Badaboom Game Review

Badaboom is an action rhythm-combo game that’s fun to play and easy to get into. It’s available for Android and can be downloaded here.

Gameplay

Badaboom features a big-headed caveman that moves from side to side on the screen, while cutting trees and fighting dinosaurs. The user has to tap the screen according to specific patterns that, in turn, will cause the caveman to perform the actions mentioned above (cut trees, fight dinos).

Different rhythm combos will cause the caveman to do different things. Some combos will cause the caveman to move forward or make him attack animals, while other combos will unleash magic. For example, tapping left, right, left, right will make the caveman move forward.

Improvements

Badaboom’s gameplay can be improved by increasing the interaction intensity when the caveman is at battle. There are a few ways that this can be done:

1. Currently, when the caveman is engaging in battle, the user has to wait for the interaction to finish. The improvement here would be to give the user a chance to queue up more combos.
2. Give the user a chance to enhance the impact when the character reacts to the combo, by adding extra actions that can be taken, like tapping on the target. When a lightening attack occurs, give the user the option to control the lightening strikes by “slicing” the lightening with his/her finger.
3. Give the user the ability to lead the caveman in the direction he wants him to go, by tapping on the screen.

Game progression and achievement

Badaboom uses levels to give users a sense of progress in the game. There are 9 levels, each one featuring different challenges. At the end of every level, the score is displayed, as well as the number of stars earned. This is a good way to start, but Badaboom can greatly improve its setup by implementing several more things:

• Additional worlds – The first 5 of the 9 available levels are basically a tutorial – they give the user a chance to get into the game. Once the user is into the game he/she only has 4 more levels to engage in playing. 9 levels is simply not enough!
• Allow users to see their high records when they play the level again. Also, the game should celebrate high scores and records.
• Score indication – While the game is played, the game should display the user’s score for each level.

Game Economy and in-app purchases

Badaboom features a diverse economy that includes single use items, upgradeable items, and equippables. The single use items are magic potion and life potion. Each magic potion can be upgraded to have more impact. The equippables are several items that the caveman can wear or carry with him.

This setup has two advantages:

• The prices of the single use items in the game are low enough to allow users to buy them after a session or two.
• Users are kept engaged and interested with the available upgrades, and the equippables allow users to get invested in the game, which causes long-term retention.

And yet, some more improvements:

The game can become more engaging for users and more effective in monetization by fixing a few small issues:

• Currently, the button that leads to the store is not displayed regularly. There is no way to access the store from within the game, the level screens, and the pause menu. This should be fixed so that the user can easily reach the store.
• The descriptions of the items available for purchase are very vague. The explanations need to be clearer so that users will know what they are buying and will buy more.
• All the upgrades cost 300 bones in all levels. This means that once users reach a certain level, they can simply buy all the upgrades and will be left with no more to upgrades to buy.
• The equippable items that are available for purchase seem to have no purpose and no impact on gameplay. Once users buy these items once or twice, they will realize this and will not be inclined to buy more.
• Users can only buy more coins when they run out, because there is no screen in the store that sells currency packs.

This game review is a rewrite of the original that can be found on SOOMLA’s blog.

Woorddict Game Review: Monetizing Puzzle Games

Woorddict is a game where the goal is to quickly spell out different words. It becomes fun and addictive once you get into it. The game is available only for Android and can be downloaded from Google Play.

Gameplay: Pattern matching

Letters fall from the top of the screen in a similar way that Tetris drops shapes from the top, except that here the letters are always inside squares.

Once a few squares have been dropped, the user needs to start spelling out words. When the user spells out a word, the letters of the word will disappear and cause the squares above them to drop down in place of them.

Suggestion for improvement: Chain Reactions

This game can easily imitate some gameplay techniques featured in Candy Crush Saga, in order to reach its full potential. Users love pattern matching and thinking about what words can be spelled out is a fun task, but users also love to cause chain reactions. In Candy Crush this happens when users match a pattern that includes special candies.

