A few weeks ago we released a free little game called Bubbimals on iPhone/iPad and Android aimed at young children (and parents). There are two simple game modes and an A-Z of cute little animal characters to play with and collect.



It’s had a deliberately soft launch, and until today we’ve avoided promoting it at all whilst closely watched the stats. Our aim is to see the difference in downloads between an organic launch and then how the downloads are affected by free promotional channels and then possibly a paid promotion as well.

Earlier this year we published Apache Overkill for iPhone via the mighty Miniclip alongside the flash game we created for them. We happily watched it rise to number 9 in the US games chart and it’s sold very well, but we don’t have full access to all the publisher stats.

By publishing our own game on the App Store and Android Marketplace we can compare the two publishing platforms and see how different markets respond to in-app payments. Unless it happens to start shifting millions of copies we don’t expect it to be a cash cow but as a free app we want to develop an install base for future updates and promotions of other future apps for clients and ourselves.



Bubbimals was created using Unity3D rather a C++ based development platform as per Apache Overkill. We’ve always had Unity capabilities in-house, and although the client opportunities compared to flash are limited we know it’s a powerful and rapid development tool. As our first Unity iphone game it’s been hugely beneficial to see how the development time is divided between concept, design, engine, testing, optimising, porting, publishing and promotion and how that compares to Flash development and C-based development.

We’ll follow up with some of our insights into the pros and cons of the different platforms and also the reaction to the app itself.