I've had a lot of feedback about the recent graphical changes to Cherry Chaser.  One of the first one star reviews that I received after the update was titled "New Graphics Suck!".  Another said that "they look like they were drawn on the back of a beer mat and scanned by a ZX81".  This and the accompanying one star rating felt a bit harsh.

I understand that there are a number of players who prefer the old style graphics and I can see some charm in the more amateurish "retro style" graphics. A few have asked to have the old graphics available in the game as a selectable alternative.  I will try to explain my position why I won't be providing this option.

Although the old graphics had charm, they were also inhibiting the number of downloads of the game.  Since improving the quality of the graphics the number of downloads has improved significantly.  They particularly make a difference on tablet devices where the old graphics did not look good at all.

Unfortunately including the old graphics as a skin is not easy or desirable for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that Cherry Chaser was not programmed in a fashion that made skinning very easy.  I wrote it when I was learning programming on Android and its subsequent success came quite unexpectedly.  I did not design it as well as I would now and changing the layout is difficult.  Including a second skin in the game would take a lot of work for not a lot of benefit.

The second reason is that I try to keep the download and memory footprint of Cherry Chaser as small as possible.  Graphics take up a lot of space and including an alternate set of graphics would increase the memory footprint of the game more than I would find comfortable.

If you are one of those people that prefer the old version of the game let me know and I will send you a link where you can download the old version.

If there is one thing I have learnt in the past year it is the importance of being visible in Google's Play store.  Improving your search ranking is the most important factor in generating downloads of your app.  I practise a number of simple techniques to optimise the position of my apps in a crowded market place.  I've talked about some of these techniques in the past but I thought it would be a good idea to collect together the best advice that I have into one post.

Make a great game
This is the most fundamental thing that will affect your position in app store search results .  Unless you have a compelling game that is fun to play the rest of the techniques in this post won't work.  If you have a great game but still aren't getting many downloads, then read on.

There is also something to be said here about the category of the game you are creating.  If you make a game that is already in a crowded category then you are going to have a much harder time becoming visible.  My games so far have fitted in to the "Cards and Casino" games category and it appears to be much easier to stand out there than in the "Arcade and Action" category for example.

Another factor that helped my own success was a gap in the market for a European style slot machine game.  Prior to releasing Cherry Chaser there were a hundred "Vegas" style slots games but none that simulated European pub style games.

Target specific search keywords
If at all possible, include your most desired search keywords in to the title of your game.  The Google Play store's search algorithm appears to put the highest weighting on the app title.  This is why Super Snake is called "Super Snake Slot Machine" on the Play store.  This also helps prospective users to quickly identify what sort of game it is.

In your apps description try to repeat the search terms that you want to target multiple times.  In the description of Super Snake I use the term "slot machine" five times.  I avoid using the terms superfluously as I suspect that Google have some sort of intelligence in their algorithm that ignores terms that are repeated too many times in quick succession.

Think about all the variants of your search term that people might use and then add those in to your description as well.  I have a sentence that reads "If you like slot machines, one armed bandits or pokies, you'll love this game." which is included entirely for this purpose.

Super Snake Slot Machine is currently the third result for the search term "Slot Machine" in the UK Play Store.

Make your app store icon stand out
For the first week after I released Cherry Chaser the app store icon was anonymous.  Nothing about the icon gave any hint as to the nature of the game and it looked very similar to every other icon next to it.  At that point I changed to my current "fruit machine cabinet" icon and downloads of the game began to increase dramatically.

The new icon informs the person browsing the store about the nature of the game and the departure from the conventional rounded rectangle shape makes the icon stand out on the page.

I still use the original rounded rectangle icon for the launcher on the phone because the purpose is different.  Icons on phones should look consistent and aesthetically pleasing and standing out in that context would be a negative for the game.

Target other languages
The Google Play store has a feature that allows you to auto-translate your listing into a large number of other languages.  The only reason you should not use this feature is if you already know the language in question and can do a better job yourself.  Even if you can speak the language you're targeting the auto-translate feature will probably give you a good basis from which to work.

My games have done extremely well in European countries such as Germany and Spain and that is due to auto-translated descriptions.  I have had one customer point out that the games auto-translated description in German is bad bordering on the ridiculous, but I'm still getting far more downloads than if I had nothing in there.

Encourage long term engagement
A major factor in your position in the Play Store is the ratio of downloads to active installations.  You could have a million downloads but if every user is uninstalling your app after ten minutes, Google will see that as being a bad sign about the quality of your game.

My solution to this problem was the addition of achievements as a game device.  There is a reason that achievements have become ubiquitous in gaming and that is because they work.  They trigger the part of the human psyche that says "challenge accepted!".  Adding these into my games increased my user engagement enormously which had a positive effect on my active installation ratio and improved my search ranking.