New game! Wormsy!

So I've been actually rather busy the last couple of months. I've had a project in the works since like the beginning of the year. It got delayed and delayed due to various reasons, but finally I've got a game ready.

Sure there are some rough spots here and there that I am aware of, but I am confident that the current stage of development is good enough for version 1.0

So here it is:

Wormsy is an addictive puzzle game inspired by Choo Choo Puzzles. Wormsy features over 70 levels that will have your brain working overtime! Tired of feeding candy and cutting ropes? Give Wormsy a whirl!

Wormsy is great for all ages. Main features of the game:

•  Help colorful worms escape from their maze!
•  3 Level packs with unique elements in each to keep the gameplay fresh and puzzling
•  Great, clean and colorful interface
•  Ability to customize the interface to your liking
•  Google Game Services integration for achievements and leaderboards
•  Great sound and music

If you want to exercise your brain and have fun doing it, give Wormsy a try. It has plenty of unique and different levels to keep you busy for hours and additional levels coming in regular intervals.

Some screenshots:

There are plenty of levels to choose from, plenty of colorful themes to get and loads of fun to be had

New game: ARCAGON

I've been really busy the last couple of months and I've finally have something to show. Its a new simple arcade/casual game called ARCAGON.

The ide is simple, place sectors of different colors into 6 areas. Once those areas are flled with sectors, they are cleared and you earn points and power ups. Here are some screenshots!

You can get the game as usual for free at 

I've removed all my guides

Following the DCMA requests to Google as it turns out a lot of guides for Ghosts were removed. To be on the safe side, until I figure out a way out, I have removed all of the other guides (as all of them are a potential threat).

I've written to Activision and Google. And hope to get an answer from at least someone. As for the outcome, I highly doubt it will be a positive one.

This will hit my users, as Google Play was a good way to distribute these apps. And will hit me, as I was earning a bit of money from the guides.

I still believe that I comply with the fair use policy of copyright information. But Activision thinks otherwise. I cannot fight the large corporation. So I am at their mercy.

The guides were removed so that I wont get my developer account suspended. I will focus on promoting my own games and their respective IP's.

Ghosts Guide has been suspended from Google Play

Woke up today and found out that Google removed Ghosts Guide from the play store.
I got this:

This is a notification that your application, Ghosts Guide, with package ID com.twoshellko.codghosts, has been removed from the Google Play Store.

REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of the intellectual property and impersonation or deceptive behavior provisions of the Content Policy. Please refer to theIP infringement and impersonation policy help article for more information.

All violations are tracked. Serious or repeated violations of any nature will result in the termination of your developer account, and investigation and possible termination of related Google accounts. If your account is terminated, payments will cease and Google may recover the proceeds of any past sales and the cost of any associated fees (such as chargebacks and payment transaction fees) from you.

If your developer account is still in good standing, you may revise and upload a policy compliant version of your application as a new package name. Before uploading any new applications, please review the Developer Distribution Agreement and Content Policy.

If you feel we have made this determination in error, you can visit the Google Play Help Center article for additional information regarding this removal.

The Google Play Team

So basically Activison I guess filed a complaint against the app. I've launched an appeal with Google but have zero hopes that something will actually change.

I was always under the impression that I complied with the fair use policy. And that I wouldn't be hurt by this.

Well in any case I am more worried about getting my whole developer account suspended. 

Also Google is a nightmare for communication. There is zero feedback. I have no idea what actually infringes. 

I have some ideas, but I don't want to risk reuploading the guide and getting it removed again.

So this is basically a huge pile of SHIT.

Marketing and Promoting Android Apps

I've been developing Android Apps close to 2 years now and have already had some experience in the field of trying and promoting my apps.
I've stepped on a few rakes along the way and I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts and experiences.

1. Advertising.
I've used 3 ways of advertising my apps. 2 of which include admob, the other includes AppBrain.

Here is what I have learned:
Doing basic banner ads on AdMob has provved uneffective in terms of money spent/money earned. A budget of 200 usd dollars blows by in a matter of minutes, results in a lot of clicks but few installs. And the installs that do come generally don't result in any significant increase in income. Neither do they reflect upon the placement of the app in the Play Market.

The only way to make it work is to use careful targeting. Target a small audience, a specific app market. To get anywahere in USA you need a hefty advertising budget. And since results arent as clear as they should be this could be a risky. What I did was attempt to target a certain age group in a certain region based on languages. Also I looked at where my app was actually used and tried to stimulate those markets by trying and bringing it up higher in search results.

So far my marketing using this has been a failure. I determine that simply - I've spent more on advertising than I've gained. So obviously thats a failure.

2. In House ads. They prove to be effective in increasing the user base slightly, but really hit your earnings. And for in house ads to work you also need to have an app that has lots of users. This is kinda of a closed loop, so it might work if you have a popular app.

3. AppBrain - you pay for install. This has worked better than AdMob, but I feel paying 0.4 usd per install is rather risky. And I doubt that in the end I will get the money back.

What works best for me?
Cross advertise between your apps. Have a section or pull down bar in every app that shows of your other apps. This seems to be wroking!

2. Paid reviews
So I've done a couple of paid reviews. And they dont work. AndroidTapp for example charges 150usd for a review. I never get that money back. I get a 1-2 day boost, earn about 20 usd and thats about it. The only way I see that helping is if you spend lots of money and do a paid review on many sites at the same time and this could boost your app and it could go higher up in the store rankings.

