku online was broken for me, though, because I couldn't use my method.
Pen/paper is a great interface for Sudoku -- very fast and flexible. Are there actually virtual interfaces that beat it, or is the only advantage portability (I'd have my phone at the doctor's office, but I'd probably forgot to bring a Sudoku book)?
I watched the video for this app -- is there support for any method of tracking number possibilities in a given square, or is the only option "make a reasonable guess and see if your score goes up or down"?
The latter is all I saw, and that's a horrible way to do Sudoku, no matter how pretty the graphics are.
It's interesting as a logic puzzle, not as a guessing game.
Most Sudoku apps I've used in the past had a notes system like the one you described. It's not that unusual of a system, I think it's a fairly normal way of doing things.
I'm co-founder of MinoMonsters. We launched our game on iOS but spent a lot of time prototyping on the Android market. Our android prototype has 250k+ downloads and 2k+ reviews. Here's some steps you can take today to try to move the needle.
* Test your screenshots! Assume that 50% of the people in the market will never read your description. Right now, your screenshots communicate "Samurai game". Try a different direction, maybe one more Sudoku focused.[1] Test lots.
* Test your app icon. Test lots.
* You should have a purchase already. Review your monetization strategy. Most developers err on the side of under-monetizing their game, in the hopes that they won't "make players mad" or some other nonsense. Spoiler alert: you're wrong. Start your re-education here: http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-w...
* Doing games is hard and a lot of what works in games is non-obvious. Be very skeptical of advice you get from anyone that hasn't done games.
* There is only one "tried and true" marketing channel - getting featured on the platform. Outside of that, you need to hustle hard to get your app featured in other places. You've reached out to "a few" sites and forums. Expand your reach to 10x as many sites and forums. Point to your past reviews as social proof for potential future reviews. No one site is going to bring in all the downloads - it's about building buzz and the snowball effect.
is there any way to test your icon other than to change it once per week and see if downloads change (meanwhile hoping nothing else changes to confuse the data)?
That sounds like an excellent approach that should work well - similar to how Tim Ferriss named "Four Hour Work Week". (Not a games guy here, but I am an ad/marketing guy in one of my hats)
Do run your ads to statistical significance, though!
Just make a dozen variations, break into groups of three, put each set on it's webpage with a header question "Which sudoko game would you rather play?" Install click tracking via your tool of choice GA/Optimizely/VWO/CrazyEgg/Clicktale. Then head on over to either mechanical turk, usertesting, gorillatesting, or one of the other many services out there. Target your expected demographic and pay for a 5-20 individuals (or whatever volume of people will make you comfortable) to go through each set clicking the one they'd want to play. Take the winner from each set, create a new page with the three winners, select a new group of testers. Take the winner and make it the first one you go with. Then over time you can try switching some in and out of the actual app store. But increase the chances that your first one is your best!
Regarding getting featured, this is another thing one can aim for. The Android team has written about how to be in the running for getting featured, as have others.
For example - Android introduces new features with new OS releases. In Gingerbread, Android introduced NFC. A well-designed app implementing NFC in an interesting way back when it was introduced had a very good chance of being featured, as well as a chance of getting publicity, and also usage by people who wanted to test their phones NFC capability. Of course, you want to be viable even if you are not featured, but some apps have a better chance of being featured than others, and being featured helps a lot, especially for a paid app.
Being featured can be called the "Holly Grail" on both ios and android.
But I always wondered how the review team of android pick the app that get featured? I am asking this because there is no any review process and wondering what are the opportunities a developer got to get his creation in front of the android review team.
Besides that, great points. Marketing takes a lot of A/B testing. I have to say, I like the graphics and whole idea behind Empire of Sudoku. The screenshot does indeed scream samurai more than sudoku, as mentioned by teej.
DO you think that plays against us?
The idea was to make sudoku FUN once again, by having challenges, "fight with friend". You see... making it different and enjoyable with everyone, even those who don't usually play it.
I shall repeat: It is very very very hard.
We were featured on CNET, AllThingsD, Kotoku, 148Apps and even reviewed on TV.
Result: You get a nice bump in downloads for a couple of days then it drops back down.
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day.
There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.
I've had some modest success with my own iOS apps but I think that's mainly because they're targeted at a more specific niche (music making) and I've been able to do my own grassroots marketing on forums etc where I know the audience really well and there's far less competition overall.