These huge chain reactions can be added to Woorddict. For example:

• When a user creates a word of 4 letters or more, he will get a wildcard square to use as whatever letter he wants.
• If the user creates a palindrome, in addition to the letters of his word that will be wiped out, the surrounding letters around the word will disappear as well.

With the combination of these two, matching a 4 letter palindrome could give the user a wild card block AND cause lots of extra squares to disappear. Compared to how the game is set up currently, these additions could make the game a lot more fun. Of course, some bling and cheering will also contribute to the overall feel of the game.

TODO: Implement game progression scheme

Currently, Woorddict is designed as a single level game. Its only sense of accomplishment and progression is a record system that makes note when users beat their high scores. This is not enough of a sense of progress to retain users over time. Users need to feel that they’re progressing all the time so they can get invested in the game. Heres are two ways to do this:

1 – Adding levels, worlds, and gates

This option is the most popular amongst puzzle game developers. It requires the game designer to design levels that differ from one another, as well as require a completion criteria – some goal that if the user reaches the level can be labeled completed. There are a few ways to come up with different levels for Woorddict:

• Changing the size and shape of the play area on the screen.
• Completion criteria variation:
  • Achieve a specific score before the area is filled
  • Achieve a specific score in a specific amount of time.
  • Match specific “locked” letters in order to free them (although this might turn out too similar to CCS).

The levels can, and should, differ in their visual displays as this contributes to the feel of the game.

2 – Adding challenges and missions

The game can preserves its single level mode and use missions as the main form of accomplishment. There are a few types of missions that can be given here:

• Reach a specific score in a single level.
• Spell out a word with a specific score.
• Spell out a specific minimum of words.
• Spell out a word of exactly some specific number of letters.
• Spell out a word of exactly some specific number of letters that includes a specific letter.

The missions can be bunched into groups, called challenges. When a user completes a challenge he should be celebrated by moving on to a new challenge. The set of missions in the new challenge should become more complex. For example: the letters can drop faster, new power-ups can become available, etc.

To give even more of a sense of accomplishment, various high scores should be celebrated, such as highest score word, longest word, longest palindrome, etc.

Selling upgrades

Woorddict has a very simple virtual economy of just 4 upgrades, that cost $0.99 each. This store simplicity is familiar from many successful puzzle games. The game designer did a good job in displaying the sale items to the users each time they start a new session. This might seem kind of pushy, but it has proven to be a key ingredient in the success of many games. What’s missing in Woorddict’s store is a clearer description of the upgrades and why users should buy them. Here, little work can go a long way.

A final tip – Name change

“Woorddict” is not a name that users will think to search for, unless they know or have heard of the game. This limits the audience of the game greatly. The game designer should rethink of a name that will cause users to easily stumble upon this game. Also, this way the name can quickly be translated to other languages, to target a market that is less competitive.

This game review is a rewrite from SOOMLA’s blog.

Free Unity Plugins just became a lot easier to find

Are you developing in Unity and have been looking in the asset store for monetization plugins and other plugins provided by the commercial companies? If so, there are many people who share the same problem with you. In fact, the Unity ecosystem never had a good way to discover and find free plugins. In recent years, more and more developers started using Unity and today there are 2 million registered developers. The lack of such a solution is now a big problem. Bigger than it has ever been in the past. Luckily, there is a now a solution for your problem. While the Unity asset store doesn’t feature free plugins, there is now a website that can help with that. It’s called FreeUnityPlugins.org

The purpose of this new website is to complement the marketplace offered by unity by becoming a hub for all these free plugins out there. On one side, SDK providers will be able to offer their Unity plugins in the marketplace while on the other side Unity developers and publishers of games developed on top of the engine will be able to quickly discover relevant plugins.

For each plugin listed in the marketplace, developers should be able to get the code of the plugin and download it directly for the website. In addition, they can learn about the plugin functionality by reading the description of it. Finally, they can find integration instructions for the plugin

Further more, having all the plugins in a central location will allow developers to make smarter choices about their game monetization. First and foremost, finding and sorting all the relevant plugins is becoming much easier now that all the plugins are aggregated. at the same time, developers can now compare their options and see which one fit them the most as all of them are easily accessible. Finally, with this new website, developers can now rate and review monetization plugins.

