100 Active devices!

Another achievement! I’ve managed to make a game that at least 100 people are willing to keep on their phones!

So subtle humor aside, all of the amazing tools that are available, have really offered an instant gratification model to building games. I’ve recently implemented Unity analytics, which is super easy to implement and definitely helping me know if I’m making the right choices.

When I first released the game, I noticed that lots of people would play, lose, get an ad and then proceed to uninstall. That was likely due to the original logic that showed an ad in between each game. So I made a tweak of making ads show between games only if 60 seconds passed after the first win. This would give players enough time to warm up to the rules of the game and be rewarded before, presented with an opportunity for an ad.

I then saw the numbers of uninstalls drop and the number of games increased, but still about the same number of ads served. Now that I’ve reached 100 active installs, I ponder that this could just be a factor of laziness or forgetfulness for a user to uninstall. It took about 300 total installs to hit the 100 active install and while the slope of the graph is got better, I contemplated doing some A/B testing on optimizing when to show ads to further reduce uninstalls.

However, I decided that I would put time into new features that would make the game worth the player’s time and space on their phones. I’ve recently introduced an “Adventure” mode, where one could progress through levels with incrementing difficulties.

The next set of features are power ups, rewards and new “mines”. Some power ups that I’m thinking of would be random tile revealers/flaggers, more lives, fixed tile revealer and maybe a larger tile revealer. However, if you have suggestions I’m super open to hearing them!

Much appreciation to all of my friends and family supporting this adventure. The nights spent when the kids go down to 2am get pretty exhausting but I really do appreciate the feedback, the ears when I re-tell my stories, the cheering on, the high fives and hugs.