Post Space Sheep Update

So I released Space Sheep two weeks ago and it has been great to release another game, even if it is not doing very well at the moment.

The game has only been downloaded 21 times at the moment. But there are several reasons for this.

Since I released Jungle Jumper it seems it has become way more difficult to get visibility in the Google Play Store when you launch a new app. I thought there was a lot of spammy games filling it up back then, but it has become way worse.

I have not been able to display house ads in Jungle Jumper about Space Sheep like I had hoped to. The reason being that Admob has been updated and I need to implement the new SDK before this can happen. The problem with that is, that I have still not gotten around to updating Jungle Jumper to libGDX like I had planned and it will just be a lot of unnecessary work if I updated the Admob SDK, that I would have to do again after the update to libGDX.

I've also not been able to get much free PR. When I released Jungle Jumper, there were quite a few places that were willing to show off the game on their homepage / blog, but a lot of these places have closed or changed their policies. However www.playandroid.com is still doing reviews for free and are doing a review of Space Sheep that will hopefully be out soon.

It's a bit sad that I've gotten so few downloads, but I'm still really happy that I managed to get a second game finished and published, even if it is just a little silly game and I feel way more motivated to finish more games and get more serious with the PR.

So with all that in mind here is my plan for the near future:

• Quickly update Jungle Jumper to libGDX. No real improvements or new features, just running on the new engine and new Admob SDK.
• Do an Amazon version of Space Sheep with Amazon IAB and leaderboards rather than Google Play.
• Finish the sailing game. I've shown this game of earlier, it is quite far along and I should be able to finish it in the near future, at the moment the working title is "Jorvis and the Sea Rats"
• Acquire an iOS test device and start working on iOS versions of my games.
• Start working on my new game which I plan to be a 2D platformer.

In other news I've updated Space Sheep, fixing a few bugs and improving the graphics and there is now a web version available on my homepage. Try it here: www.lonelygiantgames.com/space

That is all for now. Hopefully there will be lot of updates in the near future.

June Report

And the June report makes its late entry. Lets get down to business.

Total installations end of June 2013:

Google Play	48,203	+7,797
GetJar	???	+???
Amazon	1,511	+323
Handster	696	+56
TOTAL:	???	+???
Active installations end of June 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	11,631	+419
Admob stats June 2013:
Impressions	318,221	-23,263
eCPM	$0.38	+$0.02
CTR	0.81%	+0.04%
REVENUE	$122.32	-$0,15

Conclusion:

The numbers from June were very similar to the ones from May. I implemented Google Play games services in the game and I think that is awesome, but it did not improve my download numbers at all. This is obviously not the $400 which has been my next goal for a while now, but I'm hopeful for several reasons. The reason for the missing numbers is that GetJar's developer console is down. I'll go back and fill in the remaining data when it is back up.

Next:

My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll keep my next month goal on $400 until I reach it.

So I think that Jungle Jumper is more or less done, it will keep earning a bit, but I really don't think it will suddenly start downloading and earning like crazy. I will keep improving the game, but I think it's safe to assume that it's glory days are behind it. Jungle Jumper will however be passing it's 50,000 download mark on Google Play very soon which is a bit exciting.

It's all about new games... I've talked about working on other games and one in particular several times, but I still don't have anything to show for it. I can only say that I've had very little time for it and that I have not really hit upon the right recipe for my next game.

But my situation is changing, I should be getting considerably more time to work on my games soon and there are several other things going on that will hopefully make it easier and make my games better.

I'm not going to go into any details because I'll be doing a big status update about it all in a few days.

It looks like July will be a really bad month and that I won't make it past $100 which is quite sad since that will be a first since getting above it. Maybe it's all the nice weather making people go outside and play in real life. But I'll keep my $400 goal just to spite everyone :).

May Report

Here comes the May report. Again a bit late, sorry about that, but again the numbers are not so good and it makes it a bit less fun.

Total installations end of May 2013:

Google Play	40,406	+9,465
GetJar	31,884	+2,421
Amazon	1,188	+245
Handster	638	+29
TOTAL:	74,116	+12,160
Active installations end of May 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	11,212	+1,120
Admob stats May 2013:
Impressions	341,484	-108,627
eCPM	$0.36	-$0.08
CTR	0.77%	-0.09%
REVENUE	$122.47	-$76,82

Conclusion:

May was not so great, but actually in some ways it was better than April. All the way through April the amount of players and the daily revenue was falling. Through May the numbers have been steady, going neither up or down. But I'm obviously not reaching my goals at the moment which sucks.

