Hi, thank you for your post and for playing Please see my comments below.
Yep, it is harder to be noticed in the market right now. It changed a lot (again ;)) at the end of the last year. Google Play introduced ads to the search results. Currently it displays up to 2 ads at the top of the search result. It means that if your app was at 5 position it went down to 7 and it is not visible in the first search screen anymore -> less downloads. If your app has less downloads for the “search query” it goes down -> again, less downloads. It is even “better” with the appstore search ads, because you can buy ads for the specific keywords
And now lets say you are releasing your fancy game Without any promotion you won’t get many downloads. WIthout downloads your game won’t be visible in the search results + it is pushed down all the time by ads Yes, you can buy ads, but it costs a lot. And you have to advertise for a longer time to get organic traffic.
In my opinion search ads (GP and AppStore) is killing indies a little bit. Big companies can buy a lot of ads and their apps will be positioned at the top all the time, pushing down everything else
But… Google changed their algorithms (again) - now, retention is more important than number of downloads, so… if your game is playable I guess it will be going up in the search results. But still… without users (downloads) your app is dead.
Of course there is still a chance to be featured and get some free promotion. Unfortunately, because of the type of my game, I don’t think it will happen this time In my case I have to do a lot more “promotion” work right now (working on the gameplay at the same time). But I have some plan, ask me next year about the results
I would really like to discuss more about promotion, “what to do after the release” or about the current markets
WindowsPhone/Tizen - I think it is important to release apps/games on as many platforms as possible. See what big companies are doing - their titles are almost everywhere. People change phones. If they like your game they will download it again on other platform. Unfortunately it takes some time to port to other platforms - it is not so straight, but also not so difficult. If you managed to compile and run cocos project you will manage to release the game on WP and Tizen
Thank you for pointing it out. Yes, I definitely want to add this. You just confirmed what I was thinking about It is on my “todo” list and should be available in one of the next updates. This is my first game built with cocos and I didn’t want to complicate it too much at the beginning - I wanted to limit the chance when game is crashing because I missed something. Now I know that game runs well so I can add more third-party stuff
Last weekend we were showing Balls Breaker HD on Pixel Heaven 2017 It was a “pixel” party, so we prepared the special mode in Balls Breaker HD - the “pixel mode”
Thanks. No problem. Some of the levels are procedural generated and some “by hand”. However, the game itself is prepared for the “full custom” levels, which I am going to show in the next updates
We have just pushed new version of Balls Breaker to the Google Play market (iOS with iPhoneX support should be available very soon… first we have to get some device :P).
What we did:
improved switching between the game screens - it is now faster and smoother
smoother gameplay animations
mediation with FAN - I hope it won’t crash and will run well
bug fixes
Btw. this is how we test Balls Breaker in a very extreme conditions
Totally awesome, have anymore pics of your environment? I have always wanted to try a climb but it is a little expensive for me to try now. Perhaps in 2018.
@kds you post updates here like this is toucharcade forum and all users here are gamers.
First of all this is a developers forum. Yes, here is current section about games showcase, but you really spamming here.
Ofc it’s up to admins here, but I think game dev topic like should be limited with number of posts inside.
You just showing what you did and thats it, but not posting updates about new feature etc. it’s all info for toucharcade or some other kind of forum.
@slackmoehrle You should definitely do it. It is really worth it. Let me know (pm) if you need any additional info.
@anon98020523 Yeah, toucharcade could be better, but… game is made with cocos2d-x and I think it is really good to show the game progress. I have also replied to a lot of question about the game development. My previous post is already 3 months old. Is it really spamming? If there is any “post limit” let me know.
THats number of posts your topic should have here like: [Xbox One][Steam] Train bandit - this game even was featured by Apple on the top page, so what? Updates were made for that game, so what? I hope you get an idea…
Yeah, congrats to that game to be featured by Apple I really don’t want to argue with you. With all the respect (to you) I don’t think you are the right person to tell me what to do and where to post anything. Once again, please see the previous posts and what was discussion about. What is wrong in posting new game features? Maybe there should be a specific sub-forum about cocos2dx game progress? I see that other people also discuss it in this forum.
Can you direct me to the “rules” of this sub-forum (I can’t find any)?
And… C’mon, take a coffee (or a beer) and chillout It is Monday
We don’t have any rules about how many posts go in a topic. I actually tend to appreciate a single topic per game instead of creating a new topic for each release of a game.
If 5 people release games, right now that is only 5 topics. If you don’t want to read the topic, ignore it.
If they created a new topic for each release this could spiral to 10, 25, 125 topics. Then that is way more to ignore.
Please see my comments below.
In my case I have to do a lot more “promotion” work right now (working on the gameplay at the same time). But I have some plan, ask me next year about the results 
It is on my “todo” list and should be available in one of the next updates. This is my first game built with cocos and I didn’t want to complicate it too much at the beginning - I wanted to limit the chance when game is crashing because I missed something. Now I know that game runs well so I can add more third-party stuff 
Of course it is for free 
