I decided to retool Puzzlewood Quests, changing it from freemium to Paid ($1.99) with no ads, no IAP, less grinding, etc. It’s a better game now, and it’s finally available on both iOS and Android.
Full reasoning behind the change here: http://downcastsystems.com/2015/12/20/puzzlewood-premium-edition/
So, I have some iOS Promo Codes! First come, first served.
N79LEKYY3MTA
X7N3JNKX3A9K
939TWTAY4AL4
FTYYLN3KKNK7
Thanks,
Dave
Well-reasoned, Dave. Good luck with everything!
Thank you for sharing the codes Dave as well as your reasons for going premium. I just used one of those codes to download the game and am looking forward to giving it a good spin! … Would you like feedback here on the forum?
Feedback on the forum would be great. Also a review on the app store would be pretty nice too. 
Thanks!
Dave
Very cool, good luck with the new strategy. Can I ask how many downloads the free version got?
The free version got about 3500 downloads total across iOS and Android in 8 months. I could never get the critical mass I needed to make it a success, despite the free version having 50-60 4 & 5 star reviews on both app stores. It’s a numbers game, and I could just not get enough people playing to make it successful.
What I’ve read in books like The Four Hour Work Week and various marketing articles is this:
2% of the people that see an ad actually click it, and
2% of those people that clicked it will actually buy what you’re selling
If I look at the number of people who downloaded the game versus the money I made off in-app purchases, it does work out to be about 2%. Using that data, one could make the prediction that Puzzlewood would generate $1000 for every 50,000 downloads. Further following that train of thought, if I wanted to make $1000/month, I’d need to add 50,000 players every month.
That’s unrealistic for an indie game with a tiny advertising budget. Sure, there are exceptions, and occasionally a developer will get lucky, but for every indie game that gets featured on the App Store, I’m guessing there are a ton of indie games that wither on the vine, unnoticed.
My competition is Lumosity, which supposedly has 50 million users and made $24 million in revenue in 2012 – I don’t have more recent numbers – and, in a way, the PuzzleQuest series, even though the gameplay is really very different. I looked at it like, well, I just want a small piece of that, and then I just made up numbers:
“If I get just 10% of those users and 10% of them buy something, that’s $500,000! Yes!”
But, you can’t just make up numbers and hope for the best. I know, it seems obvious, but when you’re in the middle of making a game that you really feel is going to be a huge hit, your mind gets clouded a bit.
I spoke with some people about it all, including Graham from Glitch Games, and he gave me some good information about how they do things. They knew their market was small, therefore a freemium game just wouldn’t make sense, and they assumed (correctly) that the people interested in their games would be willing to pay for them. A side effect is their games end up being better because they’re not badgering folks to buy things and have no ads to detract from the presentation. I’m really happy I spoke with him about this, as it changed my whole way of thinking about app economics. Up to that point, everything I’d read told me, “You HAVE to make your game free with in-app purchases if you want to make any money.”
So I decided to try it, created the Premium edition, set the price at $1.99, and lost all my reviews in the process. After the first two weeks on Google Play, I noticed that the number of daily downloads stayed the same, even though it’s now $1.99 instead of free. So, for my game, the people that are interested in it seem to be willing to pay for it.
This is all about sales, but what about marketing and just getting more people to download the game? That’s where I still lack some understanding.
My foray into app marketing is probably worthy of another post another day…
Dave
Hey Dave,
Thanks again for sharing the codes as well as the great insight into your struggles! I am really sorry that you are missing your goals by so much and I hope your situation improves.
I have played your game a few times now and I think it’s quite clever! Sadly, Apple won’t let me review the app in the app store since it claims that I have not purchased or downloaded it. I think that having used the code disqualifies me. Bummer.
Regarding the critical mass and marketing. One weakness of the design of the app, from a marketing perspective, is that it is language heavy. By nature, the game is not well-suited to younger players and non-English speakers. That doesn’t kill the app of course but it does limit your demographic. A lot of the huge games are either translated to multiple languages or require very little understanding of English. Some games use no words at all. Just my two cents.
One final note, while playing the game it asked me if I want to review the game. I clicked yes and it took me to the app store. Unfortunately, the app store told me that the app I was looking for did not exist. It seems that a link is broken or something.
I posted on TouchArcade and that has helped a good bit. Does anyone know of a good equivalent for Android where people are really actively looking for new games?
About the rating bug, you are right – thank you for noticing that! I believe it is probably still pointing to the free version, which is no longer there. That’s got to be hurting my ratings a bit. I’ll need to get a fix out for that…
Dave
TouchArcade has an Android section; I don’t know how popular it is.
DroidGamers is relatively popular as well.
@jerejigga, about rating the game – I didn’t know that folks with promo codes couldn’t rate the game. That’s interesting. Here it is officially:
“However, customers aren’t able to rate or review an app that was downloaded using an iTunes Connect promo code.”