Next:

My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll keep my next month goal on $400 until I reach it and who knows maybe something good will happen.

I still need to do a good update of Jungle Jumper, to fix some issues and hopefully get Google Play game services in there, but I don't have much programming time and what I have is being used on the new game.

The new game has stagnated a bit, I'm trying to figure out how advanced I want to make it and whether I want to port it over into a newer version of libgdx. But I still feel good about the game, it is just not coming as quickly as I hoped.

More programming time. So a big reason that I haven't gotten all that much done, is that I really don't have all that much free time at the moment. I'm working a full time job and I have a bad work schedule and very long commute times. So I've quiet my job, I'll stay through my current project, but then I will be looking for another job. Hopefully one that will give me more time to work on my games.

April Report

Here we have the report for April. Sorry it's a bit late, it's not quite as fun to write the report when you do not reach your goals as when you do :P.

Total installations end of April 2013:

Google Play	30,941	+10,671
GetJar	29,463	+4,322
Amazon	943	+161
Handster	609	+62
TOTAL:	61,956	+15,216
Active installations end of April 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	10,092	+1,836
Admob stats April 2013:
Impressions	450,111	+19,718
eCPM	$0.44	-$0.13
CTR	0.86%	+0.03%
REVENUE	$199.29	-$70,39

Conclusion:

April was a bit of a let down compared to March. Downloads went down, impressions went down, and the big reason for the downturn in revenue, the eCPM went down. My goal for this month was of course $400 so I didn't even hit half of that. I can't control the eCPM of course, but the downloads have gone down rather than up. I'm not completely sure why. GetJar really seems to be loosing a lot of steam and Google Play has lost quite a bit as well. I think part of it was my bad judgement In-App Billing update which is now luckily over and done with.

Next:

My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll set next months goal at $400 again. I don't really think I will reach it, I might not even reach $200 as the game still is doing poorly, but things might turn around.

I need to make another update to Jungle Jumper to get rid of the bug that is plaguing it and causing quite a few bug reports, but I'm spending all my programming time on my new game at the moment. And after my two last updates which really haven't added much of value I would like the next update to actually add some content to the game.

That content might come in the form of the infamous high score system that I've never gotten in there. I hear rumours that Google will be announcing a game platform for multi-player and social aspects for Google Play and if they do that I would love to use that system as opposed to a Facebook implementation. We should know more about that soon at Google I/O on May 15.

New game! I'm still not ready to disclose anything on my new project. But it is going really well, it will however not be coming out in May so it won't have any impact on this month.

House Cleaning

This update will be a bit of a housecleaning, so bear with me if it is a bit rambling.

Jungle Jumper 1.23

So I didn't get around to doing a post when I did the 1.23 update a week ago. It wasn't a huge update, I just removed In-App Billing, fixed a texture and set the AdMob banner to only show on the game screen. So I'm really pleased I removed the In-App Billing, it was a mistake to put it in their in the first place and I already sleep better at night. I have wanted to only have the AdMob banner show up on the game screen from the beginning, but I've never really been able to figure out how to do that. It turned out to be very easy and it makes the game seem way more professional that the ad is not blocking the title of the game in the menu.
Jungle Jumper is not doing so great though, it's not being downloaded at all as much as it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully it will go back up again. This means that I won't be meeting my $400 goal this month which is a bit of a shame, but that's fine.

There is a Bug in my Soup

So there is a nasty bug in Jungle Jumper that is causing around 10 crash reports a week. The bug seems to have been introduced after update 1.2. But I didn't realise it was their until a few days ago because I had hidden the bug early on as I thought it was a one time issue. The problem is that the stack traces don't really tell me anything other than that it is a rendering issue. I'm guessing that I made a mistake with all the improved graphics. It looks like I'll simply have to go through my renderer class and clean up all the code and hope it makes a difference.

Portfolio

You might have spotted that an extra tab has appeared on my blog. There isn't much in there yet, but I plan to have it bursting with links and images for different projects down the road.

Sick

So I've been pretty sick the last couple of days and have had to stay home, it seems I've gotten influenza and I'm coughing like a chain smoker. It has however been a bit of a blessing in disguise as I have been able to sit and program a bit, which leads me to my next point...

A New Dawn

I've finally gotten started on my new game. I'll play it close until I'm a bit further along, but I can say that it is going really well and that I now have a really nice alpha version of it, that looks like crap, but has the basic game play elements in it and is already quite fun. Hopefully I'll be able to share some more info about it and possibly some screenshots soon.

