I’ve been running this for about 5 months. Players pick an animation from a list, insert their own avatar (or a friend’s) into the characters, and watch it. It sits around 100, 150 CCU right now, but it used to average 400, 500 CCU before taking a month off to do a full recode. I recently finished that recode and I’m trying to work out what to do next, as I’ve been pretty upset by the drastic drop in my engagement and retention.
What I’ve just changed:
Rebuilt the entire game from scratch because the old version was a buggy mess with deprecated code and unorganized assets.
New hub layout, with the old hub still selectable on first join.
Added a coin currency earned by watching animations, plus a shop where two animations are unlocked with coins (planning to add more in the future).
17 animations total, with 5 added recently.
What I’d genuinely like feedback on:
The coin wall. Two of my newest animations cost 100 and 50 coins, earned at 2, 8 per completed watch. I’m seeing a lot of players hit the locked cards and bounce. Is that pricing wrong, or is gating new content the wrong call entirely for a game like this?
Retention. Players watch a few animations and leave. That may just be the format. It’s closer to an interactive video player than a game, but if you’ve solved “why come back tomorrow” in something similarly loop-less, I’d like to hear how.
Mobile. Most of my players are on phones and tablets. I’ve tested it myself, but I’m only on one device.
I want to hear where you personally got bored or confused, and at what point.
Interesting game. This might’ve been a bug, but any animation where i had to choose a girl avatar, their shirt was completely removed, kinda weird.
One nice feature for this game would be a timer letting you know how long the animation has left to play. Also, maybe in addition to watches, you could award coins over time for simply being in game. I feel like you may need to be constantly releasing new content to grow this game. Or maybe create a space in world where people can play animations in a box no one can enter, but people can hang out together and watch animations.
I also took an in-depth survey in chat, and the results were nonconclusive.
Thanks man, really appreciate you taking the time to test it and type all this out.
For the shirt thing, I think it’s because of layered clothing. I haven’t been able to replicate the bug on my end since I tested with girl outfits that had classic shirts and not layered clothing, so that’s my assumption for now.
The timer suggestion was great so I went ahead and added it in, there’s a little bar under the stop button now showing time left.
Also added the passive coins over time, 2 coins every 2 minutes on top of watching. Kept it lower than watch rewards so people don’t just AFK farm it instead of actually playing, but it’s a nice bonus for sticking around.
You’re definitely right about content release speed. I spent a month on the recode instead of releasing new animations, which fixed the backend but definitely hurt CCU. Getting back to a consistent upload schedule is the main plan now.
The shared watch space idea is super interesting too. I’m a bit unsure about it since it changes the game format a lot, but I’m definitely keeping the idea in mind.
And yeah, that chat screenshot matches what I see all the time lol. Thanks again for the feedback!
