Hello! There is the second part of Zeroes Postmortem. We will look at statistics of game this time, like number of players and where are they from, how long did it take to complete level or how much hours spend players in game in total.

I would like to inform you, that these statistics are from October 16th. It is one month after game’s release. Where I got these data? From Google Play and from Unity Analytics.

Number of downloads

Let’s start with the most interesting numbers. Zeroes was downloaded by 1 476 players. You can see in chart bellow, that they are mostly from Czech Republic and Slovakia. It doesn’t surprise me so much. I was expecting quite good number of downloads in there, because I am from Czech Republic and there were no communication obstacles during contacting the press. I got really well press coverage in Czech Republic and Slovakia.

AppCountries

Downloads

Rest of the world is big disappointment for me. It is only 5%.  It could be better after the second round of contacting press. I will most probably select one country and try to increase number of players there.

DAU, MAU, New Users

DAU means daily active users and MAU means monthly active users. As you can see in chart below, there were two big leaps in New Users. The first one was at the second day after release. It is natural, the biggest downloads are usually shortly after launch. The second one (228 new user’s) was after article and video on one of major site about Android phones (http://www.svetandroida.cz/tipy-android-hry-230-201509).

DAU almost copy New Users. Both lines is slowly decreasing and increase little bit only during weekends. MAU hasn’t said anything yet. I know, that it will decrease also. Only question is, how fast it will be.

I have created two updates. They had almost no impact on number of new users. It only stops decreasing of DAU for few days.

DAU,MAU,NewPlayers

DAU, MAU, New Users

Updates

These two updates was released at October 1st and October 6th. It was 16 days after release and 6 days after previous update.

There you can see, how peoples update their game. Version two is the first publicly released version. Versions three was first update, which added twenty new levels, but it contained bug sadly. Not many players downloaded this version thanks to my fast response and those who do updated, because this bug prevent completion of two levels.

Version four and five is regular working updates. Each added 20 new levels. Surprisingly 28% percents haven’t updated. I explain it to myself, that 16 days without update was for Zeroes to long, because many Zeroes players completed game in shorter time than 16 days and than didn’t care about the game. Why? Because game didn’t offer them anything more. However only 8% stayed at version 4. Six days between updates would be and was better day.

AppVersion

Versions

Levels completion

Completion of levels is decreasing steadily. Only 150 players played some level from the fifth world, though 900 players has version with this world. Replays has the same trend as level completion, they are only lower.

PlayersWorld1

Number of level completion in the first world

PlayersWorld2

Number of level completion in the second world

PlayersWorld3

Number of level completion in the third world

PlayersWorld4

Number of level completion in the fourth world

PlayersWorld5

Number of level completion in the fifth world

As you can see, only few of players completed the last player. They are only 13. Actually 14, I am one of them.

Time to complete

Average time to complete Zeroes is 157 minutes. It is the longest play time out of my all games, on which I have participated. You can see average playtime of all levels. I was not successful in my plan to make the last level of world the hardest challenge. Only the last one was near this plan. However longer time spend in level doesn’t completely mean, that level is harder, because players get better each level. However I admit, that I don’t know how much.

TimeWorld1

Average time to level complete, the first world

TimeWorld2

Number of level completion in the second world

TimeWorld3

Number of level completion in the third world

TimeWorld4

Number of level completion in the fourth world

TimeWorld5

Number of level completion in the fifth world

One of thing, which is unbelievable for me, is time which all players in sum spent in game during one day. The lowest time was 17 hours and the longest was 3.4 days one day after launch. This looks like a lot from my perspective.

How much money did I earned?

You would not believe me, how much successful I was. I earned believable… now seriously. I earned nothing. Instead, I spent. I am don’t know, how to compose music and record sounds. It was faster for me to buy it. If I didn’t do it, game will be maybe still in development. There is sort of balance-sheet.

 

Gain: 0.00$

Music: -48.34$ -48.34$ -25.67$ -26.00$ -26.21$ = -174.56$

Sounds: -2.99$ -2.00$ = -4.99$

——————————————————————————–

Total: -179.55$

As you can see I spent not only time, but also money. I have advice for you. You shouldn’t make games, because you want to make money or to be rich. And you shouldn’t make game because you want to be game developer. You should make games only because you want to make games.  When you want to be game developer, you probably want to be famous and successful. When you want to make games, you want to make them even if they are not successful and nobody cares about them. And that is huge difference.

How much have I gained?

A lot, much lot, than I spent in money. But I will write about it in the third part of postmortem next week.

You can read previous part of postmortem here.

9 responses

  1. Ahoj Petře, moc pěkná hra. Akorát málo levelu už jsem dohrál všechny. Jestly chceš mohu ji propagovat u nás na fakultě v Glasgow. S pozdravem Martin Kubíček

  2. Díky za závěrečný odstavec, pomohl mi připomenout si, co by vlastně dělání her mělo znamenat! Poslední dobou se posouvám od “chci dělat hry” k “chci být vývojář her”, což mi občas zabraňuje v tvoření.

    • Good job, that you made it to 5-19. I haven’t found any walkthrough video yet. However I have two tips for you. Maybe you know them already, if you got so far.
      The first one: If you know, where should be some block placed, put it on the side. It will significantly reduce number of possibilities for other blocks.
      The second one is to start solving that puzzle differently. You start with placing of horizontal +1 block every time for example. Try to start with placing of different block next time.

      • Ok, I knew that stuff. The third one helped: If you know where some block should be and even after that you can’t solve the puzzle, try to place it somewhere else.
        %6 was that evil stick. Anyway thank you for hinting.

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