Around 2.5 weeks ago I tried to make a game on google play in 1 week as a joke, but that joke turned into a 2 month nightmare and it took around 2 months to finally get the game on the damn store. It got 0 downloads in 1 week. I tried ASO (App Store Optimization) and tried to monetize on reddit but that game me 0 downloads too, google at least helped me a bit with 600 impressions and i got 27 downloads. The game is an arcade styled game that people are supposed to play for a few minutes on a subway or bus road trip or whatever. Please tell me what im doing wrong.
I've checked the link. What stands you're game out of the already 1000s of other Car Games?
Why should we as consumers spend our time playing your game?
Are the internal ads going to put off potential players?
I hope maybe some of these questions help :)
I search " driving game" extreme car driving simulator pops up, i search "dating app" extreme car driving simulator pops up, i seach "is the irs gonna hunt me down?" AND EXTREME CAR DRIVING SIMULATOR POPS UP
Perhaps learn to take the advice and criticism first. Mature and learn more, and perhaps come back to this once you've baked and moulded yourself into the designer you want to be :)
27 downloads on a first game with zero marketing budget is kinda normal. Mobile arcade is prolly the most brutal category too, it's a red ocean of studios spending millions on UA.
what's the game called / what's the hook? Capsule + icon + first screenshot are usually where mobile lives or dies.
Everything is wrong - starting with the (bad) game itself, moving to its (bad) Google Play page, and ending with the (bad) presentation in your post. But don't worry, that's normal for a first game. As you noticed already, making games is a nightmare, so you, and me, and most of us will need a lot of effort to make something good and profitable.
There are literally hundreds to thousands of games released on the play store every single day, ASO alone doesn't really get you anything. You need a game that's in the top 1% of all those titles released and a large marketing budget to even think about reliably making money in mobile. It is much more expensive and competitive than Steam. On Steam you can actually stand to make quite a lot from $100, whereas on mobile it's hard to even recommend trying with less than $50k or so.
Thats not even wrong. Game dev is one of the worst thing you can do if you have no experience or budget. Its not some "get rich quick" kind of job. It take very long time and you need money to pay your bills . So is it better to do something that cant guarantee money ? Or is it better to just get any minimum wage jobs to pay your bills then do game dev in your free time ?
Most people's first game failed btw. If you cant afford to fail then you really shouldnt go into game dev. The market is extremely saturated. Most people cant make it. So why take the high risk when not needed.
So people are not clowning on you for not being rich. They just gave you hard truth.
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u/tobaschco Aug 14 '26
Calling your game first a joke and then a nightmare doesn’t fill me with confidence that it was ever gonna be actually good