Alongside with the plugin marketplace FreeUnityPlugins.org is offering resources about game development and design. One other feature of the blog in this site is that it includes in-depths reviews of some of the plugins.

So all in all, it feels like a fresh approach to discovery of monetization plugins, cloud plugins, social plugins and advertising plugins for the unity ecosystem. FreeUnityPlugins.org. is a first of a kind website and many game developers should learn about it and enjoy it.

Another Match 3 Game: Fruits and Friends

Fruits and Friends is an entertaining, iOS-only game created by the studio Social Bee. It’s another game that follows the “match 3” genre we all know so well and love.

Intuitive gameplay

Most game players are quite familiar with the “match 3” genre and will be able to play Fruits and Friends without needing any directions. The game art in Fruits and Friends is what causes the game to be so intuitive – users will see the colorful fruit arranged on the board and will immediately know how to play. This is one of the benefits of making your game fit a genre that’s popular and that has many similar games to it. Of course, that also means you have more competition, but that’s only healthy.

Levels and Worlds need to be more challenging

Fruits and Friends contains 10 worlds with 15 level each to give the user a sense of accomplishment and progress in the game.

The approach of levels and world is a common setup in many games, but the problem with it in Fruits and Friends is that the levels are too easy. It isn’t very difficult to complete the entire 15 levels and breeze the worlds.

Compared to other “match 3” genre games such as Candy Crush, this one’s difficulty level is quite lower. A way to improve this would be to make the last few levels of each world harder to get through than the previous ones. This improvement is necessary because when a game is too easy, the user will quickly get through the worlds with no sense of challenge and will most likely become bored after a short time.

Another improvement that can be made to Fruits and Friends is to create a more challenging gate between worlds. The move from one world to the next can be an opportunity to promote a social wall, ad wall, or even pay wall.

Economy model – what’s good and what to improve

Games that follow the “match 3” genre lack two important in-game economy actions:

1. The genre does not allow for users to collect some kind of currency, such as coins or gems.
2. There are no characters or items that can be upgraded. 

In Fruits and Friends, these issues are overcome by the game developer by creating an economy based on lives, and offering three types of consumable goods that the user can buy: Fruit slice, Shuffle fruit, and Extra moves.

The game also includes several mechanisms to increase user engagement:

• When first downloading the game the user starts off with a balance of one of each of the goods so he can try them out first.
• The purchase buttons for each of the three consumables are present on the game screen during the entire session.
• If the user runs out of lives he will be prompted to purchase more.
• When the number of moves runs low, the Extra moves purchase button becomes highlighted.

These mechanisms are great but will not promote user engagement if the game is not challenging. So, as stated above, some of the game levels should be made more difficult. Last but not least, an important suggestion is to display the price of each purchasable good. Users are more likely to press the “buy” button when they know ahead of time how much they are going to pay.   This article is a rewrite of the original post on SOOMLA’s blog.

Drop Limbs – Game Review and Monetization Tips

How to Play

Drop Limbs 8-bits Hardcore is a game that requires you to tilt your phone from side to side in order for your character to dodge swords, knives, and other deathly weapons while falling slowly through the air. There are all sorts of deadly obstacles to avoid, such as small daggers, big knives, and rotating blades. Your character can hit the obstacles a few times in a game session, and each time he loses an arm or leg. Once he loses his head, you’ll lose the round and have to start over.

Get more lives

The game developer of Drop Limbs gives you five hearts (lives) to play with when you first download the game. This is a smart step because it gives the users a kick-start in getting into the game. Even smarter would be to give 10 free lives at the beginning. This way the user has more time to get engaged and become addicted to the game.

