I’m not sure if you already have this. But for smaller community games, start thinking of hiring staff.
Rather than using up 50k on ads, use half of that to hire a team of public relations staff.
Get a discord, a youtube, a twitter and any other social media you can to increase free marketing. Get PROFESSIONAL public relations staff who get paid rather than just hiring fans from the community. These people will know how to keep people interested.
Add a currency so players can grind in the game. This increases replayability. Add minigames that are randomised so players get new experiences. Add promptgameinvites where players can invite their friends. This is very useful for getting new players in.
However, for sake of pragmatism. There is only so much a dev can do to keep their game alive. After a while, you’ll have to realise to stop riding off past glories as @Ty_IsHomeSchooled said above. Think of making either a complete overhaul or a new game with similar functions. And advertise the heck out of that. (A trick is you can rename your current game, to keep the previously played players and then reupload your themepark to a new place. This way, it makes your new game easier to search.)
Regular updates (Events, Trends and season) , Online interaction (With twitter and youtube) and a want to return are most important to your game. If you make sure it never becomes boring to play and players have a reason to play (Christmas update, youtuber is streaming on it, twitter codes or giveaway) Then it will most likely rise in count atleast keep a good count.
Also a website can help & working on other games under the studio or creator can drive players to your creations, You see alot of the large groups have created multiple games and have dedicated players on all of them. They would have started with one but once they created more, players would go to the group and notice the other games they have.
Though younger players can be easy to loose interest in your game, they can also be the main buyers and advertisers. They usually have large lists of friends which can join them or they tell about the game to. Also it is much easier to get younger players excited about updates.
Personally perhaps an attractive thumbnail, I personally feel like the cartoon look for the thumbnail doesn’t show a lot of personality about the game.
Adding events and putting expensive prices on winning them like the hood of champions will attract more people and also make redeem codes. try this and reply if it was helpful.
