Ventures of an ex indie game developer

Surprising 17k iOS downloads

Was astounded to find that I have some 17k downloads on App Store. Not today, but overall. Lifetime. A that's like 10x than I thought! Life is humbling, isn't it?

The first app I released in February 2011. It was not a game, but a fairly good what-favorite-tv-programs-are-on-later-today app called "TeveSilen," or "The TV Strainer." I wrote it to learn the basics of native iOS controls for work and charged $1 for it. Without any marketing what so ever I suddenly saw sales for a single week in the 100s. The reason, I found by googling, was that the largest telecommunications company in Sweden, Telia, had written a review in their blog.

Since then I've released five games, the first one was a port of the classic Slime Volleyball which was created as a Java Applet in the 90ies by some anonymous guy, presumably from Australia if I remember correctly. I put my Slime Volleyball port for sale on the App Store in mid-2011 for a buck. 5% of my downloads come from Slime Volleyball.

2/3 of my App Store downloads come from the first game I made myself: Kill Cutie. I launched Kill Cutie as a free app in 2012, but I was so worn down by the App Store release process (porting my game engine to Mac+iOS; handling iOS device rotation in a portable way; creating icons; creating screen shots; writing the info text; creating developer+app accounts, keys and certificates; dealing with the release process; etc.) that I didn't have any energy left over to create a good game mechanic.


The game had four levels and four vehicles, but only one of each was free, the others were in-app purchase. The controls came out as pure sheit. Content-wise, as with all my games, it looks like something the cat dragged in and the rendering sucked. I didn't follow my own advice to do exploration instead of refinement. I've never looked for reviews or anything like that, and I guess the reason for it being downloaded 12k times in the four years it's been on the App Store is the name. And possibly the icon. And certainly the totally deceptive App Store description.


The one feature that adds a little bit of umph an otherwise lousy game is the high score list, which frankly is very good. You just enter your name and press enter. No account creation, no checking for "is that really you," nothing. The app just sends a simple message to the high score server with a digest to keep the simplest hacks out and the player is able to see his/her position overall. The score counting algorithm however is still a mystery.

I've sold 114 level and vehicle in-app purchases, 1‰ conversion rate. A telling figure.

After Kill Cutie I made Downwash. It has controls that works for very small kids, as well as extremely hard controls for the nerds.


I've loved radio-controlled helicopters since I was a kid, and always had a couple (!) at the top of my X-mas wish list. My parents never got me one, which was probably for the best as they were hugely expensive 30 years ago and extremely hard to fly. Now I own a couple of tiny, cheap, battery driven ones and I still love them. But as always (and without dragging Buddhism into it) the fantasy about a R/C chopper was better than actually owning.

Making a game based on what you loved as a kid was not the best idea, and placing it in the simulation -> education categories was just coo-coo. Education!?! Is that hubris or what?! Who gets educated by flying these dummy helicopters? Anyhoo, 9% of my sales come from Downwash. As can be expected, the sales bump when launching Downwash is hardly visible as I charged $1 for it.


Then I made Bound 3D, which got a launch spike since it was free. The game was exceptionally boring and I don't think I ever got iAds working. I sold 10 in-app purchases for Bound 3D, which is remarkable as you don't have to, to get rid of the advertisements.


My latest game NSAgent has sold 288 copies a buck each. NSAgent is probably worth five minutes of play when you've spent your hard-earned dollar and have nothing else to do under gun-point. There is no launch spike what so ever in april 2014. I made it free yesterday, and judging from the past I'll get 1k downloads in the next year or so.

My five games were sold without any marketing, promotions, news letters, press releases or helping hands. Possibly they ended up in the "new games" part of App Store. Otherwise I doubt I'd see any spikes at all in my downloads.

My game prototyping tool, Trabant 4 iOS, is free but only downloaded 133 times. Which is better then I thought but still yuckie.

I've never tracked the downloads of the Mac+Windows versions of my games from my webpage, but I have to guess they're around a dozen, and I'd be surprised if they were more than a hundred.

My goal for the next game will be to get more than 17k free downloads in the first month. As soon as I reach a critical mass of players, I'll turn it into a paid application. The icon style was probably best in Bound 3D, so I'll use that. The App Store description of Kill Cutie was good, so I'll see if I can produce something along those lines. The game will land in the action category of App Store. And I will not release until controls are great and the game is fun. Looking forward to making a great game for the first time. Wish me luck!

About the author

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Gothenburg, Sweden