Upcoming Monster Cache Releases

It's been about 2 weeks since our Monster Cache promotions at Planet Comicon and it looks like our momentum on the sign ups from the show has ended.  We're at 71 users on the Legends board now, so that makes 29 new Legends that caught monsters after the show.  Lots more people than that downloaded the app and registered though, they just never caught a monster.

One of the things we learned (or actually already knew, but it became even more clear) is that we should make the sign up process easier, specifically with requiring people to verify their email accounts.  The point of the email verification was so that people couldn't refer fake accounts and then sign up with the fake account to get a referral bonus.  So now we're not going to require account confirmation unless you've been referred by someone else.  Once the account is confirmed, both users will get a bonus.

So I'm going to work this weekend on an immediate Version 1.3 release for Android and iPhone:
-- simplify registration process
-- fix android 4.1.2 bug with map
-- new monster sound (got good feedback that current siren noise was scary while driving, so Matt made new sound)
-- Monster Binoculars to let you see further on map
-- new In App Purchase pricing
-- some new badges
-- info windows for monsters that shows their Level

The new In App Purchase price changes are motivated by one of our new users who bought our $8.99 package of 1000 coins and used them way faster than we expected people would.  Still not sure what the new price offerings will be, but we're going to make some even higher ones.

Then in two months or so, we hope to release a version that has:
-- a unique sound per monster, or at least per level.  That will be a big but hopefully fun task, probably for Matt.
-- users can find piles of coins
-- (maybe) users can place statues
-- try to improve database performance on finding monsters

Then once I'm convinced the database performance is okay, I'll make some monsters in Europe :-)

Planet Comicon

Planet Comicon was this past weekend.  Above is a picture of our booth, with Hellzapalooza (a horror novel) booth on the left and Jeff Balke (comic colorist) on the right.  It was great meeting our booth neighbors and all the visitors to the booth.  And it was fun seeing all the costumes and other exhibits at the convention.

As far as results of our promotional effort....not as much as I'd hoped, but not bad!  We entered people in a raffle for 4 prints of the monsters if they downloaded the app at the booth.  Based on raffle tickets, that would be 45 downloads.  But actually, we got about 41 downloads on Android alone (from 47 to 88) and 34 on iPhone, for real total of 78 on the weekend.  A lot of people took our business cards to download it later, so I guess that accounts for the extras.

Most if not all of those people registered accounts, as I can see them all in the database.  There are 22 new people on the Legends board since Friday, so 56 of the people who downloaded this weekend haven't found a monster yet.  That kinda surprises me, but then again, people may not have time to go get a monster right when they download it.

Nobody bought any of the prints that we made, so that was a bummer.  But then again, that wasn't our main goal.  Mainly we wanted to publicize the game, but I thought of printing the cards as a way to hopefully get some money back to cover the booth expenses.  Didn't sell any, but I'll be sending some to the raffle winners (we picked two).

By the way, total iPhone downloads appears to be about 140, and 88 for Android, for grand total of 228 downloads so far.