You should have a good mix of long tail keywords and popular ones and find one or two gems that are popular and not that competitive and bet on those.
Not sure if your way of analyzing really helps anyone. We tried a lot of this and nothing changed anything.
Do a review for this one, which has 5-10mio downloads and you see what I mean:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ketchapp.stickhero
Hi Bronsoner,
Thanks for the great help to the community.
Could you give a hand in my case:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tructv.dance
Thank you in advance!
Pour enough budget into anything and you will get results, plus - if you can get cheap enough downloads, you will dominate competitive keywords not to mention Ketchapp games get featured often. Also if your gameplay is good enough, it will make up for other flaws.
Here is another example that beats yours: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerdyoctopus.gamedots
If you already are successful, can get a lot of downloads from different sources, you can pretty much ignore ASO and other marketing methods that will help immensely people I advise here with app downloads ranging from 100 to 50 000, who get few houndred downloads per day tops. Keep in mind the trend for simple/minimalistic games is something a bit strange and most games and apps presented here are not of this category.
I have similar apps (from 100 to 50k) and I made tests with them from different angles - I know what helps and what breaks an app like that. If you want to compare them with flappy bird, that really doesn’t make any sense. Let’s stick to basics and stuff that works for small developers without big budgets.
You really have to thread carefully with anything sexy on google play - the moment they spot you on the radar, you will get consequences, even though your app doesn’t really look like sexually gratifying it takes just one keystroke to someone from google to ban your account once they see it … especially since your other game is typically child (kiddy) oriented. But thats the risk you took and it seems it paid off so far.
You could add rounded edges to the icon and a border - would look better in the store listing. Also text on the screens saying something about the gameplay would help a bit, but generally you did a good job with presentation.
Thank you Bronsoner
Hi Bronsoner.
I was reading this and previous topic, where you helped developers with advices, so i used some of them for one small game i have.
I just changed icon and pictures, so i can’t tell if they improved something or not.
I would still like for you to review this two games i published:
first is this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itbuilds.calculatefast
it is the one where i changed icon and pictures.
second is: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itbuilds.dotmemorygame
The screens was the same for first game as they are still in second.
I don’t have any promotion for apps, and i have very small number of downloads.
Also, i created and designed everything about my apps, and i am not a designer so i would like to hear opinion from a pro.
Thanks.
Hi,
The first one is significantly better, but don’t use white border - your icon will look small among other icons, see here: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=Calculate%20Fast%20Numbers%20Game&c=apps - it blends with white background google already puts there. Apart from that icon and screens are nice and make good impression.
Description: “If you are bored waiting on the airport, standing in a long line, or just bored, give it a try.” - do you really want only bored people to play this? That doesn’t sound too convincing … show more confidence in your app, tell me why should I play it not when. How is it better/more unique than similar apps? Also “Clean the matrix” sounds really bland and reminds me I need to clean the dishes (not a fun thing) - use more extiting words.
Hi Bronsoner,
This is my app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zickzeon.fighter2
This is a traditional shooting game and I know it may have a lot of things to improve. Could you give me some suggestion ?
And also this game has an IOS version. Why the download times everyday In IOS is much more than Google Play ??..
Thank you very much~:o
Oh dear… I know I’m probably breaking a lot of rules with my app. It doesn’t look very flashy. I like to go for a very friendly/silly/cutesy kind of impression, because the game is kind of like that. But maybe it’s just completely ineffective marketing-wise.
I’m impressed by the feedback you’ve been giving people here. I wonder what your thoughts might be on this. 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.waterwarp.dzt
- The icon is nice, but lacks the border - that really takes quality feeling out of it
- Too few screens, text on them is unreadable unless zooming to full size screens, they do show however nicely it’s a bullet hell game.
- Waaaaay too short description and no ASO, this is your weakest point
- No reviews - this will hurt you now and will affect how your app does on google play
- 26MB for this kind of game is asking a lot, any way you can reduce size?
- Game name - it will be ok’ish for 2015, than it will be old and noone will want to download it - this will hurt while not helping at all, why not use bullet hell space fighter or something similar instead?
- Appstore is giving you most downloads during first month, google play will give you increasing downloads depending on how your app does, but in general they will be rising with time.
Ok, this one made me laugh. If you go for alternative style, than most of what I write here will not apply. I believe there are people who dig this kind of graphics. It looks like made by a child for other children, so this could be a good selling point.