So my advice to you is - dont bother with paid reviews. They dont work.

3. Social Media
This sort of wakrs for me but it requires a lot of work from my side. Genrally I target communities or groups in Google+, Facebook and other social sites. I do post a couple of tweets and so on. Each outburst of this advertising results in about 150-200 installs. Best of all its free for you and you see a certain gain.

4. Press releases and sites that do them
Press release sites like pitchpigeon didnt do a thing for me. For 50 usd all I got back was emails from paid review sites wanting more moeny for reviewing my game. So this has also been an utter waste of my resources.

Summary
Being an indie developer is tough. The market has saturated and big players spend lots of money on promotion. The sums they use and have on hand is something beyond any indie developer can use for marketing of their app. So all I can tell you is use social media. Spam like hell but be careful and follow guidelines. Promoting and marketing an app is just as tough as actually making one.

Simply Sudoku version 2!

Good news everyone, I've made a new version of Simply Sudoku!

Actually I am very proud of what I've done. Perhaps this isnt a real 2.0 release, but the amount of work underthehood that went into it deserves a 2. 

This is also my first foray into the realm of in-app products. It features several in app purchases. Including new level packs with puzzles and the option to remove ads within the game. 

As for the way things look and play, well there isn't a lot thats really changed. It's still Sudoku and it's still as fluid and good looking as ever.

Screens:

One other cool aspect of the app is the new Tablet layout that I've designed.

As you see Tablet mode is in landscape orientation. And the app uses automatic detection of the screen size to lauch the relevant activity.

A user setting can also override this and lauch the opposite of whats been chosen automatically.

Video!

As always, get it from Google Play!

Call of Duty Ghosts guide released!

I've finally made a new application! After pending a bit of time doing other things, I've got around to doing a new app! This is a follow up app for Black Ops 2 Guide

Here are some screenshots!

The guide for Ghosts features several key improvements over Black Ops 2 guide. First - its much smaller in size. This is due to several factors. The range graphs are no longer pictures, but are custom views. This will give me a lot more flexibility when changing their values when balance changes come.

The app is also designed using fragments, so in one of the future updates this will enable me to make a kick ass tablet app. 

So if you like ghosts and want to see the real sepcs of guns and create your ultimate soldier, get the app for free here:

New version of Lines!

I am exceited to release a brand new version of my game Damn Lines....err Lines!
Yes, I've changed the name so that even the little ones can play without being offended by the word "Damn". Although I've never found it offensive. In any case, here is the new icon:

The game features completely new HD graphics that are more colorful and rich than before. This marks the biggest change in the game. Actually the update started with a blank project and has less than 10% of the original code.

The game features new music that is very cheerful and rather catchy.  Without wasting your time, here are some new screenshots!

Hope you enjoy it!

Tangled reviewed on Playboard.me

The kind folks at Playboard.me decided to review Tangled. They seemed to have enjoyed the game!

Read the review HERE

Black Ops 2 Guide minor update

Just released a minor update to Black Ops 2 Guide version 1.2.14. The update fixes 2 small issues - Ballista RPM is now correct at 47 and Nuketown Callout typo for Green Garage has been fixed.

Both of the issues were pointed out to me via a review. If you see any more errors, contact me!

Update for Color Converter

Color Converter has been updated to version 1.3!

There is basically just 1 change that you should expect. Since working on my games I noticed that I am mising a way to convert values from RGB 0-255 format to RGB values with the 0-1 format that are used often, for example in AndEngine.

The update should be appearing in Google Play soon.

When revenues dip

Its always very encouraging when you see your revenues grow over time. More people like and download your app, but its so hearbreaking to see the reverse.

And at the moment my revenues are sliding. But I am not giving up. I will continue this path!

Simply Sudoku review

I am pleased that Simply Sudoku go reviewd recently. +Kulíš Android had a look at my game and seemed to like it.

You can read the review HERE

Thanks guys!

Making a dollar with Android

Part of being a developer is trying to get something back for the time you spend. In an ideal world I would remove the ads in my applications, because they do ruin the experience of the user.

In the last couple of apps I tried to tone down the use of ads. In Tangled for example ads are shown only in the pause menu and at the game over screen.

In Simply Sudoku i tried a similar approach. Althpugh both applications use the same way of showing ads the results are different.

Tangled games are rather quick and the user sees the ad every time the game ends. This leads to a good number of requests per user. In Simply Sudoku the games last much much longer. And the ads dont get shown once the user actually completes the puzzle. And rarely do users go into menus.

To combat this I plan to bring a couple of changes to Simply Sudoku. I will try and show the ad in the difficulty choser. It won't harm the user experience from playing the game. Further I will see about adding ads to the main menu - as the user will be there most often. Either when starting a new game or resuming an old one.

This should lead to a better overall request rate for me and shouldn't hrt the users much.

And finally, the last option would be enabling the user to buy the removal of ads. Which seems to work well on Android. Now I just have to implement it!

Simply Sudoku - a new game by me!

I've finally got around to finishing the very first project I started. When I was just learning the inns and outs of developing for android I began with a simple sudoku game. Several years later - here it is. Simply Sudoku!

This is a game about, you guessed it, solving Sudoku Puzzles. Here are some screenshots:

As always - it's free and you can get it here: Google Play