How do I keep players in my game for a while and also have them return?
1: I think the main game loop is interesting enough to keep players playing for a while but how would I improve that?
2: I thought that the idea of purchasing skins and saving for them would keep players coming back. but now, I’m not sure. Are there other ways I could motivate players to keep returning?
3: I added leveling rewards and a level leaderboard to motivate players to keep leveling up, would this help retain players or not?
4: any other player retention tips!
Have you considered daily missions and log-in rewards? Shuffling content in your skin store to keep things time-gated? Not sure if it’s applicable to your gameplay, would be neat to see what you have though.
Holiday or seasonal updates, daily rewards to claim, new icon updates, game changing updates so they play to complete more of your game, add trading, etc.
I would say make it impossible (Not figuratively either literally make it impossible) to finish the game/Achieve all goals/get all items in one sitting. But make it to where it’s easy to accomplish something in one sitting. I’ll use a Pokémon concept as an example.
Make it impossible for the player to reach and beat the elite four and champion (Final Bosses) in one day. But make it easy to be able to beat the first gym within 15-30-45 minutes. And then make the second gym take slightly more time 30min-1hr and etc. Also
Also, this is a kid’s platform using something that looks cool (Evolving Pokémon) is more likely to bring them back then watching their level go up (Even if its reaching level 100). Also, I’d say make long term goals for older kids/teenagers such as catching all the Pokémon. (Gotta Catch Em All you know)
I’ll use another game Undead defense which I just finished playing.
The basic goal is finishing the tycoon and kill zombies.
I can’t finish the game in one sitting, but I can get enough money to buy some new guns and upgrade my base.
TL;DR
Make your game impossible to finish in one sitting but make it easy to accomplish something in one sitting.
I agree with that, because even if there is a invite players option, some prefer to test the game first to see if its good before inviting friends to join them. But if there is no players it gets kinda tricky. Single player mode could help.
Also, maybe you could add a random event or some tweak on the gameloop to spice things up, so there is more incentive to keep playing. For example in the rake i believe there is a bloodmoon event, sometimes people keep playing because they want to play that particular event, so that easily can extend a game session for some more minutes of play.