That’s too bad. I’ve been giving them out like candy and hoping for some reviews.
Thanks,
Dave
Dave,
Oops! Looks like I misspoke about the age appropriateness. I just discovered the kid-friendly players, Adriel and Jack! Very clever! (I guess I should have read each of the player descriptions before writing my post.)
Well, you’re still right about it being English heavy. Even with those “kid mode” characters all the text is English, there’s just less of it. Whenever my youngest daughter used to play the game (before she could read), she would just skip through anything that required reading. She’d get stumped on some of the game types, though, like word scramble and sudoku especially, so that’s when I thought I’d just create a special mode with all those game types removed.
Dave
Well-reasoned, Dave. Good luck with everything!
Thank you for sharing the codes Dave as well as your reasons for going premium. I just used one of those codes to download the game and am looking forward to giving it a good spin! … Would you like feedback here on the forum?
Feedback on the forum would be great. Also a review on the app store would be pretty nice too.
Thanks!
Dave
Very cool, good luck with the new strategy. Can I ask how many downloads the free version got?
The free version got about 3500 downloads total across iOS and Android in 8 months. I could never get the critical mass I needed to make it a success, despite the free version having 50-60 4 & 5 star reviews on both app stores. It’s a numbers game, and I could just not get enough people playing to make it successful.
What I’ve read in books like The Four Hour Work Week and various marketing articles is this:
2% of the people that see an ad actually click it, and
2% of those people that clicked it will actually buy what you’re selling
If I look at the number of people who downloaded the game versus the money I made off in-app purchases, it does work out to be about 2%. Using that data, one could make the prediction that Puzzlewood would generate $1000 for every 50,000 downloads. Further following that train of thought, if I wanted to make $1000/month, I’d need to add 50,000 players every month.
That’s unrealistic for an indie game with a tiny advertising budget. Sure, there are exceptions, and occasionally a developer will get lucky, but for every indie game that gets featured on the App Store, I’m guessing there are a ton of indie games that wither on the vine, unnoticed.
My competition is Lumosity, which supposedly has 50 million users and made $24 million in revenue in 2012 – I don’t have more recent numbers – and, in a way, the PuzzleQuest series, even though the gameplay is really very different. I looked at it like, well, I just want a small piece of that, and then I just made up numbers:
“If I get just 10% of those users and 10% of them buy something, that’s $500,000! Yes!”
But, you can’t just make up numbers and hope for the best. I know, it seems obvious, but when you’re in the middle of making a game that you really feel is going to be a huge hit, your mind gets clouded a bit.
I spoke with some people about it all, including Graham from Glitch Games, and he gave me some good information about how they do things. They knew their market was small, therefore a freemium game just wouldn’t make sense, and they assumed (correctly) that the people interested in their games would be willing to pay for them. A side effect is their games end up being better because they’re not badgering folks to buy things and have no ads to detract from the presentation. I’m really happy I spoke with him about this, as it changed my whole way of thinking about app economics. Up to that point, everything I’d read told me, “You HAVE to make your game free with in-app purchases if you want to make any money.”
So I decided to try it, created the Premium edition, set the price at $1.99, and lost all my reviews in the process. After the first two weeks on Google Play, I noticed that the number of daily downloads stayed the same, even though it’s now $1.99 instead of free. So, for my game, the people that are interested in it seem to be willing to pay for it.
This is all about sales, but what about marketing and just getting more people to download the game? That’s where I still lack some understanding.
My foray into app marketing is probably worthy of another post another day…
Dave
Hey Dave,
Thanks again for sharing the codes as well as the great insight into your struggles! I am really sorry that you are missing your goals by so much and I hope your situation improves.
I have played your game a few times now and I think it’s quite clever! Sadly, Apple won’t let me review the app in the app store since it claims that I have not purchased or downloaded it. I think that having used the code disqualifies me. Bummer.
Regarding the critical mass and marketing. One weakness of the design of the app, from a marketing perspective, is that it is language heavy. By nature, the game is not well-suited to younger players and non-English speakers. That doesn’t kill the app of course but it does limit your demographic. A lot of the huge games are either translated to multiple languages or require very little understanding of English. Some games use no words at all. Just my two cents.
One final note, while playing the game it asked me if I want to review the game. I clicked yes and it took me to the app store. Unfortunately, the app store told me that the app I was looking for did not exist. It seems that a link is broken or something.
I posted on TouchArcade and that has helped a good bit. Does anyone know of a good equivalent for Android where people are really actively looking for new games?
About the rating bug, you are right – thank you for noticing that! I believe it is probably still pointing to the free version, which is no longer there. That’s got to be hurting my ratings a bit. I’ll need to get a fix out for that…
Dave
TouchArcade has an Android section; I don’t know how popular it is.
DroidGamers is relatively popular as well.