I released my game a few days ago and I’ve spent about 40 ad credits on it.
It has above 3% CTR, but my all my stats are in the red and my average playtime and daily retention stats are very low. I would appreciate it if I could get some feedback on my game.
Hi! I just checked the game out and before I begin, I want to say that I am in no way a game designer so take all of my advice with a grain of salt. I will try to list improvement tips and ideas in order from when I enter to when I leave.
[Beginning/Tutorial]
From the thumbnail and game name, I got the idea basically immediately which is very good! But the tutorial is really fast, and I wasn’t able to catch the text and absorb it!
The building in the game is very buggy. Sometimes I want to place a block and it wont show or will show up sideways or something not even show up at all! This got really frustrating, and I can see this as a turnoff for many players even from the beginning. I actually got stuck on a stage and couldn’t progress
The building mechanic needs to be explained more, you explained how players can switch between types of builds and stuff but never actually walked us through it! In addition, I don’t know the next block and found myself to be scrolling through them (cycling by clicking q, please add e support!!) until I got to the next one. Maybe have a visual indicator of the next block in cycle to ease the load on the player.
[Stats and stuff I guess]
Monetization. The monetization in the game feels extremely disconnected from the game concept itself. I do understand where they are coming from but there wasn’t a option to buy more builds (which I kind of expected from this game)!
Retention wise, there isn’t really a reason for a player to come back to the game. Obbys are usually one and done deals. You want to give the player a reason to come back to the game. Ask yourself: do I want to come back to the game? If yes, why? Right now, the fun in the game (trolling people) is exclusively monetized. Other games like slap tower allows you to fool around and fight people without spending money from the start and adds support for monetization rather than locking it behind a paywall. Another example is ink games, in the game, every player gets a throw sand and push for FREE which was really fun and even pushed me to almost buy the super push because it was so fun.
[Other considerations]
Please nerf the heck out of the spinning blocks one, it’s far too fast and I can imagine a lot of younger kids getting frustrated, it sometimes lags and throws me off too.
Please make buildings reset on new checkpoint or death. I really don’t like having to keep clicking delete builds, just to start fresh.
Troll games usually have a bunch of people in a single place, when I enter the game, everyone was far away from me and very separated which gave me no incentive to troll or buy anything. Take slap towers for example, they have specific stages dedicated for fun time/trolling other players. Ink games forces everyone to start at a common place and allows people to fight each other close quarters.
Invitation rewards aren’t clear, I don’t know what I’m getting rewarded with, how and what are the terms? Does the guy have to stay in the game for 10 minutes?
The game was comprised of basically just walking to the next stage, it felt slow and eventually got boring after a short bit. The game itself is a unique and interesting twist and hooked players onto it but you have to reel them in (lol).
AGAIN I AM NOT A GAME DESIGNER!!! I CANT DESIGN FOR THE LIFE OF ME. THIS IS JUST WHAT I THINK AND THAT’S IT! TAKE IT WITH A GRAIN OF SALTTTTTT
Besides what ZNoob_x already said, I have a few thoughts:
The shop seems to be bugged. After I won the obby and got 75000 cash, it wouldn’t let me buy the gravity or speed coil (both of which cost $75000), telling me I either already had one of the item or didn’t have enough money (it should also be noted that it’s called Yen in this notification, which isn’t what money is called on the leaderboard). It let me buy the banana though, which makes me wonder if it won’t allow you to buy something that costs exactly how much money you have.
There are a lot of duplicate stages, which made it less engaging for me.
I think the concept is unique and interesting but it could be taken a lot further. It seems most parts have predetermined spaces that you’re allowed to build something on, which means there’s really only one way to beat any given stage. I suggest giving players freedom to build anywhere they want and adding some more complexity to the levels. A few ideas for making the levels more interesting would be adding a special type of ground in some levels that you’re not allowed to build on or making levels that require you to clear all your builds halfway through to have enough in storage to be able to finish the level.