It's time to review the last 2 years of Pingouin & Raptor's existence!
Production: I started the game development early 2018 with the help of my friends from Tuesday Quest.
It took 2 years and a half to complete a free to play version with ads.
The game got released in June 2020 on Google Play and 2 months later on the App Store. I made a huge update with paying content in December 2020, and another one in September 2021. Then I added two new free to play levels for Halloween and Christmas 2021 (this one was delayed to January 2022).
Results: over 8k downloads and around 30$ revenue every month. It's not much, but it's not zero!
Hardships:
Motivation... big ups and downs cause working as a solo developer, there's obviously no one else to make progress when I can't.
Time: of course I have to prioritise what I'm working on and whatever's paid goes first! This is slowing down production even more (which is already very slow ^^").
Stores: Lately it got harder to publish a game on mobile stores, I seriously don't have the knowledge, time and patience and all those guidelines keep changing every month. My game is very simple and cute but it's a free to play with ads, so I had to remove it from the Google Family program and even from the children category. It's very sad but I just can't keep up.
Visibility: I don't have much reach over social medias and even if I did my best, I clearly lack time and ideas for marketing, and funds for acquisition. Soooooo, unsurprisingly downloads are insignificant and my game is slowly disappearing. Also, it was great to present the game to the public in gaming events during its production, but with the pandemic, I haven't yet attended an event where I could show my game now that it's available...
Benefits:
I finished a game! That's still a small miracle and a big achievement! :D
People play it and sometimes they leave a nice comment (yeah I know there's not enough levels...).
Future:
Earlier this year I started to work on new levels in the Castle of Pingouin & Raptor. This will be a big update, with beautiful music from Cadred! My goal is to publish it this year and then... I don't know...
I'm very tired and so far 2022 is kicking my ass... ^^"
So I'm planning a new project and... it's not a video game O.O
Stay tuned! ;)
