Drone Lander - Looking For Success

​As I mentioned in the first blog post, my first game was not successful, but it was more experimental to figure out the process of game being created and uploaded to the Google Play store. After a while, the idea arose to create a game with drones. This time I paid more attention to details. I created 4 different maps from scratch with Blender. This time it looked like the game would be a success story. The game took about 4 months to develop.

After some investigation, I realized to make at least some money from my game, I need to create limited resource. I came up with the idea that flying with a drone would require batteries, one division - one flight. Batteries charge in 30 minutes or player watches ads to get batteries instanly. This method also did not work, because players are basically annoyed by ads, and if there is a limited resource they cannot fly – players just simply unintall the game. In summary, such a model is not very appropriate, as the playing time should not be limited. It is a better way to offer players some additional resources by watching ads, in my case as an example would be different drone.

​True is that the quality of the initial Drone Lander version was pretty poor and it had to be significantly improved over the years in terms of UI, graphics, and gameplay. For the clarity, I provide a few illustrations of what the original and improved versions looked like. It is important to mention that time required for game improvements paid off and were well worth the time compared to my first game.

Now lets take a look at Google Play key indicators. One of most important key indicators is conversion rate. Drone Lander conversion rate is at about 14%, at the lower end of the median, with the upper limit at 25%. Good conversion rate is about 20% near the upper median limit. The conversion rate mostly depends on the icon, rating and reviews; less dependent on screenshots and description. If your game conversion rate is less than 10% I would recommend to improve the icon, screenshots and description. If the rating of the game is low then you should improve the game itself. Another particularly important indicator is user loss, if it is high then it means there is a problem with the game and game needs to be improved.