Hey there!
I just made my first game on Roblox and began sponsoring it. For my first game I did a simulator with a timing game element. It was heavily inspired by many existing games because I figured it was a tried-and-true formula. Here’s a screenshot of my stats so far (Day 7 Retention and Unique User Qualified Play Through Rate are irrelevant at this time as it hasn’t been sponsored long enough).
Here’s the game: Become a Superhero!
I’ll go through each stat and what I’ve done/am hoping to do to address it.
After initially very poor average session time (45th-ish percentile, 6 minute average), I made the tutorial more hand-holdy, the game controls more obvious, and made the first world cheaper to get through. So far after 1-2 days that’s gained me about half a minute of retention, up to 6.5 minutes and 53rd percentile. Slightly better but not great. I am using funnels and see that most players dropped off before the Iron Man Egg (second thing you do basically), so I made that half price and ensured no matter your luck it takes a max of 3 flights to afford. But still most players drop off there.
Day 1 retention has me the most worried, as it’s very low (4.13%) and in the 33rd percentile. This is also the stat that people say matters the most, so that’s not great. The biggest problem, however, is that I have zero idea how to address this. I’ve already got daily rewards that the player is introduced to first thing. I’m hoping the fact that more players are getting to World 2 now (about 32%) will entice them to come back since it has a lot more stuff.
The monetization ones are tricky to me. .22% Conversion Rate (36th percentile), 33.4 Average Revenue Per Paying User (36th percentile as well). Frankly, if this game fails the last reason I would’ve expected is monetization issues. I really thought it did a good job of offering a billion different things to buy while not being overly intrusive and killing engagement and retention. I guess if those are going to be poor anyway I should just go all in spamming game pass prompts lol. This one I also don’t know how to fix… maybe just hope for a chain reaction from the other stats getting better?
I understand this is maybe too much detail (or at least too much for anybody to want to read lol) but I wanted to try and address everything I know.
Please, I would be very grateful for any critical and/or helpful feedback.
Thank you!
P.S. For what it’s worth, my current theory is the timing game with the meteors is too hard to initially explain and that it isn’t that fun. To me it’s pretty fun for a simulator gimmick but I think the average player is used to something maybe more simple like just clicking. I might replace it with something else and see how it goes. Regardless of how this game ends up I’m probably going to release another game with this base infrastructure of code so I will test that hypothesis. I think the core game works.
My other theory for the lack of success is that the way you collect power and gems (bouncing on little mole hills coming out of the ground, which I thought was a more fun twist) is too different from the normal method (collecting orbs) and too similar to other simulators gameplay loops, so players similar with the genre get distracted by that and confused. Whenever I join the game to study the players there’s always a sizable chunk just bouncing around aimlessly collecting power just to not fly. Frankly I think the tutorial should’ve made the main gameplay loop clear but c’iest la vie.