Iron Man 3

So I warned you I was going to be rambling a bit and I just wanted to mention how excited I am for the next Iron Man movie. I'm planning on going too see it on Friday with my better half if I'm well enough. So far I'm hearing very good things about it, such as people comparing it to The Dark Knight movie.

Feedback

So I'm beginning to get a decent amount of traffic here on the blog and I'm wondering if I have any regulars out there. If I do please write a comment, I'd love to hear whether anyone finds my ramblings of any interest and whether there is anyone in a similar start up situation who gets any info out of my monthly reports. Any feedback would be very welcome.

March Report

Here we have the report for March.

Total installations end of March 2013:

Google Play	20,270	+11,983
GetJar	25,141	+10,488
Amazon	782	+174
Handster	547	+64
TOTAL:	46,740	+22,909
Active installations end of March 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	8,256	+5,941
Admob stats March 2013:
Impressions	469,829	+211,422
eCPM	$0.57	+$0.16
CTR	0.83%	+0.04%
REVENUE	$269.65	+$162,58

Conclusion:

March was an incredible month. I did not think it likely that I would reach my $200 goal, but I far exceeded it. I didn't do any updates. The only thing I really did was to update the description on Google Play, which seems to have really had an effect.

Next:

My long time goal is still $2000 so I can make a full time living of it. Next month's goal will be $400 dollars. Which seems pretty possible, if the game keeps doing this well and possibly improves a bit when I update it. Which I hope to do very soon. What I really need is more games, but that seems very far away at the moment. I'm simply not getting enough work done. I have way too little time for it, being back in a full time position at work. I'm hoping that I can maybe take a week of work and work full time on the games and get my next game into shape.

I still have not managed to get the Facebook implementation to work, so I have taken it out for the moment, hopefully it will return for the next update. The big features in the new update, will be a few improved textures and an In-App Billing button to remove the ads for 1$.

I also found out that the game no longer works on Android 1.5 and 1.6. This was because of Google Analytics. I have remedied this issue, which is why I want this update out soon so It works correctly again.

Debug Scmebug

So I finally got some programming done this weekend. I created a debug for Jungle Jumper. It probably took around an hour and ever since I made it I've been kicking myself for not doing it earlier.

So it's quite simple as you can see. Simply three buttons. One for unlocking everything, one for resetting the settings and one for making the feedback screen appear. All this appears and works and the AdMob ads go over to the test ones when I change my debug setting to true in the code. This is really nice. Earlier I would be changing all the settings in the code to test different things; having things I had commented out that I could bring in. This is way better and I definitely recommend to anyone making games to take the time to build a little debug.

As you can also see in the screenshot I now have a string saying "Remove Ads" in the bottom of the screen. When you press it, you are presented with an In-App Purchase to permanently remove the ads. The In-App Billing stuff was a bit of a mess to implement, but it went way more painless than I had thought. It seems to work, but I haven't run all the tests on it yet.

I'm almost done with this update now, I think I'm pushing the music and better sounds for the next update. The only thing really missing now for this version is the Facebook implementation. I'm having some issues with the Facebook SDK. When I run Facebook's own test apps, they do not seem to connect correctly with Facebook, I don't know if this is an issue with the sample apps being deprecated or maybe it's simply an issue with my test device and account.

I hope to get this update out soon, but I probably won't have any time to work on it again until the weekend.

February Report

Here we have the February report and it is awesome :).

Total installations end of February 2013:

Google Play	8,287	+4,647
GetJar	14,653	+6,906
Amazon	608	+155
Handster	483	+58
TOTAL:	23,831	+11,566
Active installations end of February 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	3,894	+2,315
Admob stats February 2013:
Impressions	258,407	+120,368
eCPM	$0.41	+$0.02
CTR	0.83%	-0.09%
REVENUE	$107.07	+$53,08

Conclusion:

This was a very good month. I reached my goal of $100, which I really thought was unrealistic, especially taking the short month into account. Early in the month I did the update that asks people to review the game. It really hasn't done much in the form of reviews though. But it seems like more people a plus one-ing the game, which is great as well.

Next:

The long term goal is still to get to around $2000 a month which should enable me to do this full time. The goal for March is $200 which I think will be quite difficult to reach unless something big happens this month. I really have not gotten much work done on Jungle Jumper or my new game this past month. Mainly because I'm back at working a full time job, but also because I have had quite a bit of computer trouble so that USB debugging would not work.