Your description however and lack of reviews will make this game go stale on google play - ASO is not gonna make you millions of downloads most likely, but it helps and getting tousands of free downloads is nice, so why not do it?
Yeah I wanted it to kind of stand out by giving it that alternative cutesy look, but if it would simply be seen as ugly and off-putting, it would be kind of a waste. 
I’ve done some very tiny advertising in this style per experiment and did get a decent CTR. I hope that’s a reasonable indicator.
Thank you very much for the tips. I will hold both into account.
First of all, I’d like to say you are doing a great job by giving these advices for free, keep up
I’d like to ask for help… I’m making a indie text-based MMORPG game (see Pets LIVE!, Black Dragon Free MMORPG etc: some text, some more statistics, few static pictures), it took me ~1 year to do it, and I’m close to publishing it. I’m done with game mechanics, I need to add tutorial, advertisements, do a bit of item and exp balancing. I think I’ll be ready to release in january/february. My problem is… I know nothing about ASO, when I had a blog about making the game I couldnt get any visitors (well, the blog was nothing interesting, just updates about progress on my game, but nobody visited it to find out its not interesting).
I am scared that I’ll fail to get even the ~20-40 DL/ day…
These will be my heroes images: Vector monsters.
I need a good title, since I did not launch an app I thought I’ll ask for advice on that matter (I guess changing the app name after x days/months from launch is strange, or am I wrong?). I checked sensortower.com for good keywords, and it seemed something like “Furry Bralw”, “Furry skirmish” or “Furry Riot” would work best. Then I checked searchman.com and they say that keywords “brawl” and “riot” have almost no traffic. Also, when searching “brawl”, “skirmish” or “riot”, no rpgs show up. Now I think about calling it “Furry Quest MMORPG”, but as I said, ASO/SEO is beyond me, I read about it, I know the theory but it does not seem to work for me…
“Quest” is a word that users intrested in mmorpg could search for, but it has strong competition. On the other hand, Furry has weak competition, but who searches “furry” (or “riot”, or “brawl”, or “skirmish”, or…???) if they want a text-based mmorpg? Also, the Quest seems not to be the best word to describe my game, it suits normal RPG more, not MMORPG where you just slash players for exp, and going for a quest is sth like clicking the button “do a quest”.
So I ask for help, and I’d like to ask for help again when I write the first version of the app description.
Your case is a bit more complicated than usually, so talk to me on Skype: bronsoner.x
Dear Bronsoner
I need your advicer too, my app realy bad
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trust.media.quickboost
Thanks you
Hello, I have developed an app called “Here I Am”, it texts your location to your chosen contact in a human readable language, without “difficult nerdy data”.
Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbyusman.hereiam
I don’t have a team, I had put effort in making the UI a bit unique and beautiful. I also did the description myself but I think it looks too big. What do you think?
After reading one of your replies, I have just changed the title from “Here I Am” to “Here I Am - Text your location”, doesn’t look clever but I put the keywords in 30 characters.
I cannot spend on marketing, and I didn’t implement ads in the app because I want loyal user base and money will make its way later. (and ads would make my app look ugly).
The only marketing I did was to make a facebook page called “Apps By Usman” (my developer name), posted screens of my app there and then shared that post on many pages with a personal statement appealing them to download it. I also used the century-old sentence “A Pakistani developer has made a great android app”, but nothing worked. The only downloads I have got came from my family.
I had made a political app and that got purely organic downloads going upto 800. (now the politics is over, so are my current downloads)
I have also made an app Simple Color Wallpaper (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbyusman.simplecolorwallpaper) and it is getting downloads from random countries like USA, Japan, Taiwan etc and I didn’t even promote it!
EDIT: I am planning to make a video review of my app myself, but as I am not fluent in English, I am thinking to make the video without audio then add a text-to-speech based audio on it. What do you think? Those free app review sites don’t do anything for free.
Hi Bronsoner,
Can you take a look at my app Plz ?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.introvertmonster.teddywar
I have put a lot of effort into making beautiful screenshots and description.
I’m still working on the promo video.
Thanks
Here is my app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.infinitesoftware.monsterblocks.playstore
What I do:
- Bought Ads on Facebook (this give me nothing :/)
- Got reviewed on App Apes and nominated as one of the best Indie Games of 2014
- Changed description several times
Still my download are very bad. Once I got 25 downloads when I post link to reddit. Can you help me?
Buy some installs, to get it trending.