This is a game I’ve been working on for a couple of months and about a month ago it was released.
I’m looking for some feedback on the game in general and specifically how to improve my retention, as my D1 retention is pretty low. Please let me know about any ways I can improve my game and specifically how to improve it for new players and get them to stay!
I played your game a little bit, and have the following reasons why the D1 retention is low:
The game feels very dull, very quickly. After the tutorial, you’re just dumped to work things out and wait for money to come in, there’s not much to do except wait to earn large amounts of money.
The tutorial is honestly not the best, I’d say there’s players who leave during the tutorial who aren’t going to be coming back.
here’s a few things you could do:
have an option to invite friends and allow multiple people to work on the same supermarket. people are always more interested in playing games with their friends.
make it a little bit easier to see what you need to do next, and make it a bit cheaper to buy new fruit stands etc.
I don’t generally like this, but you could also add daily rewards to incentivize users to come back every day.
How can I improve the tutorial? Do you have any tips for that? What do you think I need to explain better?
Here’s a good video talking about tutorials I suggest watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG4Yy-1G-wc
Even if don’t want to bother watching the video/following the video, here’s some tips:
shorten the tutorial, for example remove unnecessary steps (e.g. you don’t need to advise me to add another fruit container, i’d be able to work that out in the step showing me to open the build menu).
automatically continue to the next step after a task has been completed (however, make it clear the step has changed)
allow a method to completely skip the tutorial
make it easier to read the text you’re showing to the player - it feels too small (at least on desktop).
This is all great advice, thank you so much. I thought about a method to skip the tutorial but then I thought every player would do that and end up confused no?
I personally don’t think the tutorial is super necessary for new users who’ve played a game like this before. You could add a Skip Tutorial button - you’ve got the ? button if I need help after.
You might have users leaving due to bugs. I had an NPC cashier that stopped serving customers. They lined up at the register, didn’t move for the entire time I was there, and when I tried to delete the register to clear them, I couldn’t because there were still customers in the store that wouldn’t leave even though it was closed.
I think I’ll add the skip tutorial button then,
About your bug though, I’ve never had this happen or have it reported, do you think you can replicate the bug? Or maybe what caused it?
I can jump back in and see if I can get it again. It was the first non-free cashier I hired, a customer with the red and white head covering pulled up with 8 or so apples and she just stood there, not checking him out. It fixed on rejoin.
Edit: The bugged customers in line were possible to walk into and push around, and I don’t seem to be able to do that with other customers. I don’t know if that helps, but it’s what I’ve got.
Another small issue I noticed, you can carry multiple boxes at once, which is nice, but when the boxes are of different stuff, the names overlap and it looks like it shouldn’t be possible.
Alright, thanks for letting me know, I appreciate it.
Hi, late to this thread but I just want to congratulate you on the success of your game.
If you dont mind answering, what was your D1 retention before you implemented any changes? What was it after? What types of changes did you implement, and how long did it take for the algorithm to start boosting your game?