Ask HN: Our iPad game hit top 30 in free games, how do we keep the momentum?

Give people exclusive levels or badges or other bonuses if they download within a time period. These don't have to be prepackaged with the installer, they can be delivered later, depending on the installation date.

The game's humble Android start are still evident in the link to the Google Play store.

http://www.gfycat.com/OptimisticGrossAegeancat

That app was languishing in the nether regions of the App Store until we got press on some Gawker properties at which point it absolutely exploded. It was then picked up by other outlets which only helped.

There's a million apps out there and media outlets are not going to talk about all of them, so the way we got that press was by making writing an article about us more valuable to them: we gave them something to give their readers. This was a $0.99 app (these were the days before it was clear that charging money up front for apps is not a viable strategy). We scheduled a weekend giveaway about a week out, emailed media about it, and they got to offer their readers more than just pointing out an app they might like, they got to give them a deal on it.

So, in my limited experience, a good way to get traction is through some combination the media (they have the eyeballs) and a deal (people love deals). And the best way to get the media to talk about you is to make talking about you more valuable to them.

Other ideas: Look into some way to compete with other people. Some way to share it.

Add the ability to text a link to the App Store to a friend. Only ask for the contacts permission when someone initiates that feature.

Just keep iterating on the game and polishing it. You guys will get more ideas as time goes by.

Expect the popularity to fall off at some point. That's normal.

Apple looks for apps that really show off the platform. Being in the top 30 is great. If the visuals and sounds were a little more polished there's a better chance your game might be featured. This can be really great for boosting you higher, though it's not a permanent bump.

Apps have life cycles. Do the best you can now and learn from it. Invaluable lessons for doing more apps in the future.

I would recommend making a subset of the levels free and having the rest be IAP or a separate purchase. Then, make it free for a limited time, and try to get some blogs to cover you and promote your app on social media at the same time. This type of model only really works if you have critical mass, but it seems like you're off to a good start.

Good luck!

Retention : add push notifications, try to stay in touch with the users (with limited offers for example as mentioned below) and to make the user come back to the app

Social sharing : I would suggest creating a leaderboard, and connecting to FB to share your results and compete against others.

Ratings : Implement an incentive to let the user rate your app, to grow the number of reviews you have.

PS : I didn't have time to download the app, so maybe you already did this. I will download it in a couple of hours and will edit. If you want to chat more, alexei [dot] chemenda [at] gmail [dot] com !

I'd say your top priorities should be (in this order): 1. Keeping your existing players as long as possible (Retention) 2. Making money (Monetization) 3. Getting new users in the door (User Acquisition)

It's a tough environment right now, and you can easily spend all your profits on marketing--so you have to make sure you're maximizing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of every install.

As a product manager with experience working on games for Zynga, Disney, and a few small gaming companies, I can tell you that free to play games are more like an on-going service than a make-it-and-ship-it console game.

Successful game developers generally follow the same pattern: 1. Collect data to see what players like / don't like 2. Analyze the data to decide what to do next 3. Implement a change / new feature 4. See if it worked 5. Repeat

Data-driven decision making is key to making sure you're investing your engineering resources for the highest return.

I'd be happy to talk in more detail.

Thats incredible. Apple pushes new apps in the first week or 10 days. Usually it kind of drops after that. It might not be the case for your app. Wait a bit before you decide to change your life because of this game. If in one month its still getting 100 000 downloads per day... Then you got a winner

There's a few things you can do: - focus on growing the userbase and sell the game in a few months or years. Make your game better and better... - try to make money right now through ads. I would suggest to cut a direct deal with a big game developer like supercell (charboost is good for that) - you're probably not making any money right now. I saw that you're not anywhere in the top grossing

I have a few apps that hit the top 1000 overall in the us. If you wanna talk, contact me : gabriel.louis.muller at gmail.com

Enjoy the ride,

Gab

Your options include working with a large game publisher, which would be something to consider if you have limited resources on the marketing side and don't want to raise venture capital.

From a pure product strategy point of view, the best possible thing you could do is develop a viral loop, such that each of these installs you're currently getting for free could help you generate more installs.

Often this is done hand-in-hand with some key element of game-play (e.g. gifting) or hand-in-hand with some paid element, so people can either pay for something (generating you revenue) or avoid paying by completing viral actions (generating you new users).

Good luck!

Here is an edited screenshot to give you an idea of how I might see the game: http://i.imgur.com/IFUkvKm.png

Can you see how similar the second two marbles look?

One common way to address this is by assigning each marble and each bucket a letter or a number.

I don't pretend to know much about the iphone game market, but I can't imagine that these ads will help your position much.

A couple of thoughts.

Tracking: - If you are not yet tracking your users, start doing that (Google Analytics, Flurry, etc.). The analytics will give you great insights into user behaviour, retention, churn rate, segmentation, etc. Use the data to decide what you should focus on next (e.g. if the user engagement is too low, try focusing on that).

ASO - Optimize keywords to ensure that you are ranking in the top 10 for each of your keywords. I have written a series of blog posts about this topic (http://blackboardmadness.com/blog/app-store-optimization-aso...) and also developed my own keyword selection/scoring model. I'd be happy to help with this (szilard at blackboardmadness.com).

- Optimize file size: got a warning on the Android Play Store that the file size is very large (probably wouldn't prioritize this too high at the moment, though)

Review/ Rating: - Allow users to rate your app from inside the game (e.g. use Appirater to prompt users to rate after X app sessions)

Social Integration: - Deep FB integration (add an invite friends button, post achievements, FB leaderboard integration as in Dots)

Good luck!

That being said I would keep very close attention to reviews. (I use appfigures to keep track of that) and fix very quickly everything that should not be. Even though we were #2 there were a few bugs reported via the review system and there is a lot of people that are kind enough to let you know,

If you have a tool like crashalytics thats even better.

Congratulations!