Games are such a big, saturated market that I wouldn't even consider trying to tackle them as an indie unless I could find a similarly specialized sub-niche.
I believe the apps market, especially games, is and will become even more like the chart music industry. It will settle into major 'labels' who will pick games on criteria they think will make it a success, and then apply their big guns on promoting it using ever evolving methods. Sometimes an indie production will slip through but as the methods mature so will the independent successes be increasingly niche bound.
One quick question here - I notice that you don't mention that press in your app description or homepage?
As a marketing type, any time we get press my first instinct is to say "quick, stick their logo on the homepage! Social proof!". But I'm not a games guy - is there a reason that doesn't work in games?
The highest order bit is cash flowing to developers, unfortunately. If Android matched iOS in credit card coverage and user's propensity to pay the platforms would be way more competitive than they are currently.
Android definitely has a lot of catching up to do there.
But it also seems to me that the entire app market is shifting more to apps that aren't revenue sources in themselves but free apps that are part of some larger business strategy and in that world overall user reach is what counts. And there Android has all the momentum.
I think we're going to hit an inflection point later this year when 4.x breaks 50% market share and more developers start feeling comfortable ignoring the 2.3 laggards.
The OP here.
I think this is becoming a big incentive for developers. We also have the IOS version almost ready, but we chose to launch it on android first to be able to do quick iterations.
For example, we already pushed more than 4 version in 3 weeks to adjust to users requests.
It's a great looking app - you definitely have a sense for design. However, like many others have already mentioned, Sudoku is overdone.
While you may still gain some traction here (14 5-star reviews is a good start!), you definitely have some talent to use on your next project.
If you go for another game, try to come up with an entirely new gameplay-type. Or at least pretend it's a new gameplay type by not using the gameplay type as part of the game's title. Halo isn't called Halo: First Person Shooter for a good reason.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadAlso, your price is "Free". That may be why income is 0.
Also, the app is only in English as far as I can see. So they are competing in the most crowded market. Not that foreign languages save you with competition always. I tried to do an Android app in another crowded market, flashlight apps. Doing it in several languages did not help.
There are so many lacunae on Android, I have ideas all the time, yet so many people do yet another Sudoku app. They said they spent a lot of time on it. An MVP would have quickly told them what the demand was.
In terms of lacunae - only one app handles Microsoft Access files on an Android device AFAIK - my app. I based it off a popular LGPL Java library, the MVP took about two days or so of work, and did very little. I got a response, and suggestions, and built it up a little. I only have one competitor that I know of, and their database works off-device, and charges a fee after a trial period. There are gaps all over like that yet everyone goes for another Sudoku app, another flashlight app etc.
That's a nice and clever way of saying what I intended to say.
Absolutely no one is sitting around saying, "man, I want to play Sudoku on my phone but I can't find any games!". There's so much Sudoku to choose from, anyone that has wanted a Sudoku game has at least one on their phone, and has probably tried multiple ones before settling on that one.
Is this honestly the Sudoku game to end all Sudoku games? If so, great, but it's going to take a lot of effort to get people to recognize it, as it's no doubt buried in the search results, and game reviewers are not going to be jumping out of their seat over seeing a new Sudoku game hit their inbox. And if it's not the be-all end-all Sudoku, then forget it.
Yes, those pretty graphics are important, and people getting their first sodoku game on the phone may switch to your game because of them. But almost everybody that likes sodoku already has one installed, and they still have to find you at their search results.
How many new Android phones are activated every day?
The real issue is not only the big 0 income, but the fact that after 3 week we barely pass the 100 downloads. Google advertise everywhere that there are more than 1M new android activations everyday.... Those are potential users of any game right.
What is not quite right I believe is the discovery of new app on the market. It took us 13 days to start appearing on the 20th page of the search "sudoku".
For example, on IOS, when you launch your app, you have a section where only the newest apps appear, at that give them enough exposure to sufficient traction if they worth it.
:)
Unfortunately there are already hundreds of sudoku games, so a user will hardly find i.
I can give you a couple suggestions anyway: send it to the guys over androidpolice.com every 3 weeks they make a list of the best games that just came out like this one http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/01/15/40-best-new-android-... so I think you might have good chances of getting in there more than a fully featured article.
Post it here. I think HN is more than willing to review your game.
