StickWars - Top 10 paid app for about 3 months, build with cocos2d

cocos2d for iPhone » cocos2d games

StickWars - Top 10 paid app for about 3 months, build with cocos2d

(79 posts) (22 voices)

Started 2 years ago by LongJohnnyE
Latest reply from LongJohnnyE

Tags:

12 3 Next »

LongJohnnyE
Member

My first iPhone app, StickWars, was built using cocos2d. I obviously can't say enough about how I couldn't have done it without cocos2d, and I will find ways to give back to the community behind this great work.

StickWars was one of the first castle defense games on the AppStore (XGen Studio's Defend your Castle actually beat mine by a few days, but wasn't as popular). The concept behind the game is simple--drag charging enemies in the air with your finger, and drop them on the ground. However, there are many more elements that come into play later on to keep it interesting after the first 3 minutes :).

Let me know if anyone actually wants some promo codes, I'd be glad to post them here, even though I'm slowly running out as Apple has sat on my last update for about 3 weeks now.

From a technical side, I can tell you that it is amazing that StickWars actually runs, much less is playable. I was learning everything I was going, and coming from a Java background, programming in ObjC on a small device is a very new perspective. If anybody has any questions, I love answering questions from developers, as long as I can figure out the answer.

Homepage
http://johnehartzog.com/projects/stickwars/

Full version:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=309527804&mt=8

Lite version:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=309528712&mt=8

[edited img link by admin]

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

I fail at using tags :(.

Posted 2 years ago #
coolman
Member

I expect riq will earn a good cheque :)

Ah, I have put you in the credits of my game, you know why ;)

Congrats Eric well done.

Posted 2 years ago #
allenfjordan
Member

It's an amazing achievement. I bought the full copy just to see what the top cocos2d game was like. I like how it starts out simple, then adds variety to keep the player engrossed... I need to integrate something similar into my game and hope for success :).

Posted 2 years ago #
jptsetung
Member

LongJohnnyE, give us some tips :)
I think I read that the best promotion technique was to update the game every week, is it right ?

Posted 2 years ago #
cavalcade
Member

Some stat sharing goodness would help drum up more interest as well as help fellow developers. congratS!

Posted 2 years ago #
redsky
Member

Are there any tips you can share such as... what do you know now that you wish you had known when you were starting?

Any lessons learned in terms of approaches you took that you wouldn't take again in your next project?

I also agree with cavalcade. I love reading about success stories and any stats you'd be willing to share about sales would be appreciated.

After all those sales did you keep your day job? :)

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

Tips? Make a fun game that is different!

It wasn't that I updated my game every week, but that every 1.5 weeks or so I pushed out an update that added a lot of new content to the game. My changelog was like 10 lines long for each update, you can check it out at http://johnehartzog.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

The fling physics is great. Its very satisfying throwing those stick guys up in the air. Or slamming them in to the ground. Or dropping them in jail.

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

I'm actually an officer in the US Navy (just commissioned last month) so yes, I'm still at my day job.

My stats? To be honest, a big reason I haven't been more public about the exact details of my app sales is I don't want to be the target of people looking for money or whatever. I'm happy with my day job and my life as it is, and I don't want people knocking at my door, calling me on the phone, all looking for favors or money.

I'd be happy to share the insights from my data, however. I can give a few quick tips from my experience:

Create a lite version to demo your app. My sales doubled after I had a lite version live and in the top 10 (although this happened to coincide with a major update, so it could have been multiple factors).

In addition, use advertisements in your lite versions, if you can find a non-intrusive way to fit them in. In case your app is a hit, the lite version will skyrocket to the top 10 of free apps, and then fall within a week. If you don't have ads in the app when it is riding the wave, you're missing out on thousands.

Glad you like the fling physics Codemattic! They are surprisingly simple...chipmuck is basically doing all the work. My code behind the flinging is less than 10 lines...

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

LJE, its not just the physics, but the blood splatter, frankly. My game has blood particles too. The appstore reviewers used to reject games with blood. Are you selling SW in every country? Maybe its ok if its stick figures or zombies that are getting killed.

"use advertisements in your lite versions"

should you display advertisements for $, or as an ad swap for getting advertisements for your paid version in other people's games.

Posted 2 years ago #
Acceleroto
Member

LongJohnnyE- congrats on the commission!

We need to make a "Military iPhone dev" group. I only know a few, but I haven't found one yet who's even thinking about leaving their day job.

Cheers,
-Bryan

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

Yea, I'm selling SW worldwide. Does that make a difference?

