Rocket Shark A Really Fun Game
When I started the endeavor to create my first IOS game, it was a huge learning experience. What started out as a hobby game, quickly turned into something more. It was exciting to see the levels, the hand selected music, sound effects to start taking form. Rocket Shark is so personable, my household instantly recognizes the sound of the main menu tunes. The music is addictive, the gameplay exciting and the graphics are friendly and appealing. It was a huge undertaking for one person and a 9-5 day job.
When Rocket Shark was complete, it was time to publish. No one taught me how, and the scattered guides were confusing. Publishing to the iTunes store was a daunting mess of two websites and a slew of poorly explained fields to fill out. It took most of Saturday into Sunday night to get it all done. I didn’t have a Mac so setting up a Mac VM was the first time sink. Then comes XCode and the certificates that followed. Finally at 1am I was able to upload and click “Submit for Review”. I slept at my desk that night and still managed to make it to work the next day.
Rocket Shark is creatively unique.
What happened next
I marketed the hell out of Rocket Shark. Then I updated it, adding level select screen and made the app free. No one was downloading it. My friends all said “oh that’s cute you made an app”. Remind me to get new friends later. Week after week I looked at the iTunes stats and was disheartened to see 0 downloads one day and 4 another. It was abysmal. Oddly enough my other game a shameless Flappy Bird copy (still not a reskin) was doing really well. Bionic Power Bird was seeing 15-30 downloads a day. This was without marketing or mention. This was by all means my first app, a test app that I published the same time as Rocket Shark.
Then Something Amazing Happened
I stopped focusing on Rocket Shark, resigned to it’s fate. I was working on my adventure group, a Community Social Media site (ChoaClub.co). This took months, 16 hour days to complete. But the site is damn good. But this isn’t about Charlotte Outdoor Adventures (CHOA).
Having completed the CHOA site I decided to check Rocket Shark‘s stats. It was getting 10-15 downloads a day. To me this was huge. People were actively downloading my game! I spilled my Lagavulen Scotch in the excitement. Then I put the excitement aside and kept working on other projects. More updates for the games and planning new levels for Rocket Shark. I had always planned on 15-20 more levels and have all the assets needed.
Then it Happened
Recently I looked at the stats and nearly had to change my undies. Rocket Shark AND Bionic Power Bird took off. Not an increase to 40 daily downloads, the games went viral! I was looking at thousands. Somewhere, somehow my games got a massive, overnight boost in popularity and exploded in excitement. It’s calmed down a little, but the games are still seeing absolutely astounding success.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I am thankful for it. I put in a lot of work, and learn an amazing amount of things in getting Rocket Shark created and self published. He’s also available on the Google Play store, though nowhere near as popular there yet. Help me out on getting this game super famous.
Rocket Shark is also on Google Playstore.
Tell us how you really feel!