Post it on reddit.com/r/android it's a very open community and they often try apps for people that ask nicely.
Try something more vertical niche, and hunker down. A fill-in-the-blank game is not super-profit worthy. Even Rovio took a decade before they hit it with Angry Birds.
I think this is a problem too: Price: Free
Well, unless you make up for it in quantity...?
Rocketcat games had a huge problem selling their game "Punch Quest", which was stunning due to that game's high quality. They ultimately realized that the money drops were too generous, that links to buy stuff were lost in the UI, that not enough compelling upgrades existed, etc. What you have built seems to be very polished and I think it's a very interesting take on the genre, but I think you might be in similar territory here.
I'd also guess that the lion's share of people that pay for sudoku games are not the type that would want RPG elements mixed in. They are probably an older demographic that values simplicity over everything else. When the game "10,000,000" integrated rpg elements with "match 3" style gameplay, the masses loved it because it was a convergence of two types of gameplays that had similar demographics.
Searching for "sudoku" in the Play store returns "at least 1000 results" for Android apps. Potential buyers are unlikely to discover yours on its merit alone even if it is the best in the field.
Review sites are unlikely to want to review "yet another sudoku app". Your 1000+ competitors are all asking for reviews as well. Unless you can offer a compelling narrative or give them an interesting reason to write about this app in particular you should not be surprised that there seems to be little interest.
Your app also requires significantly more permissions than some of the other most popular sudoku apps. I don't know if most users care but given a choice between several free sudoku apps that might make a difference.
Hard when you are a few years late, in a genre (Sudoku) where there's not much room for innovation in game play.
Find where your customers are, then spend your time and effort there. Go to those specific forum boards/google groups and be helpful and cool. Don't just barge in and spam everyone with new topics. Help people out first. Ask senior members to review your game and give you direct feedback. Take their concerns/comments seriously.
Trying to market to everyone simply dilutes your effort.
Make sure you have a good keyword rich domain name like sudoku-pro.com or sudoku-evolved.com or something (I have no idea if those names are taken). Highlight how your product stands out from "generic" soduku games.
Setup a simple landing page (e.g. from a wordpress app template) with more information that details how great your game is specifically for Sudoku fans.
Add google analytics or kissmetrics to the landing page.
List your landing page in google for indexing (be patient it takes a while).
Then buy a little traffic on adwords when people search for the keyword Sudoku (like 50-100 clicks). Limit your budget at first. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot. Just a little.
Check google analytics to see the keywords that showed up on your page. When people click on an adwords ad, it shows the keywords they searched google for.
So, if someone clicks your ad for "Bacon-flavored Sudoku", you will see in your logs their search term of "delicious tasting sudoku"
You can learn a lot about what people are looking for this way and then fine tune your messaging and even your product to fit what people are looking for.
Hope that helps.
Sorry, pal!
Still, your take on it looked interesting so I clicked over to the Play store intending to install it. I then saw that your app wants the "phone status and identity" privilege, which is an automatic no-go for me. Perhaps your potential customers do not want you to know what their phone number is, or the phone numbers of the people they're calling?
The level-up format sends a very strong signal that there are tons of "easy" puzzles and like many of these level-up games, it is going to take a while to get to "hard," and that is a tough investment to make when you are 99% sure the payoff doesn't exist.
It is a nice-looking game, but I don't get the impression the creator is someone involved in the soduku world or understands the market too well.
Think of soduku like you'd think of crosswords. Crosswords have a very quick ramp-up. Those that do well early and like it will quickly move on to the hard stuff, only bothering to do Monday and Tuesday as a speed-trial if they bother at all. They use ink instead of pencil and they get very upset at poorly designed puzzles and bad clues. In other words, you are dealing with a highly finicky crowd.
So many freemium models invest hundreds of man hours into development then expect to pay $0 for advertising. It doesn't work like that. If you invested 100's of hours into dev, then get ready to spend 1000's of hours marketing, or alternatively buy your way into the market which is expensive.
Good luck!
The answer to the question here: there could be many reasons for this. The one that stands out is the fact that the market is very crowded and thus, to get traction in the early days, you need a lot of marketing. The method you have adopted (blogs, forums, videos, etc.) sound like a good start.
