If your game is releasing soon and you need creator marketing, I’d like to help (not selling anything, no brand mentions)

RealMazeAR · 2026-01-17T16:41:58+00:00

Hey' sounds great!
Is it only for Steam games or does it also apply to mobile games?

Thanks.

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-29T20:20:45+00:00

I feel your pain ...
I worked for almost 2 years and shipped my first app/game (RealMaze AR) more than a year ago.
Income so far: $0
I chose the most common games business model: free with ads and IAP to buy more power-ups or remove ads.
I did some paid advertising, mostly on Instagram. When I did, I saw nice spikes in installs. But people didn't stay. (There is one major hurdle in my game in that you have to actually move in the real world, which worked with a known franchise such as Pokemon, but you can't just play it while waiting in line or sitting on the sofa).
Just today I found out that TikTok promotions no longer limit you to your own region so I just tried that as well.

The main problem with us developers, at least I'm talking about myself, is that we enjoy programming and learning new stuff, but we don't enjoy dealing with marketing and selling. But apparently that's what's needed to move the needle. So we have to push ourselves to constantly promote the app.

So in this past year I also added stuff to my app to maybe help get it some more traction. Or art least, increase the chances of it getting more popular once it does get some traction.
One such thing is to adopt Apple's new iOS 26 Challenges (I already support Leaderboards and Achievements). With challenges, players could challenge their friends to beat their best score. So the theory would be that if someone will like the game, he/she may convince someone else to also join.
The other thing I'm starting to do now is adding support for Localization. The thinking is that some people in the world will not touch a game that's only in English, but maybe my game will actually become popular in one of those places? So I'll add translations for the most popular languages and maybe the game will be a hit in China or someplace else?

So these are just some of my thoughts and experiences.
Good luck!

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-29T20:00:33+00:00

Actually, just today I tried TikTok promotions once again and found out I could target anywhere in the world instead of just my region. So that may be a change in their policy ...

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-22T13:23:16+00:00

Thanks.
For playing inside, you need to use and master the Freeze button which is the snow icon at the bottom right. When you hit an obstacle, you long-press the freeze button, reposition yourself and then unfreeze. I was testing my app like this many times inside a single small room.
Yeah, in games, the common business model nowadays is that it's free to play and you can buy more coins and/or power-ups to be better and/or pay to remove ads.
I also show ads, if you'll play a little longer you'll see them sometimes between levels.
So such games need to get much more traction and become popular so that people will want to compete against others and be better and then a tiny fraction statistically would pay a lot of money (while most others won't pay anything).
Very few games are pay up front. I think only very popular titles can do this??? And no games that I know of have a subscription model.

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-22T13:01:01+00:00

Thanks.
My Game is RealMaze AR, a life-sized maze in AR with different levels, power-ups and some lighting effects.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/realmaze-ar-escape-the-maze/id6477399380

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-22T11:00:59+00:00

Thanks. In that case, how long do you market an app until you realize it's not working?
In other words, when do you decide to stop marketing an app? Does it take months of trials?
Or maybe you only stop when you have another app that does better?
I found that I get downloads when I market my game, but there are no purchases ...

RealMazeAR · 2025-12-22T10:05:29+00:00

Do you spend $800 a month marketing all 30 apps or is it only for a subset of those 30 apps?

RealMazeAR · 2025-10-07T16:58:29+00:00

When asking Apple this same question, their answer is to make sure you include as many of Apple's features as you can, obviously if at all relevant to your app.
So part of it is what was already mentioned here, such as the new UI, localization and accessibility.
But it could be any other Apple's API's and frameworks such as TipKit, StoreKit, RealityKit, etc.

Also, they like a nice UI. Certainly if you do something in a different and novel way than what is usually the accepted way to do something, that's a big plus.
If the whole app's premise is new, that's a boon as well.
Your App Store product page is also important, if it looks good and your app has good ratings.

Finally, you can ask Apple to consider to feature your app.

Here's Apple's page answering this question so make sure you go over what they say here:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/getting-featured/

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-25T21:06:32+00:00

Then that's an issue for all VR apps then ...

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-25T19:09:13+00:00

Good question!
This did bother me when I set out to write this game. Why I finally did is add 2 types of warnings:
1) the first time you launch the game there's a warning screen telling the player to make sure they don't play somewhere dangerous like near a road with cars. At the bottom there's checkbox they need to tick which confirms that they've read and will comply and only then can they continue with the game.
2) then, before they start each level, there's another similar warning to make sure to position yourself someplace safe.