I wish I could offer more insight on the effectiveness of paying for or exchanging ads, but I really didn't find any way to collect that information. I can tell you that for the first 4 weeks, I used 100% exchange ads, and served about 10k ads per day. After my lite version was approved by Apple and the impressions skyrocketed, I stopped exchanging and stuck with the paid ads. I can just tell you what I did, I don't know if it was correct or not.

Thanks about the commission, though I wish I could take a little more time to keep working on my iPhone game!

Posted 2 years ago #
arian487
Member

I read your previous topic and I did just about everything I could think of, posted in forums and stayed active in those forums, provided promo codes, got some reviews, and even had the app out there. I used some ads from admob and had 100k impressions very quickly, of that 100k, 400 clicks and 0 buys. I've been using various other advertising techniques and really the ads don't seem to be working at all. It's not that people are playing it and saying it's bad, people just aren't buying it. Those who have have bought and played it like it for the most part. I'm providing some updates for sure so we'll see how that works.

I also did an interview with SlideToPlay so I wonder how much that'll help (though I doubt it'll help much).

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

That sucks, Hopple is fun. Didnt you used to have a lite version in the store? If so, why did you take that down? Was it not getting people to buy the full version?

Posted 2 years ago #
arian487
Member

Oh yea we decided to try taking off the lite. It might've been cannibalizing paid sales so we temporarily took it off just to see the market reaction. We'll probably put it back up when our next update gets released. But we are definitely still trying.

Posted 2 years ago #
jptsetung
Member

@LJE, by the way, did StickWars appeared in "New and noteworthy" section of the app store, when you released it ?

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

@adrian I wish I had more tips! Most of my marketing was 'hands-off' in that I didn't actually do that much.

@jptsetung Until after I had already hit #1 paid in the US, StickWars was never featured by Apple, nor what is featured in any media source.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"Until after I had already hit #1 paid in the US, StickWars was never featured by Apple, nor what is featured in any media source."

totally badass!

[ makes it look soooo easy! :) ]

Posted 2 years ago #
stu
Member

I'd be interested in a promocode if you have any left.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

promocode, really? You cant dig up 99 cents?

Theres a free lite version anyway if you want to see what the buzz is about:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=309528712&mt=8

Posted 2 years ago #
stu
Member

Sorry, I didn't mean it in that way and it's not about the dollar. I've just never used a promocode and wanted to go through the process of redeeming one at least once since I'd like to do something similar in my game.

Posted 2 years ago #
jptsetung
Member

@stu, you don't have to do anything ont he code side to use promocodes, it's automatic and entirely managed by Apple. You'll understand when you use the web interface of iTunes connect.

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

Here are a couple of codes.

JKXAK9FEH4AK
WX6KK73LLANJ

I would give some more, but it's been about 4 weeks since I submitted my last update and I'm still waiting for Apple to approve it, and I can't get new codes until the new version is live :).

Posted 2 years ago #
stu
Member

@jptsetung I see. I tried to redeem and code and it is restricted to American citizens. Also I learned that this is something offered by Apple and the developer doesn't need to implement a promocode system. Nice!

LongJohnnyE: Thanks!

Anyways sorry for the confusion and thank you for clearing things up.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

sadly yes - codes only work in the US appstore. Not sure why Apple restricts it this way.

Posted 2 years ago #
sergen1976
Member

LongJohnnyE,

Thanks for the promo code! I used WX6KK73LLANJ. I am going to leave excellent review when I get home!

Posted 2 years ago #
arian487
Member

Yea it's not fair we don't get to use promo codes. That being said, I paid the 99 cents because it's a great game for one and for two, it was made by cocos :)

Posted 2 years ago #
trump-card
Member

Hello LongJohnnyE! First of, thank you for sharing your information about StickWars.

I have a question for you. What was the hardest thing to implement by using Cocos2d?

Thanks,
Stas

Posted 2 years ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

The hardest part about using Cocos2d was the lack of documentation, or even a unified location where 'tips' and other information was stored. Remember that this was my first game, and first experiece with xCode/iPhone/ObjC. It was a lot to take in at first!

I would find answers to my questions on various blogs and other sites through painfully constructed google searches, along with reading every word here on the cocos site. I'm sure some more documentation will come with time, especially as cocos is proving itself to be capable of making very successful games.

Technically the hardest thing to get to work was AtlasSpriteManager. I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to be using it, but I couldn't figure out exactly the best way to efficiently create sprite sheets for different characters that still shared several animations. I ended up with a very ugly but working solution which I posted on my site at http://johnehartzog.com/2009/05/using-cocos2d-atlasspritemanager/.

Posted 2 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

12 3 Next »

Reply »

You must log in to post.