I'll like to share my stats & thoughts about the 2-week release of my game demo (alpha).
Here's what I got:
A. VISITOR STATS
Social-Networking is definitely not up my alley as I don't use them personally, but I have to do it for game promotions. I may not know the effective ways to do so, so that's about it.
I have drawn people from Facebook, Scirra forums, direct and the most are from indieDB & Google+. (yet to use Twitter) So here's my 2-weeks visiting stats:
I find it funny that you have to constantly posting stuff to maintain the number of visitors. (like feeding )
According to Google Analytics (from posting day till closing day):
Less than 50 people visited my website , a quarter of them revisited to play, and about half of the people played at least 2 times (ok).
The average session duration part bothers me. Besides the 2 peaks (they probably played around 4~6 minutes), It seems that many only took a glance and went back. I can only think that either my game is not attractive enough, or they don't have time to wait for the game to preload... (I wonder if my website's bandwidth is fast enough)
Even though this visiting number was not too bad for a first try, I feel I somewhat did poorly to draw more people into my game. I now know that I have to do a lot MORE info spreading in order to get better exposure & publicity. (yes, better next time ) I think besides making the game more fun & attractive, focusing on creating that "Buzz" around is more likely to draw larger crowds effectively.
B. THE FEEDBACKS
I only got feedbacks from 6 people. But they're all valuable.
The most commented about how hard it is to get it pass the 2 critics.
Then followed by need more music & sounds (I'll put some music in it next time)
About the most comments, I know it's my mistake as the egg 'cooked percentage' did not represent the 'supposed' look & it's slightly off. (The egg starts getting browned on the pan surface but actually it's still not THAT cooked.) This part is easily fixable just for a few tweaks. I hope this doesn't tamper their impression about the game badly.
Also, some likes my character design, and some thinks it's fun & interesting.
Thank you for the compliments, it's encouraging!
Other comments are: monotonous, gameplay confusion, social sharing difficulties on the webpage. The last one is easily fixed. For the 2nd one, I'll put in a simple tutorial picture when playing for the first time. And of course I'll make the game more variable than before.
On the other hand, I think the current game wasn't quite connecting to people emotionally as I wanted (especially on the critics side), I need to make that part a lot more FUNNIER !!
So what do you think, am I in the RIGHT direction?