Once you finish up all your lives, you’ll have to either wait a limited amount of time to get more lives, or obtain new lives by:

1. Paying money – You can pay $4.99 and get “endless hearts”. The decision to give an unlimited number of lives in exchange for a few bucks limits the game developer’s revenues, because users will make this purchase once at most. A more monetizing approach would have been to pay a lower price for a pack of some number of lives.
2. Inviting your friends to play – When you invite your friends to play you receive more lives. Promoting users to invite their friends to play Drop Limbs is the simplest way to include social network usage in the game. However, rewarding friends that play with a few bonus lives is a much friendlier and more pleasant means of luring in users.

Comparison to other games

The game begins with 5 lives that allow you to play 5 consecutive sessions. Compared to most other games, that provide the player with a starting amount of 5-10 lives, Drop Limbs is on the lower side of the range.

The amount of time to wait for one new life in Drop Limbs is 3 minutes, while in most games in the industry the waiting period is about 7 to 10 minutes.

A gameplay session in Drop Limbs is about a minute or two, while in other games it is 5-10 minutes. The waiting time compared to the playing time is almost double of most other games.

Improve the sense of achievement

Every session of Drop Limbs starts at the same point in the game scene. The sense of achievement that users get comes from beating their own scores and beating their friends’ scores that can be viewed on the Facebook leaderboard. The main problem with the beat-your-own-score approach is that most users’ scores curve is very steep at first and quickly becomes completely gradual. In other words, the first few times users play they will beat their own scores, but at some point after a few rounds, users will stop getting better and will just stay in the same place.

The solution for this is to create additional ways  in which users can accomplish goals and maintain a sense of achievement.

Some suggestions to improve this in Drop Limbs:

• Make note of personal best scores based on a weekly basis – “Highest score of the week” to give users motivation to play more.
• Count the number of deadly obstacles that were avoided and when some number is reached, reward users with a bonus life.
• Add funny achievements like in “Hill Climb Racing”.

Some last tips

Here are a couple of improvements that can be made to Drop Limbs in order to increase user engagement and revenues.

Currently, when you finish a gameplay session the screen that is displayed has a “back” button that needs to be clicked in order to return to the main screen, where you’ll find the “Start” button. You need to make quite a few, not very intuitive clicks in order to start playing again. The suggestion here is to highlight the “back” button, or to simply place the “Start” button on the screen that’s displayed right after a session.

When you run out of lives, the “Start” button on the main screen simply stops working until 3 minutes pass by and you receive another life. An improvement that can be made here is to display a pop-up that gives the user the option of buying more lives.

 

This game review is a rewrite of the original post on SOOMLA’s community blog.

 

 

Game Review: Stinky Bird

In this game review we’ll give a monetization analysis of Stinky Bird, a game that was created with Unity game engine by OMG Ware. Stinky Bird, AKA the new version of Flappy Bird, is a game available for Android only.

Stinky Bird vs Flappy Bird

Surely you’ve played Flappy Bird, or at least heard of it. It’s an addictive game that has you constantly tapping the screen to keep the little bird alive and well and in the air. Let’s not forget about the obstacles along the way that are awfully hard to get through. Stinky Bird follows the same concept with the additional task of avoiding the evil birds that come at Stinky bird.

Stinky Bird economy

You can easily reach the Stinky Bird store through the screen that pops up every time a session ends. Stinky Bird’s economy has only one currency, “diamonds”, and only category of goods that are sold in the store, different kinds of birds that you can choose to play as. The screen that pops up every time a session ends also include a “Save me” button that allows you to continue to play as if nothing happened, even if you just lost in the last session. This luxury will cost you a few diamonds.

Same bird, different look

In the store, Stinky Bird offers various birds that users can purchase and play as whenever they choose. The only difference between these birds is their visual appearance. This is a missed opportunity, because most players won’t be highly motivated to spend their diamonds on such a thing as a prettier bird. However, if these different bird characters came with additional features, users would more likely want to buy them. Adding a small feature to every bird is not a hard task and will make the user’s shopping experience much more interesting.

Not enough diamonds? Add some coins!

