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About the Episode
How do you develop a hit game? Well today’s guest made a game that was immediately featured by Apple and over 20 million downloads. Also, listen to the part of the show where the guest talks about why you should study the horribly bad games as well as the successful one.
Matthew Hall is the Founder/Director at KlickTock & Hipster Whale – creators of Crossy Road.
Show Notes
Developing a Hit Game
Upon developing Crossy Road, Matthew and his co-founder took the core features of Flappy Bird and apply a spin on the game to make it unique which would, in turn, move people to share it to their friends. Crossy Road had also integrated variety which are not found in other Flappy Bird games — such water, streets, trains, cars, vampires –in case people start getting bored and to promote retention so people will keep coming back. Virality and retention were the two things they had focused on.
He reached out to Apple before the launch to let them know about Crossy Road but shares that to be featured, it is just a matter of developing a game that Apple is comfortable in presenting to their consumers. When he was doing research, he used to check out every new game in App Shopper and if something looks interesting, he would click on it, look at the screenshots, check out the description and he would end up playing them. 7 out of 10 games which he was driven to play would end up being featured that week in the App Store, and so, through this process, he is compelled to believe your screenshots and descriptions play have huge part in making your apps successful.
Learning From the Bad and the Good
To make a compelling game, you need to dissect good games and ask what makes the game tick because there are so many factors which could make it that way.It helps to play the bad games as well for you to analyze what makes it bad and what it is doing wrong so you can reference to these as well and shape your methods from there.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to build a mobile app?
Make sure you understand not just the good games but the bad games as well. Ask what that app had done wrong and make sure you never make that mistake. Too many people just look at the good stuff.
Show Mentions
– Qubicle
– Fav app: Tiny Wings: (iTunes)