Devlog 9: what a local newspaper article did to my install numbers

I run PolyTowerz as a series of small experiments and write down what comes back. Most of them are quiet. This one was not.

For the two weeks before, the game got about one or two new players a day. Some days none. Not a curve, a flat line.

In September a Dresden newspaper, tag24, interviewed me, and a photographer spent part of a day in my home office where I build this thing. The piece ran on Tuesday. That day: 27 new players. 13 of the 31 active ones were in Saxony: Dresden, Chemnitz, Leipzig and three smaller towns.

The article had no tracking link, so every one of them shows up as "direct". The cities are the only evidence I have. I think it is good evidence, but it is inference.

The paper tells me the article had 1,773 clicks when I last looked on Wednesday. 11 new players from Saxony that day is about 0.6 percent. That is the floor, since GA4 only counts players who left analytics on. The article also had no link to the store, so everyone who installed had to search for the name by hand.

Earlier I paid Apple €32.72 for ads and got 5 installs (devlog 8). Same method, different experiment: try it, count it, say what it was. Neither of them is a plan yet.

New players per day since the article: Tue 27, Wed 6, Thu 2. It fell back to the old line in two days. Wednesday also had 27 active players against a normal 5 to 9, so most of that day was people from Tuesday coming back.

Which brings up the one number I like. Of the 27 who started on Tuesday, 15 opened the game again the next day and 12 the day after. That is 56 percent on day 1. It is one cohort of 27, so I would not build anything on it.

What I do not know: whether they are still here in a month, and how many people installed with analytics off. The real download count is higher than any number in this post.

I do not have an audience that waits for my next release. I have a few hundred people who watch and a game that gets a little better each week. If you want to see how that goes, devlogs are where I write it down. The co-op update is in testing now; that is the next thing I will write about.