The economy in Stinky Bird is a bit problematic because of the unbalance between obtaining diamonds and being able to spend them in the store. It is quite a difficult mission to collect diamonds and takes an awfully long time to do so. Users might play session after session and collect only one diamond each time. This situation wouldn’t be so challenging if the products sold in the store were cheap, but the cheapest item you can purchase costs 20 diamonds! You have to play hard in order to “provide for yourself”. This causes shopping not to be an essential part of the game experience in Stinky Bird, which might result in loss of motivation for many users.

There are many possible solutions to fix this problem, we’ll describe one here. The first thing to do is to add another currency to the game, such as coins, that will be easier to obtain than diamonds. The other addition to the game is to sell temporary shields in the store that can be purchased for some reasonable amount of coins. Once a user has purchased a shield, he can activate it whenever he wants during the session of the game, and it will temporarily shield him from all evil. This will give users a reason to continue playing and collect more coins, so that they can buy more and more temporary shields. Now, the long amount of time that it takes to obtain diamonds is actually reasonable because in between diamonds users will be engaged in collecting coins.

Monetization techniques

Stinky Bird has great monetization potential with the “Save me” button described above and the bird characters. That being said, the game requires some work to reach its full potential. Some of this work is to add some small feature to each available bird character, create another currency that can easily be obtained, and offer a temporary single use item such as a shield that can be bought with the new currency. All of these will make the shopping experience more engaging for your users. Lastly, giving the users some free diamonds to start with when they first download Stinky Bird would be a good motivator for them to keep playing.

This game review is a re-post from the SOOMLA blog. You can find the original here.

MVC in Game Development

So you already have an idea for a new game? Great! But be sure to read this before you start coding away. When you have a new game in mind, you decide on the main aspects of your game such as the game theory, the audience you’re aiming for, the design, and more. Once all of that is set you can, and should(!), think about your game’s code architecture. You need a way to maintain your code, be able to easily add more features, and have the option of making changes in a fast and easy way. A great way to do this is to use the MVC architecture pattern.

 

What is MVC?

MVC stands for Model View Controller. If you don’t know what MVC is or you want to learn more about it, check out this video. MVC is one of the most notable code architecture patterns available today. It has been around for a long time now, and is used by many applications. MVC describes how to organize your code in such a way that is easy to maintain, and helps in improving code readability.

 

The Problem that MVC Solves

Without structure, your code can get messy very easily and look like “spaghetti code”. To avoid this, developers should separate the game logic from the display code. If this step in development is skipped, you will find that once your game becomes more complicated you’ll have a hard time updating your code. Tangled code will cause bug-finding to be more difficult, adding new features will become exhausting, and changing existing features will be almost impossible. Not persuaded yet that MVC is the answer to all your problems?

 

The Pros of MVC:

• If you use MVC, when you’ll want to add a new feature to your game, your code will be modular and organized. All you’ll have to do is create another controller, model, or view, depending on the requirements of your new feature. Then you’ll easily integrate it with your existing code.
• With MVC, your code will be adjustable like never before! For example, if you’re dying to change your game’s look-and-feel, you’ll be able to easily update its View. If you want to change the behavior of a button in your game, all you’ll need to do is update one of the controllers.
• If you use MVC, you won’t need to write a ton of code because of the way the code is organized.
• MVC will cause your code to be both more readable and easier to write.

The (very few) Cons of MVC:

Ok, so nothing is ever perfect in this world, and neither is MVC.

• MVC requires a bit of thinking and organizing beforehand. This means you’ll spend a little time, before you actually start to code, on planning the structure of your app.

 

If you decide not to use MVC, it is probably because of either of two reasons:

1. Your game might be very straightforward, with a small amount of code, and then you don’t really have any use in design patterns.
2. This second option is because you made a mistake when you began coding – you didn’t realize how MVC can help you. Later, you’ll be cursing yourself as to why you didn’t start with  MVC in the first place.