I've gotten started a bit again now and I hope to release an update to Jungle Jumper this month, with quite a few improvements. I've taken down the paid version of Jungle Jumper, since no one bought it and I plan to instead have a button saying "Remove Ads" at the bottoms of the game that allows you to pay $1 to remove the ads permanently. I have not tried setting up In-App Purchases before though so it will take a bit of research. I'm also working to implement the Facebook SDK. I really wish I didn't have to, but it seems that is the only way to get sharing to Facebook working. Hopefully I'll be able to set it up as a Facebook app where you can compete on a leader board, which would finally realise my dream of a universal highscore list. Other than that, I've improved the jungle vine texture, the chameleon texture and the spider texture. I'm also thinking about brightening the whole game a bit as it is a bit dark. The final big thing is music. I have a version working with music, but I'm still working on my little composition trying to make it resemble something with a decent melody.

My other game is still a bit in limbo, I actually don't think it will take all that long to make it when I get really into it, but I've mostly been setting things up and doing tests and drawing different graphics for it so far.

$$$

I'm past $100 in Admob!

So hopefully soon I'll get the first money transferred  $100 is not much when you consider how much time I've put into this by now, and that I've also spent $25 on getting a Google Play developer account, but its a big thing for me and hopefully it's only the beginning.

Jungle Jumper hits 5,000

Well not quite yet, but soon.

Jungle Jumper finally got past 5,000 downloads on Google Play. It also had the most downloads on a single day from Google Play ever with 333 downloads.

The game has done even better on GetJar, though it has slowed down a bit lately, it is very near to 10,000.

The game seems to slowly be climbing and since the 1.2 update I am seeing that people are not uninstalling as much either. Since none of these downloads are based on ads or the game being on the new list, I see no reason it should slow down, I expect and hope that it will keep going up at an accelerated rate.

It will be exciting to see how long it takes to get to 10,000 on Google Play.

I'm still working on my second game and I also have a version of Jungle Jumper with music and a few other improvements, that I'm playing around with which will probably come out pretty soon. But I'm back at having a full time job now so I don't have all that much time to work on the games.

Another big milestone will be coming up very soon as the Admob earnings have almost surpassed $100 which will mean my first paycheck from the game.

I've only been talking about my games for a long time here on my blog, but this is the place where I like to talk about all the things that interest me and all the stuff I'm working on, so I'll probably be doing a few posts about books, movies, TV-Series and maybe some other little projects I have cooking.

January Report

So as discussed in an earlier update I'm gonna start doing monthly reports on downloads and Admob stats.

A few caveats about the numbers. I was hoping to get good numbers of my entire install base from Google Analytics, but the numbers I'm getting are not making much sense, so I'll write the total number of downloads from Google Play, Amazon, Handster and GetJar. I have by far the most downloads on Getjar, about twice as many as Google Play. I'll also display the Active device installs from Google Play as that is the only number I really have on active installs.

Total installations end of January 2013:

Google Play	3,640
GetJar	7,747
Amazon	453
Handster	425
TOTAL:	12,265
Active installations end of January 2013:
GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE	1,579
Admob stats January 2013:
Impressions	138,039
eCPM	$0.39
CTR	0.92%
REVENUE	$53.99

Conclusion:

This is of course my first report so I can't really compare to earlier reports. But this has been a very good month. Almost all the GetJar downloads are from this month. And in the three months before the game earned $14.87. The big two things that have changed is that I published the game on GetJar and released the big 1.2 update.

Next:

The long term goal is to reach around $2,000 a month as that would really allow me to make a full time living off of my games. But my next month goal will be $100, hopefully the game will continue to do better and better on it's own, I'm also doing a small update that will ask people to rate the game when they've played it for a bit. More ratings will hopefully help with the games listing in Google Play. It also shouldn't be too long until the game get's past 5,000 downloads in Google Play which will hopefully help too.
I'm also working hard on my next game, but I doubt that will be out before the next report.

Jungle Jumper 1.2 is done

Jungle Jumper 1.2 is finally done and out in the wild, I didn't manage to get everything in there that I wanted, but it is a huge improvement compared to 1.11 which was out before. Let's start with some screenshots.

This shows a comparison of the main menu. As you can see the entire thing has gotten an overhaul.

I got rid of the blurred look of the backgrounds, which I think is a big improvement. I drew a new jungle vine, which I'm really pleased with, I always thought the old one was pretty bad.

I also improved Jorvis a bit especially his face and tipped his hat back a bit. I also made his tail a bit thicker. I also made three more versions of Jorvis hanging here wearing different costumes which I'll explain shortly.

As you can see the buttons also got an overhaul. Before it was simply a box with rounded corners and a bit of bevel and emboss. Now it is instead to slightly offset squares, they also shrink slightly when you press them. This also goes for the menu items. The start item is also wriggling back and forth a few degrees to entice people to press it :).

