Mobile Income Report #1 - June 2014 (monthly income report from Android, iOS, Tizen, bada, ... games)

 On 1st June 2014 I left my previous job and became true Indie game developer. It is big adventure and I started this series of Income reports to share my experience with other small developers.

 If you are interested what are my games like, you can see detailed Portfolio here. The portfolio page will be regularly updated.

What I did in June

•  I was working on adjustments of our games. The main one is prepared set of new levels for Shards - modern Arkanoid / Breakout game. Lot of players asked for more levels, so we made adjustments to add them easily. Jupiter who is responsible for graphics and levels created set of 10 new ones. The total number is 60 now. We also added Shardiens - glassy enemies that are spawn from hives. Both enemies and hives can be destroyed and when this happens it affects the screen space with distortion effect. The update will be published in July.

• iOS version is finally coming - most of the work was done and I hope it will get published in July,
• we adjusted Fruit Dating to support 2560x1600 screens without stretching images and published it at Amazon store. Thanks to this we reached the Developer Select program and we got 500k ads impressions campaign to promote this game. The campaign is scheduled for July,
• although my games are for Android (beside other OS systems) I am not Android programmer. So in June I took deep studying of Android programming. I want to do the same for iOS in July. My target is to be able to write not only games, but also non-game apps,
• beside this I am learning Unity for 2D game programming.

Report

 Now to numbers. Below is table summarizing earnings from paid versions. It does contain any iOS and Tizen versions yet as iOS version of Shards will be published in July and Tizen OS was not launched yet (its planned July launch in Russia was postponed by Samsung - developers were not given any explanation).

 Total $23,5 is not much really. It is even less if I say that this poor profit from our games will be split among other teammates who were working on the games with me.

 The most profitable was Shards. It is funny that bada - dead OS system - made the same amount as Android.

 Here is income from free versions that contain ads or in-app purchases to remove ads:

 Currently the highest income is from Chartboost ads. We use these interstitail ads during game start and then from time to time between levels. If Chartboost inventory is empty then full screen interstitial is requested from AdMob. AdMob and Amazon are currently used mainly for banners - AdMob works as safety belt for interstitials. The income from Tapjoy is very very low. We implemented it only into Fruit Dating as the other way how player can earn in-game currency (stars). If player is stuck with logical puzzle he can purchase the solution for previously earned stars and if he does not have enough of it he can earn some by watching video ads. As the number of downloads is low the Tapjoy traffic is also low. So, I do not see the problem in Tapjoy network.

 So, total income for June = $23,5 + $138,4 = $161,9.

Next?

 In July I will report experience with Amazon Developer Select campaign. I hope Shards will pass validation procedure at iTunes. It would be great for Tizen developers to finally know when it will be launched. I will continue in my Android / iOS / Unity / Objective-C / C# studies.

Our games & apps

Follow @SBC_Games

 Here is list of our games and apps with list of changes and details about each item. Click icon below to jump quickly to detail:

WOODVENTURE

Woodventure is classic mahjong connect game. Mahjong connect games have simple rule: two tiles can be connected if path between them has maximum of two turns. Your target is to clear whole board.     Woodventure has 18 levels and you are traveling from one to next on map of the wood.   During game you can use three types of bonuses:   hint: will show you one of next possible match,   bomb: will blast random pair on board,   reshuffle: will reshuffle all tiles on board   For fast matching you are getting combo points. Total score is for: matches, combos, remaining time and level bonus. Every time you start level, you see what is your best score for this level. You can play any level multiple times. If you do so, your total score is cumulated. (back to applist)

FLAT JEWELS MATCH 3

Flat Jewels Match 3 is classic match 3 game in modern flat design. It employs well known game mechanics in this simple yet addictive version. Game has two modes: Levels mode and Time Attack mode. In Levels mode you will go through 150 levels fulfilling simple tasks. In Time Attack mode you will aim to reach highest possible score in limited time. Game contains 20 achievements and 2 leaderboards.  In this game we tried to differentiate from all similar games with simple design, small install size, quick gameplay and we do not push players into any IAPs. Based on target platform and appstore the game has implemented Google Play services, Amazon Game Circle and Apple Game Center. This is also our first game that uses Google Analytics to tune difficulty of levels based on data from players. (back to applist)

FRUIT DATING

Fruit Dating is original puzzle game with simple rules. It was first published int the beginning of December 2013 on Android OS. There are two versions of the game: free and paid one. In the free one the user has to accept ads while the full one is without them.  In both versions when the player is stuck and can not solve puzzle he or she may purchase solution via in app purchases. Actually, the player does not buy solution but stars that work as in game currency and solution is then bought for these stars. The player can also earn stars for playing well. In some versions we tried to reward player with stars for watching video ads. For any first IAP purchase in free version the ads are permanently removed from the game. (back to applist)

SHARDS

Shards is clone of popular Arkanoid / Breakout games. We tried to make a really nice clone. Every single level has its own fractal background with bricks originally arranged. The game features really great soundtrack.  The game is in two versions - free with ads and paid without it. The users of free version can upgrade to full one directly from app with in app purchase. They can get discount by installing some of our other games (Fruit Dating, Deadly Abyss 2).  Currently this game became our flagship. (back to applist)

DEADLY ABYSS 2

Deadly abyss 2 is game with submarine. You control it with screen touches and you can launch torpedoes against enemies simply with swiping with your finger. There are also three huge and dangerous bosses.  Two versions are available - full without ads and free with it.  You may ask where in portfolio is Deadly Abyss 1? Original Deadly Abyss was our game for old Symbian phones and if interested you can see some screenshots here. (back to applist)

FUTOSHIKI

Futoshiki is Japanese puzzle game. Similar to Sudoku but different :-) Your target is to fill Latin square with numbers from 1 to 5. The game is paid or free with ads.  As the game contains puzzle generator inside it can generate infinite number of puzzles! It can also solve them in human-like manner so when generating it is possible to rate the difficulty and when user asks for easy puzzle then prepare easy one for him or her. (back to applist)

MAHJONG TRIS

Mahjong Tris was first game in my "new era". Previously I had experience with Symbian, Gameboy, Atari, ...  The game was made first for Samsung bada OS. When launching there was big contest. We made it into top 300 qualifiers and won new phone. After some time the game was rewritten to use my cross-platform engine and published on Android. (back to applist)