To conclude, we can say that MVC is an architectural structure to make our code clearer, simpler to update, and easier to maintain. Whether or not you’re going to use MVC in your next game, you can always use SOOMLA to maintain your game’s in-app purchasing needs. The original article about Why MVC should be used in Game Development can be found here.

 

Box It Game Review – Monetizing Puzzle Games

I love puzzle games! They are fun, they keep my mind sharp (I think) and when competing with friends it feels like winning has to do with brain power so I’m more eager to prove them I’m smarter rather than luckier. Box It the latest puzzle game I fall in love with. I have been playing it for 3 months now and it is still fun.

Game play experience

When I started playing this game it was very intuitive. It’s a clone of an old PC game I used to play called Xonix with a few twists. I wouldn’t give the game a high score on originality but sometimes re-makes of existing genres are the most fun to play. If you played Candy Crush or Flappy Bird you should know what I mean. If you haven’t played Xonix, let me explain the concept in a few words. There are evil balls and there is your ball and the game is played in a rectangular area. Your ball moves on the side of the rectangle while the evil balls move inside it in straight lines and bounce of the box walls in angles you can easily predict. As you swipe your finger on the screen: up, down, left or right, your ball will leave the walls of the box and will travel in it, leaving a line behind it. While your ball is not on the wall it’s exposed and if one of the evil balls touches it or the line, you lose a live. However, if your ball safely arrives to another point in the box wall, the area you boxed becomes filled and is counted towards your captured area. The goal of the game is to capture as much as 70% from the box area. 

Mastering the art of boxing evil balls

The trick in this game is that if you box an area that has an evil ball in it, the evil ball disappears from the game so you have less evil balls to deal with. The skill of boxing evil balls is key to master as there could be up to 9 evil balls to dodge so without taking some of them out you can’t win. The way I go about capturing evil balls is to set traps for them. First, you box out an area that is close to an existing wall and creates sorts of a long hole between the box wall and the new area you boxed out. Now, you keep your ball in that area until one of the evil balls comes into the hole and as soon as it comes in, you move your ball across the entrance to the hall and capture it. NAILED IT. Feels really good to capture those damn balls.

Game progression and sense of achievement

To make the game interesting for a longer term, the developer created worlds and levels in the game. Each world is a set of 9 levels. Starting from the second world, there is an area in the middle that makes it harder to predict the evil ball movement and at the same time serves as another obstacle that your ball needs to avoid. Worlds differ from one another in the shape of the area in the middle while different levels have different number of balls. One area where the game can improve is a better visualization of the user progress through the levels. 

Recently improved – easy access to the store  

When the game launched, it was hard for users to access the store. There has been improvements in the last update, but there is still some room for improvement and now it is easier to reach the store from within gameplay or between sessions. There is still a problem. Users can play more sessions instantly every time they fail. Without some waiting mechanics, there is not enough motivation for users to check out what the store has to offer. 

Needs more focus on giving users currency

Box It is one game that can use more focus on the coin loop. As a user that just started to play the game, it took me a long time to realize that I’m earning some sort of currency when I’m playing. There is very little indication of that when a level is completed. Once I did realize I have some buying power, I checked the store only to realize that there is nothing in it I can afford with the coins I collected. This is a bad practice. Getting your users to engage with your virtual economy is a key for long term retention and monetization. I would recommend two changes:

• Improving the earning of currency: add sounds, make the balance visible and randomize the gained amount
• Balancing the buying power of the coins by matching the lowest priced consumable item with the number of coins gained in one session

Missed opportunity – adding lives

The developer of this game is missing out on one great opportunity to better monetize the game – adding lives. This trick was used by one of the most successful puzzle games ever – Candy Crush Saga by King. The idea is simple. You give users lives to start with. Every time they fail, one life point is removed. Once users run out of lives, they can wait or buy extra lives. 

