Coffee Induced Games

We're focusing on retro style games for mobile right now. Why is this?

Well, retro games are generally much simpler then modern games, meaning it's possible to write one in a month or two, even working part time. And.... they look simple too, so you don't need to hire artists to do the graphics, which saves a lot of money.

Why else, well, it's less risky. People know retro games, they remember them from their youth, and they want to play them again today.

Last thing, because the games are simpler this makes them easier to maintain and fix bugs that may be found.

Maybe we'll go more modern in the future (we do eventually want to work on VR projects), but for now, retro cool is where we're at.

For those of you writing mobile apps. It may be worth noting that you can show less ads, but make just as much money.

We recently reduced the number of banner ads shown in our most popular game: Invaders. And the results were surprising, by increasing the require cpm for the ads, it meant less ads were returned by the ad provider when requested by the game, however because these ads have much higher value, then clicks on these ads earned us much more than the old adverts click got when we were just spamming users with ads every minute.

So net benefit is the players see less ads, but we make just as much money! Awesome, it's a win-win and that's great.

Right now, I have three games that are doing well. Invaders, Invaders Deluxe and Invaders Mars Defender, notice a theme there?

Since Invaders did well, I've focused on building on that success by releasing sequels with more features and better graphics. This has worked, but this means I've taken focus off my other released games:
Orchard Crush - matching game with fruits
Piggy Bank Toss - simple toss tossing game by flicking finger
Block Stacker - side on block stacking games using just shapes and no sprites
Twin Stick shooter - Overhead 360 degree space shooting game with twin stick on screen controls.

Do I focus on improving these? Or get cracking on the next Space Invaders style games? Which currently are
Invaders Endless and Earth Defence Fighter (more of a modern arcade space shooter along the bullet hell style).

What does everyone else do? Maybe I'll stick to the current plan, get more games out, see what popular and push those harder. My most popular game has 420,000 downloads, the least popular has 98. But deep down I value them all as much.