To make money — and since the app is free, I presume you are looking at ads — you will need traffic. That traffic isn't going to come in a month; it may not come at all. It seems you've had high expectations and are disappointed at not meeting them. So, yes, here are some of the things you did or are doing wrong:
* the market and the offer (as a combination, not separate) — A crowded market and a me-too offering. There has to be something distinct, something that makes you stand out in a market as crowded as this.
* the marketing itself — You need to be a lot more aggressive in marketing, get your app out on a lot more places. Even if a few blogs aren't publishing as quick as you'd like — and there's a reason for that — be persistent. With this kind of an app, it will be difficult. But not impossible. Get traffic in as many ways as you can.
In some ways, as far as the traffic is concerned, you are also limiting yourself. Why advertise on just game related forums? You can go anywhere you think there is a good percentage of Android users and post. Build some reputation and you will drive some traffic. Again, the key is to be persistent. You may not meet your expectations but the traffic will go up.
Great job on getting something out there! You have made some mistakes, and set some really high expectations, but you have something that you can learn from, if nothing else.
Platform: Android
I think this is the larger factor. Getting people to pay for Sudoku seems like a big ask considering the plethora of existing apps which scratch the same itch (and better) for free. Graphics aren't a big thing for Sudoku to me.
Stop targeting your ads at Android related users (Android forums, games review sites). Go find a place where the people who will actually play your game hang out and then advertise there. Mothers group forums, parenting forums, business traveler hangouts, school teachers - whatever.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/success-on-greenlight-is...
I'd like to read their reaction.
Advice similar to yours helped me rethink my marketing message once upon a time and the results were pretty darn good.
What I see here is a pretty good looking app. Sure, it lacks things like scratch marks, but a solid version 1.0. However, you have really not done very much to promote the app. Emailing press and posting on forums won't get you far. The press get hundreds of review pitches a day - you can't expect to email them out of the blue on launch day and get them to cover your app - especially when it is not exactly noteworthy (it's not the first app of its kind).
Learn to hustle. The newspaper ad under the sudoku puzzle was a good idea.
Right now this app can't be found above the noise floor. So how much is it worth to you, as a developer, to actually have people buy your product. 10%? 20% ? 50% of your interest.
Now for the OP (not sure if they are reading here or not) but the advice to hit up folks who would use your app and where they hang out is a good one. If there is a shopping center or other area where a large number of people congregate near you, consider setting up a table and offering a free App for feedback. In the best case you can tie analytics for app use back to user 'type' (age/gender/socio-economic status/interests) which will let you find other people who might like your app more easily.
Perhaps a non-technical cofounder could've helped here, but really what he needed is courage and the ability to take risks. People who strike it big - in any market - do so by providing what other people are not providing; you have to be willing to say "I'm going to do what other people are not doing, because they're doing it wrong" and then be right about that.
That is a seriously good way to talk about indie/startup business.
I am not playing it defensive here. I've explained in a previous blog post where the game come from. I admit it should have been out a few months ago already. Nevertheless, what I tried to express in the blog post is my surprise/disappointment the results we are getting from our strategy. For example of getting featured on two facebook page of more that 200k fans each and not get at least 1k download is still interrogating me.
And to come to the point of "providing what others are not providing", this is the whole point of the app. Our premises were: - Sudoku can be fun. - Sudoku can have nice design too with nice ambient sounds. - You can build a fully featured sudoku game with all the above extras.
Now I know, one can say that it is not enough...
That stat is pretty worthless. You can buy "fans".
From 200k your potential target audience drops rapidly I would imagine.
Instead of being featured on device pages you should try and get featured on actual sukoku or puzzle pages where a greater percentage of likes are from people who are more likey to be interested in your product.
The market is telling you that there's no need for another Sudoku game. It's possible that this is because of some missing element in the game design - or it's possible that other people already find the other 1000 alternatives fun, or think they have nice design. Either way, though, wouldn't it be easier to find a less crowded niche where people have real needs that are being poorly met by the existing apps?
I'm in a similar situation as the OP, and to be honest I'd be willing to give a lot away to have someone handle the sales & marketing end.
Sorry, but Really!? You expect a game that is also in every single newspaper in the world and has a puzzle book on every single book selling stand to do really really well because why? You launched it and sent it to a few app review sites? That's not all it takes to advertise something, there has to be a reason for someone to choose your game over the 50,000 other Sudoku games. And looking at it, there really isn't.