 

The Complete Mobile Game Monetization Guide

If you’re going to develop a free mobile game application, you are in good company. Many developers have opted to make free games and it becomes harder and harder to convince users to pay upfront for an app. However, I’m pretty sure you still want to make money from the free game you are developing, so here are a few ways to monetize your mobile game

Advertising inside your app

1 – Banner Ads

This method tends to cover some of the screen but can make you up to $3 CPM. While it’s quite simple to implement, it doesn’t provide you with a lot of money and users can become annoyed by it.

2 – Full Size Ads

This method can generate CPMs as high as $10. If you correctly place these full screen ad units, users are not going to be as annoyed by it compared to banner ads.

3 – Additional Games Button

Adding a “more games” button is a simple way to earn money from big game vendors. Users that click the button will see a list of games related to yours they may be interested in playing. There are multiple vendors who provide this as an easy to implement widget. Playhaven is one provider you should certainly look into in this category.

4 – Level Failed Ad

Once the game session ended with a failure of the user to carry out the task or complete the level, you can show them an advertisement for another game. The engagement ratio is much higher and revenue can be double the revenue compared to the same ad shown when the user succeeded.

5– Value Exchange

These are easy transactions where users attain in-game coins for downloading and using other apps. Since the users are earning coins, they actually like to receive offers like this. Some providers in this space are covered in This Article

6– Second Offer Wall Provider

Two is better than one when it comes to value exchange providers. The users that like earning coins by taking offers are even happier when you offer a diversity of offers to choose from. Other users will not be annoyed since this is opt in advertising.

7– Coupons

A way to reward users in-game is to offer them a discount on something they may want. Think about how much fun it could be for them to get a pizza discount or game discount after they successfully complete a difficult level. Kiip is the leading provider in this sector.

8– Videos

Users can watch videos ads, attain in-game coins while you receive actual cash. It’s one of the simplest methods for developers to earn money. Adcolony and Vungle are two providers who specialize in this category.

9 – Search

If you want easy money, the simplest way you can do is to offer a search app with the game. Of course, it’s an Android-exclusive option and Startapp is the one that offer the service.

10 – Branded Virtual Goods

There are some providers that will allow you to sell branded virtual goods to users. Advertisers will be interested in promoting their brands in this fashion.

Selling Game Content (DLC)

11 – Premium Version

If you’re moving away from creating paid games, you can create a lighter game version and allow users to pay for the full version through In-App Purchase. Probably the easiest way to go freemium but usually doesn’t yield very high revenues.

12 – Level Packs

This option works by breaking a game into levels and selling them individually. Slightly harder compared to the previous method but still relatively easy.

13 – Wallpapers

Some users may like your game so much that they’ll want to purchase a wallpaper for their phone.

14 – Worlds (Visual Customizations)

This means that you make and sell customized versions of the game by changing its look and feel.

Eliminating Game Restrictions

15 – “Remove Ads”

Many games have ads in them.If your game has them too, you can sell the user a version without any, which they are likely to purchase. The common price is $0.99.

16 – Additional Time

If a user must finish a level in a certain period of time, the game can sell them more time to finish the level.

17 – Extra Life/Turns/Energy

With energy mechanics, your game is limiting users’ game playing time – usually it’s no more than 10 sessions/minutes. If someone wants to play more than that, they’ll need to pay for it.

Virtual Economy

More than 50 percent of the revenue in mobile games is derived from in-game economics. There are numerous ways to earn money from virtual economy so pay close attention.

18- Avatars/Characters

If users can identify with avatars or characters in your game, be sure to give them more options in it. Be sure the characters have one-of-a-kind attributes – one character is faster while another is stronger for example.

19 – Tuning/Training

With characters in the game, let users purchase training or tuning (depending on what that game is).

20 – Virtual Item Upgrades

When users have virtual items they own, they can benefit from upgrades, but they can only get these virtual good upgrades by buying them.

21 – Items with Special Abilities

Items such as gear or weapons that provide a user with special abilities in the game. These needs to be balanced to make sure the sense of challenge and competition is not broken. Watch for your players’ reactions.

22 – Customizations

Nearly a quarter of all game players want to customize their game playing experience – weapons, character, car, etc.

