Tiltz Redemption (and more lessons learned!) blog - Gamieon

A year ago I released my first iPhone game: Tiltz. You may think "But you just released it!" What I just released is the remake. Following my past blogs, you'll see I made a lot of mistakes with the original Tiltz. It got so bad, I pulled it off the App Store. To list just a few things I improved on:

• Shrunk the app size from 50 to 15 mb using optimizations in Unity Full
• Made it run faster by properly using static meshes and carefully optimizing texture and mesh content
• Making the game brighter instead of dark and shadowy
• Adding more levels with more diverse game play
• Preparing a press release
• Splitting the full and free versions
• Social networking integration with HeyZap

...and all the hard work paid off. Tiltz Lite is rapidly gaining on Tiltz in terms of ad revenue (it skyrocketed out of the gate in comparison), and Tiltz Deluxe (the 99 cent version) is well ahead in sales from the original Tiltz in its first month.

As nice as all that sounds, Tiltz is still not at its pinnacle of success. Not by a mile. Which is why I'm adding some big new features in the 1.2 update; but also making more changes as I've learned more lessons:

1. Don't confuse casual gaming for gaming without difficulty.  The problem with Tiltz is you can't lose. It's the main customer complaint. I'm addressing it in the next update by making it so players can lose if they drop too many marbles.
    
2. Use unusual level designs that deviate from typical game play sparingly. This one I already knew, but was affirmed by one of my testers. They didn't care for the upside-down level. I suspected it was so different that the novelty would wear off fast, so I kept a low marble count just to be safe.
    
3. Reviewer and user feedback are both valuable.  Tiltz 1.2 has many changes in it. How many of them were NOT from user feedback? Just one. And sure enough, I better understand the criticisms now that I see how they wanted it to be more like!
    
4. Minimize the amount of time between the "Game Over" announcement and restarting the game.  The player knows they lost. You don't need to rub it in. If they want to play again, don't stop them! Don't even make them wait!
    
5. In pre-viral marketing stages, the market only responds when you ask it to.  I have download graphs that prove, in my case, the nearly sole reason sales ever go up is that I made an announcement or gave away free copies.
    
6. When you think "I'm too busy to write an update", you should instead think  "I'm not managing my time properly".  I haven't done any kind of press release since the Tiltz release because I've been busy working on pinball. Potential Tiltz sales have suffered for that. This is the price of doing close to everything by oneself. As they say in Habitat for Humanity: Don't work hard...work smart. I need to get it together!
    
7. When you think "There's nothing to write about," you should instead think "Why don't I have anything to write about!?!?"

I'd write more, but I've got another press release to write and another new feature in Tiltz to sneak in.