kp

Arachni Crusher's first month

February 15, 2012

Arachni Crusher has been live for just shy of a month and I thought it would be interesting to write up a quick overview on how the first month has gone. Let's get started with the download stats.

Downloads

Not too shabby for a game that can bring out some serious arachnophobia:

Google market

Amazon market

GetJar

Revenue

We had no intentions of "making it big" with AC however we did want to try and recoup some of the costs that come with buildings apps (marketplace signup fee's, domain name, Android books, etc). Earning enough for a free lunch wouldn't hurt either.

We decided to try a free (with ads) and paid (without ads) revenue model. Ads are displayed on each level on the bottom of the screen. We adjusted the spider spawn locations to make sure that they didn't spawn underneath the ads thus making the levels more difficult for the free version. We also remove spiders as soon as they approach the ads so try and limit the chance for a accidental click.

It looks like we've earned back our google marketplace fee and we're on our way to a free lunch!

What's next?

We're currently working on a new mode for AC; endurance. Endurance has no real objective except to simply crush as many spiders as possible. The mode will progressively add more spiders and powerups as time goes on to help keep it entertaining. In the future we may add a leaderboard so you can compete against friends to see who can crush the most spiders.

We're also working on 10 new 4th of July themed levels that include new spiders, powerups, and backgrounds.

Here's hoping our second month is at least as successful!

Programming Game Development