There are only two ways for a new digital product to get noticed online: either go viral or buy ads. Neither one is easy: you have to either be incredibly creative, entertaining and lucky, or spend ad dollars on messaging. The foolhardy will spend heavily on advertising for a new and untested product. But, it is also naive to think a new game will be noticed by chance. How can a new digital product get noticed?
We will do a little bit of both: do ad buys in the usual places, and also seek to make some noise, get some attention, and release the game into that.
Competition is Fierce
Hyper casual gaming is competitive. The typical top 500 game studio is making pennies on every engagement (that is, every time a gamer watches an advertisement). So there has to be a lot of engagement. Add to this the fact that a typical hyper casual game has a very short lifespan. It’s not uncommon for games to measure their ROI in days, not months or even weeks. If the latest game is not profitable by D7 (day seven), then either change something fast, or move on to another game.
That’s a tough walk for a fledgling family game studio. We’re nearly 12 months into development on Blast Arena and it’s almost time for the beta test. This game needs a lot of players to get the kind of engagement we need. To get attention for Electric Board Games, and Blast Arena, we have created a new twist on an old idea.
Introducing Rev-it Runner
Remember the old rev-up friction toy cars? Those cars were small, but substantial: most were heavier than they looked. You power it up by revving it on the floor, then set it down, and watch it take off across the floor. I loved the feeling of revving up the toy and watching to see how fast I could make it go.
We set out to put that feeling into a game! And we did it!
The challenge in Rev-it Runner is to keep the runner running as fast as possible by dragging your thumb down the side of the screen. Get just the right rev and the runner will speed up to insane speeds! Make too many mistakes and the runner will be running too slow to bust through the walls and run through the traps and loops that are coming his way fast!
These are prototype screens. The game is playable, but still needs beta graphics and polishing. We’re releasing this into beta very soon.