The new button on the right with the mouse changing pants appear when you unlock a costume, you can then switch between the different costumes by pressing it. This will change both the Jorvis in the game and the Jorvis in the menu so you can see the outfit you will be wearing.

There has been added a menu item "objectives" and here is a screenshot of the objectives screen and you can also see the improved highscores screen.

You can see the new objectives screen displaying all the objectives and the gifts you earn by earning the starts. When you earn the different gifts they show up on the main menu around Jorvis making him look more and more badass.

Lets look at another screenshot.

Here we have a comparison from inside the game. and you can again see the improved background. You can also see the improved mouse in one of the costumes. More on that in a moment. At the bottom you can see the new GUI that holds the current score and the objects you are are collecting at the moment. It also houses a new system. There is now an experience tracker and a multiplier, you loose your progress if you loose your hat.

Here is a look on the improved mouse:

As you can see the animation was only two frames and is now four instead and has generally been cleaned up. I'm also showing another of the costumes underneath.

Conclusion

The game is now way better and way prettier in my opinion. There is a lot to do in the game with all the achievements and gift so I hope people will enjoy it. But there is still room for improvement. The biggest thing still missing is good music in the game, I still hope to be able to compose that myself at some point, so people will have to do without until then. 

The other improvement I want to make is something you can't see in the screenshot as I took them in the ad free version. The Admob banner is in the top of the game in all screens and it is really blocking some things. I planned on getting it set up to only show in the game, but this update had taken so long that I decided to fix that in a small upcoming update instead. 

But now that I have been playing the game I realize how much the banner is slowing down the game. Whenever the banner animates, the whole game stutters, I'm also in the annoying situation that I have to change the position of the spider for the ad version of the game so you can see it lurking, but it will end up looking different in different games because the banner is different sizes on different devices. I'm seriously considering removing the banner from everywhere, except the pause and game over screen. At that point people have time to look and click the banner and it won't block anything.

I might not be completely pleased with Jungle Jumper yet, but I'm still very proud and happy with this update. I think I'll leave Jungle Jumper alone for a little while and work on a new game as I'm feeling a bit worn out about it.

A last note before signing off, I finally have Analytics in the game so I can get good numbers on how many people have the game in total, so I think I might start making a weekly or monthly report here about how many people are playing the game and how much I'm earning.

Lonely Giant Games Status

Jungle Jumper has now been out for a month and half and is doing quite well. Here are some stats:

Jungle Jumper Downloads:

Google Play:	521
Amazon App Market	122
Opera App Market (Handster)	300
Total	937

My guess is that the game has probably been downloaded at least as many times again on some of the other free markets where I don't get any statistics as I have seen some big bumps in Admob stats that don't coincide with the known markets.

Admob Stats:

32,103 Ad requests
98.13% Fill rate (percentage of the requests that Admob could supply an ad for)
$0.26 RPM (revenue per thousand filled ad request)

$8.17 Total revenue.

Status

Well I'm not exactly a millionaire yet, but it's a start. It's also worth mentioning that I have not spend any money on PR at all, the only money I have spent so far is the 25 dollars to register as a developer with Google Play.

The Future - Jungle Jumper 1.2 and more games

I've finally really gotten started on the next update for Jungle Jumper, here are the things that I'm certain will be in the update:

• Achievement system
• Fewer system accesses - There is definitely one access that I don't need, that should disappear.
• New buttons - I've realized that I really don't like the buttons, so they will get a overhaul.
• A loading / splash screen - I'm not a big fan of long splash screens that you can't skip, but this is a quick one that simple shows of Lonely Giant Games logo while saying loading. There are sometimes issues with the sounds not yet being loaded when a new game is started quickly resulting in the music not playing, this should fix that issue for good.

Things I hope to include, but which might be pushed to a later update:

• A universal high score system - I've wanted this from the start, but it's a bit of a daunting thing to implement
• Google Analytics - This would be very beneficial to find out how many people are really playing the game and statistics on how long the keep playing and what their scores are.
• Cleaner graphics - I've spotted a few graphics artifacts that I want to get rid off, and I think I might get rid off the blurred out of focus effect on the background.
• Better sound effects and music

More Games!

The way that I hope to become successful is of course through more games. I hope to regularly put out a good free game, so that people will come to expect good quality and no annoyances such as in-app purchases, ads that prevent you from enjoying the game or push notifications outside the game. Hopefully having several games will create a nice synergy.