First attempt with Unity on Google Play – Tap Addicted

It all started in 2016, a friend of mine showed Unity and then I was amazed at how easy is to create a game, so I started creating my first game. For the first game, it seemed like I was going to create “anything”, and everyone will play it, but that kind of thinking was a mistake - I only realized after a while that there were tons of much better and more interesting games on the market, but I had to start with something.
The game was created spontaneously, but the essentials at the start of development are usually the same: player (camera), environment (scene), enemy, and goal. In this game, balls run towards player and player blast them by tapping touchscreen. If player touches the ball game over occurs, otherwise player goes to the next level. Game is primitive, but for start it was OK. It is important to mention that all game models I have been creating from scratch with Blender. Blender is free and has many good features. If you struggle with modelling, there is always an option to buy models or just find some free in Unity store.

When the game is ready next step is uploading to Google Play. Basic skills with GIMP are enough for uploading. It requires multiple screenshots, icon and description. If the game is arcade genre and its goal is to score as many points as possible then it would be more interesting to create a leader board. All of these elements are particularly important and therefore require special attention. The icons must be clear and distinctive because the user first sees the icon. For description, it’s important to find as many relevant keywords as possible, which can simply be found in similar games on Google Play or using Google Ads Keyword Planner. Screenshots should also be clear and show the most important episodes and features of the game.
Uploading a game to Google Play can be frustrating as there won’t be many installations at the beginning. A good saying is how anyone can play your game if no one have even seen it. The Google Play store is very crowded, so another important element is marketing. A free way to attract players is to write directly to the developers of small Youtube channels and ask them to share the game or do a gameplay video. Another way is to buy Google Ads, but it's paid. In other articles, I plan to describe in more detail the specific results as far as I was able to earn and share some game statistics.
So in summary, creating the first game requires Unity, Blender, GIMP, and some basic programming knowledge. Starting from scratch you can learn from Youtube, which is full of different levels of educational material. If you like games and think you can create then do it! Don't expect very much at first, but over time, if you work hard and create a fun and quality game, you will succeed. It took a lot of time over the years to optimize the first game, but it wasn’t worth the time, so my advice is - if you failed with the game and players are not playing it as you expected then don’t waste time and move on.