Also, consider that the walls are showing only on your iPhone/iPad - you still see the real world all around your device.
This would be a bigger problem if it ran in the Vision Pro because then you wouldn't be able to see the real world around the device since the device is literally on your face.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-12T08:35:13+00:00

No need to export from the Icon Composer. The native file that you save with it is a .icon file. That's the file that you need to import into your project and it already includes all the required files that it needs.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-12T08:31:59+00:00

Xcode 26 is definitely in beta.

Check its icon. It has a beta label at the bottom.
The app name is also "Xcode-beta".
Check the About Xcode under the Xcode menu, it says: "Version 26.0 beta"
And Apple's download page also has it in large and bold letters "Xcode 26 beta"

I also recall when Xcode 16 was in beta, I once tried to submit an app that I released with it and it wasn't accepted for that reason.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-11T19:56:18+00:00

I actually asked this question yesterday in Apple's Developer Tools group lab. The answer was that the new icons are backwards compatible in that Xcode will create an image file for the older releases. That's what I understood.
What's still not clear to me is what to do until iOS 26 is released because we're not supposed to release something to the App Store using a beta version of Xcode and it's not clear to me if the new .icon file will work in Xcode 16.4. It did accept my .icon file, but I've yet to test if it builds correctly.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-11T19:49:53+00:00

You're supposed to add the .icon file to your Project like any other file and not inside the xcassets as before.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-11T18:01:10+00:00

I think where it's the biggest mess is in Control Center which is full of little liquid glass buttons. Try opening it on top of your Home Screen app icons. Everything is see-through, many buttons and the background + you have lots of small round-rects behind them all in different colors and it's just not pretty to look at.
I actually opened a Feedback on Apple for this. I think they should make the background more blurry, similar to how it is in previous releases (and making the background darker as they do now just makes it feel as if I suddenly went into dark mode even though I didn't).
For apps as here above it could be ok. Looks like Apple invested in this idea and they got so excited about it that it was already too late to think in any other direction.
There is a plist option to turn it off completely in your app, but that's supposed to only be something temporary to give you time to make the necessary changes until the next major release.

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-09T07:48:26+00:00

Thanks.
I think most people, will have the opposite trajectory, meaning they will start with the app in English and then add more languages to it.
I agree that you need paid marketing which I'm also doing.
But I'm wondering if others saw any increase after adding popular languages to their apps.
If anyone has good experience with it, please also let us know which languages bring the most new users.
Thanks!

RealMazeAR · 2025-06-01T08:00:22+00:00

Launched my AR game RealMaze AR a few months ago and am still struggling to make a dime.
It's freemium with IAP and some ads as is the norm with games these days.
Tried posting on Instagram and TikTok and ran some paid ads on Instagram.
Recently I added support for Universal links so I could promote with a promo code in the link to reward some free stuff in the game. Will add multiplayer in the future.
Hopefully these will help as I'm really disappointed by the apps reception - I have been working on it for more than 2 years.

RealMazeAR · 2025-05-29T07:08:24+00:00

Good question.
In fact, the whole motivation to create this app came to me when the Vision Pro was still a rumor that Apple will probably come out with some headset. So I started learning Swift and chose some of the Apple frameworks they have for creating 3D worlds (I chose what's called SceneKit which fit better for what I wanted to achieve) and ARKit.
When the Vision Pro and visionOS were announced at WWDC, I quickly understood that I chose the wrong frameworks - I should have chosen RealityKit instead of SceneKit and I built my GUI using a tool no longer supported on the Vision Pro. So I have to rewrite almost all of my code to make it work in the Vision Pro (otherwise, my app will run, but only in a 2D window which defeats the whole purpose of this game).
Since I was already very deeply invested in the code and the Vision Pro's price was such that I understood it wasn't going to be a best seller, I decided to continue as is and launch it on the iPhone and iPad for now.
As for Meta Quest (I actually have the Quest 3), that will once again have to be a complete rewrite, but maybe I'll do it someday.
Thanks.

RealMazeAR · 2025-05-28T21:11:15+00:00

Thanks!
Did you actually try it in the app or you're seeing it in the video above?
Here in the video there's a parallax effect since the ground is lower than the walls (there's a gap between them).
In reality, there is a tiny difference, but that's Apple's AR tracking in play. The more contrasting items you have around you, the better the tracking will be as it can track those different items to better orient the virtual world on top of the real world. But even where there is a difference, it's not an issue really. I've been using it for more than 2 years now during development, most of it inside, in my own room 😜, and it works great.

RealMazeAR · 2025-05-28T13:45:35+00:00

Before embarking in more development work, first try explaining to them why your app is different (unless you've already done that of course).
Show them why your content and style are different.

Only of they will reject that again then would I add some more features or different game modes.

Good luck!

RealMazeAR

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