How i managed to get my first android game on play store !

Hi All,

Although, i don’t write much. But i thought this is really worth sharing.

In this blog, i am going to share my experiences about publishing my first app on play store and then results that i got.

I was jobless and didn’t had any contract work for past few months.  I thought lets utilise this in creating something exciting and new. For me, i had never published any app on play store so i thought it would be good idea to go for this. Now, as being an iOS dev i didn’t had any knowledge about android development. I was looking for some solution which is cross platform so that i can do it for both iOS and Android in less time.

Having some experience in game develpoment in Unity3D, i decided to take this platform for making my first app on play store.

Environment :

Unity3D is an amazing piece of software for making games. It was very easy to pick-up and get the ball rolling. It has tremendous support as so many developers are there since so many years. So, it was easy to get some pre-baked modules for doing some basic stuff of the app. Moreover, it has asset store for purchasing and reduce dev time (Althought i didn’t spend any bucks there).

Assets :

As i am not from designing background. It was difficult to get assets for game. Now, if i learn photoshop and spend time on creating assets, it would have cost more time to me and also it won’t be that good. So i decided to hire an intern at very low cost. It was a remote intern so i didn’t need to get an office for all this, i was working from my room. Intern did a good job, i wanted the design for one game. But during her work she completed two graphic design work. So, workable design was ready. It was further improved by my younger brother for sharp looks and clean design.

Game Logic :

For any game, game logic and actual gameplay is the key thing for success. It has to be bug free and clear. So, before doing anything else i focused on gameplay. Being new to 2D game development in Unity3D, i took around 3 weeks to learn and complete a gameplay in proper order.

Research & Gamification :

Being new, you should not pick-up a big game idea OR you might end up wasting months in that and i read a lot about developers not making any handsome amount from there 1st game. So i decided as for game to be a success they are certain elements which are necessary and are repetitive in every game ex. rate the game, leaderboard, feedback, sound integration, screenshot creation. To sum it up and being honest its hell lot of work for one person to do all. I was very sure, to make it hit gamecenter / google play games services and sharing options are very important .

Working my way out with Google play services : 

Whenever you create any game, it’s important to have some gamification so that a competitive environment and zeal to score more is always on. For this, i used google play services. Initially, it took a lot of time for testing/uploading and verify that it works in correct way. I never like google documentation, they always give more n more links to other docs, ultimately we end up reading a lot instead of doing. Also, they had bugs and after integration instructions they had list of points which you should avoid. They had two consoles OLD and NEW. which also created confusion . Ultimately there was a video tutorial by google employees which helped in understanding the whole process correct way.

This was one functionality which took most of the dev time and as per results it wasn’t much fruitful as well. Coming from Apple background one would never like the way these guys organise docs and buttons that they have in consoles :P.

So moving forward, after integration it was all ready and up on play store. Good part in google there is no review process, it was up in 10-12 hours. I made the same game in iOS as well. Most of the functions were supported by unity3D directly so it took very less time.

Comparison :

I am not going to generalise anything, i am just sharing my experiences. It was easy to get up things up and rolling on iOS in terms of GameCenter compared to GPlay services. GPlay also creates problems if you only use it for Android and you need to use NO_GPGS to avoid the code in iOS build and its not available by Unity APIs.  It was lesser screen sizes to check on.

Downloads and Revenues :

Now, the performance and result. in terms of downloads, to my surprise i got more on iOS. I did zero promotion on iOS. I told only 4 of my close friends to download and rate it and provide me the feedback.

On Android, i worked really hard to get downloads. I sent 200 people (friends and family) a message about my game and to my surprise i got only 60 :(. Most people complain about 26mb game, I agree on this part i made a mistake and i didn’t know about mip-map setting in unity3D (by default its on, it should off for 2D sprites). Another thing that i need to use was scale images to PVRTC – 4 bits. I have tried this in my next game and total size in less than 20mb with more assets.

Moreover, users on android have 4gb memory / 2gb memory. In India, some don’t even have internet. So eventually the platform looses in terms of promotion. Our vision about everybody is having android and we will get more downloads is different from reality.

Learnings: Whether a normal game OR App. The App size has to be very small on Android. Otherwise it would effect largely on downloads. 

It is written, at some places that even it you have empty project in unity3D. if you build, it would come somewhere around 22mb. When i got 20.6mb i was like i had optimised it well. But the reality is, users don’t care there are other games and environment which generate less file size. Major chunk of people don’t download.

Also, in Gplay store it takes time to come at search so your mouth of word is wasted initially. When i launched, people were not able to search my game by exact name. Forget people even i wasn’t able to search it without publisher’s name :D.

Now, lets have a look at iOS. I was blown away by the results that i saw in AppAnnie. Below is the picture of rankings i had in initial days. 

Here is detail of Ranks in different countries :

Featured 606 times and in some countries it was #1 in some categories. I was like WOW!!!…. What did happen ? i never did any marketing on iOS. Very few of my contacts had iOS. After so much shout on Android, the number is still there on Gplay store which is not handsome.

In terms of revenue, iOS had 6 times of Android. In IOS 80% downloads from US and China. In Android 80% downloads from India. :)

And this is the link of my game :

Android : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nishansh.twotank

iOS : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/2-tanks-control-survive-score/id992221456

So this is it….. might save your time in something… Happy Coding.

At this point of time, we are very close to launch our next game, it is currently 'In Review' by Apple. I am looking for investors for next game as it is much better than this one in terms of concept and graphics.