While I enjoy Sudoku, the overhead of entering numbers is challenging on a phone. I've liked none of the ones I've used, and so far the best Sudoku interface I've used is the one that was stock on my Nook Color.
Even with that, I find still I often find it refreshing to do on paper, as there's less interface annoyance in most cases.
I developed a system with dots and sometimes little numbers (I think? I don't even quite remember it now) to track the possibilities that worked really well -- I could do advanced puzzles in pen, without ever guessing and being forced to backtrack.
Sudoku online was broken for me, though, because I couldn't use my method.
Pen/paper is a great interface for Sudoku -- very fast and flexible. Are there actually virtual interfaces that beat it, or is the only advantage portability (I'd have my phone at the doctor's office, but I'd probably forgot to bring a Sudoku book)?
I watched the video for this app -- is there support for any method of tracking number possibilities in a given square, or is the only option "make a reasonable guess and see if your score goes up or down"?
The latter is all I saw, and that's a horrible way to do Sudoku, no matter how pretty the graphics are.
It's interesting as a logic puzzle, not as a guessing game.
Think angry birds meets bubble bobble meets Sudoku.
I'll take 50% of the profits thanks guys
* Test your screenshots! Assume that 50% of the people in the market will never read your description. Right now, your screenshots communicate "Samurai game". Try a different direction, maybe one more Sudoku focused.[1] Test lots.
* Test your app icon. Test lots.
* You should have a purchase already. Review your monetization strategy. Most developers err on the side of under-monetizing their game, in the hopes that they won't "make players mad" or some other nonsense. Spoiler alert: you're wrong. Start your re-education here: http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-w...
* Doing games is hard and a lot of what works in games is non-obvious. Be very skeptical of advice you get from anyone that hasn't done games.
* There is only one "tried and true" marketing channel - getting featured on the platform. Outside of that, you need to hustle hard to get your app featured in other places. You've reached out to "a few" sites and forums. Expand your reach to 10x as many sites and forums. Point to your past reviews as social proof for potential future reviews. No one site is going to bring in all the downloads - it's about building buzz and the snowball effect.
That's all I can think off the top of my head.
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[1] - No one can tell you what's going to work best. The only way to know is to test.
Do run your ads to statistical significance, though!
I also suggest:
-changing the price (price reductions shows up on app tracker apps and twitter feeds).
-get good reviews from your friends.
-you might look into app store keyword optimization also.
For example - Android introduces new features with new OS releases. In Gingerbread, Android introduced NFC. A well-designed app implementing NFC in an interesting way back when it was introduced had a very good chance of being featured, as well as a chance of getting publicity, and also usage by people who wanted to test their phones NFC capability. Of course, you want to be viable even if you are not featured, but some apps have a better chance of being featured than others, and being featured helps a lot, especially for a paid app.
But I always wondered how the review team of android pick the app that get featured? I am asking this because there is no any review process and wondering what are the opportunities a developer got to get his creation in front of the android review team.
Besides that, great points. Marketing takes a lot of A/B testing. I have to say, I like the graphics and whole idea behind Empire of Sudoku. The screenshot does indeed scream samurai more than sudoku, as mentioned by teej.
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day. There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.
Games are such a big, saturated market that I wouldn't even consider trying to tackle them as an indie unless I could find a similarly specialized sub-niche.
As a marketing type, any time we get press my first instinct is to say "quick, stick their logo on the homepage! Social proof!". But I'm not a games guy - is there a reason that doesn't work in games?
I wonder if that's going to become more and more of a differentiator vs Apple as the Play store catches up in overall app quality.
The highest order bit is cash flowing to developers, unfortunately. If Android matched iOS in credit card coverage and user's propensity to pay the platforms would be way more competitive than they are currently.
But it also seems to me that the entire app market is shifting more to apps that aren't revenue sources in themselves but free apps that are part of some larger business strategy and in that world overall user reach is what counts. And there Android has all the momentum.
I think we're going to hit an inflection point later this year when 4.x breaks 50% market share and more developers start feeling comfortable ignoring the 2.3 laggards.
While you may still gain some traction here (14 5-star reviews is a good start!), you definitely have some talent to use on your next project.
If you go for another game, try to come up with an entirely new gameplay-type. Or at least pretend it's a new gameplay type by not using the gameplay type as part of the game's title. Halo isn't called Halo: First Person Shooter for a good reason.