23 – Resources

These are items that users can accumulate and use. They are typically the heart of the game because they ensure users are involved with the shopping experience. Including resources in your game will give you more game economy balancing options.

24 – Industrialization

Games have that have resources usually allow users to attain resources by investing game currency and time. Both the time and the buildings can be sold for money.

25 – Save Me

If you’re going to cheat, why not cheat death. Any game that demands users to begin from the start of the game would be a contender for this option.

26 – Double Coins

Another way to earn a little extra cash is to include a “double coins” cheat on the game. There are many games in which a user can double more than once.

27 – Discovered Items

The majority of the items users purchase in games are delivered to the immediately. However, discovered items require users to find those items in the game.

28– Surprises

Users can purchase an item but don’t know what’s in them until they buy it.

29 – Seasonal Items

If you need to increase your sales during the holiday season, make use of that season to do it. It’s an easy trick to put into action if you have an In-App Purchase Platform that allow you to control the store remotely.

30 – Limited Editions

After you identify items users want, you can limit the sale of certain ones, and even create an auction for them. Buyers will feel special when you have limited editions of things they like.

Billing

Apple and Google both have their main billing service, but, the international markets do not have full coverage. For instance, the majority of people living in Brazil do not use credit cards. Buying an in-app can be difficult for them.

31 – Vouchers

These are codes that may be bought online or offline and redeemed for coins in the game. Both Google and Apple allow this method.

32 – Wallet Payments

If you need an idea of what this is, just think of PayPal. Users could have a balance they need to unload. Bear in mind that this is an Android-exclusive method. If it’s an option, consider partnering with PaymentWall.

33 – Carrier Billing

Again, this is another Android-exclusive option. When users buy something, it can be added to their monthly bill. A company that can assist you with this is Fortumo.

Merchandise

34 – T-Shirts

Selling clothing – like t-shirts – is a cool way to make some money. If fans love your game and want to show their spirit, they’ll opt to purchase a shirt.

35 – Branded Cases

You can create a smartphone case for users that want to show your game on their case.

36 – Lunch Boxes

This method of making money can be popular with kid targeted games.

Social

37- User Contests

Free games can become money-making games when users compete with each other for prizes.

38- Tournaments

Tournaments are an advanced version of Contests. Your game will need a bigger user base as well as doing some marketing. This option works well when games a similar to real world games that actually have actual tournaments (Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon). Tournaments can also be with a cash entry fee like the ones provided by skillz.com

39- Gifting

This provides users with the option to give away items – virtual goods or coins – to other users. Spending money on a gift tends to make more sense to users compared to spending it just to increase their game standing.

Android Only

40 – Caller ID Advertising

There is also an Android-only option. Caller ID advertising allows you to send ads to unrecognized numbers, with your receiving or making a call. It’s an interesting option to getting paid without having an impact on the app experience. One company that allows for these kinds of ads is Pingjam.com

41– Icon Drop

Bear in mind that the “Icon Drop” method is exclusive to Android. It’s a simple idea, the game installs another app on the users’ device. Airpush is one provider that can help you get there.

42– Push Advertising

The game sends promotional messages to the user as push notifications. Those promotional messages normally feature other apps. This method is available only on Android and allows the developer to monetize even inactive users.

Top consumables in games for iPhone and Android

Consumable virtual goods propel the mobile apps economy. Out of the Billions of dollars that Apple and Google are charging from users and sending to developers In-App Purchase make about 90% and consumable goods are generating about 90% of that revenue. Need further proof? Go to any top 200 grossing game and look for the most popular In-App Purchases. You will find that most of them comes in packs of 5, 10, 50, 100 or more.

The reason for that is quite simple. Virtual goods that don’t last requires repeated purchases so they have the potential to generate more revenue. In addition, the presence of coins and goods that can be accumulated is one of the things that defines a virtual economy and ingame economies are highly effective engagement and retention mechanisms.

If you want to learn more you can read this post about the most common consumable goods. The articles covers each one of these highly used goods and explains how to implement them in your game.