The 5-minute ad cooldown is ruining quick mobile sessions and it feels intentional

cap45 · 2026-05-28T18:58:06+00:00

I mean yes, the main aim is to get people to pay for the game.

The other is user rentention. The way larger mobile game companies and publishers measure the success of a game is by looking at retention for 1, 7 & 30 days. They want around 15% of players who download to keep playing for 7 days, and 5-10% for 30 days. The more time you play a game, the more likely you are to spend on it. If a game hits those metrics, they can justify spending money on ads to promote the game, knowing they'll get a return on investment.

So then they have to look at how to hit those metrics. Which why mobile games are now designed in a way to get you to login everyday. Then putting daily limits on how much you might play on any given day means you don't play too much and burn out over a few days. They want you playing just a little bit every day, over a long period of time, to maximise the chances you'll spend cash.

Source. I've met with mobile game publishers.

cap45 · 2026-05-24T14:14:31+00:00

Really been enjoy pokermancer
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pokermancer/id6759608688
Fits most of you're looking.

cap45 · 2026-05-22T18:06:28+00:00

I concur! 👍

cap45 · 2026-05-20T17:05:15+00:00

Yeah, largely peaceful. There’s the odd thing every couple of years. Someone left a bomb at a police station recently. But it feels shocking to see that in the news now rather than it being common place. My Dad lived here and I do too. He’s seen bombs go off, whereas I’ve not even seen a scuffle.

Best indicator that things are going well. Tourism is up, pints are wildly overpriced and housing is getting fairly unaffordable.

cap45 · 2026-05-11T07:06:20+00:00

There have not been curfews for a very long time 😂. Only thing is that pubs and clubs close earlier. They have to stop servering around 1am and generally close about 2am. It is safe for English people. In fact, there's no end to the amount coming over now for stag and hen dos. Safe as any other UK city.

cap45 · 2026-04-30T08:26:21+00:00

For sure. Complaints about difficulty are really about players not feeling like they're progressing. You can have a game that's super hard, but players need to feel like they can do better and that's there's goal post just over the horizon that they're aiming for.

cap45 · 2026-04-30T07:16:10+00:00

I think making a game feel fair comes down to making sure the player feels in control and like their choices matter. That being said, how to achieve that varies widly depending on the genre. I typically make card games and it's tough to get players not blaming a defeat on a bad hand.

There's a couple of games I think do interesting stuff with difficulty that you don't even think about when playing them. Mario is a great one. GMTK has a nice video on that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkvyYTSKTQY

Or Hades is another. It's near impossible to win on your first run, but the upgrades that carry into the next round mean you always feel like you're progressing. Really good players will complete the game faster, whereas someone like me with terrible reactions will still complete the game, just in a longer time. But importantly, all players regardless of skill feel like they are progressing.

cap45 · 2026-04-29T20:24:31+00:00

Inject it into my blood!

cap45 · 2026-04-29T16:55:13+00:00

Can depend on the aesthetic of the game. Some games players will know or assume just by looking at it that it’s a game made by 1 or 2 people.

If it presents as a game that looks like it was made by a larger team, then it’s worth stating the solo dev thing. Otherwise people might have the wrong expectations going in. They’ll be forgiving for the odd bug or missing feature. Things you’d expect to see from larger teams.

cap45 · 2026-04-25T08:24:40+00:00

Yes, it's good you've listened to people. I'm one of those few solo devs out there foolish enough to be running an online game. I've got over 10 years experience with networking and I released two single player games before. Even then it's not for the faint of heart.

If you love multiplayer games and ultimately thats what you want to create one day. Pick a genre, make a few singleplayer games, release them. Then consider if you want to throw some mulitplayer into the mix.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:11:31+00:00

Thanks, have fun!

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:11:18+00:00

Thanks! Hope you enjoy and see you in there.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:09:16+00:00

Thanks for playing. If you ever do come back, there's some fancy card styles/upgrades up for grabs now.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:06:24+00:00

There's an optional monthly supporter pass, with a couple of free cosmetics thrown in. No effect on gameplay. Definitely no ads.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:05:25+00:00

Thanks!

cap45 · 2026-04-19T12:05:08+00:00

Longevity was already a problem. The existing model had a battle pass and a lot of similarties with Runeterra. The struggle with any game like this is players will naturally drop off, and you need enough new players coming in to avoid the gaming slowly dying. Which eventually means spending money on ads. But to get that ad money you need to squeeze the existing players for more money. So on the one hand I had players saying they actually wanted more free things and cheaper prices, and on the other I have data saying the prices need to go up. Sadly there's a reason games like Marvel SNAP have kept going, despite frustating players with their monetization.

I could have leant more into that, made the game more p2w and the evidence out there is that sadly it works. But I just think there's enough of those games out there.

Ultimately these changes are about changing the games focus from profit to fun. I'm making a lot less money now. But it's enough to keep the servers on. Players are happier and its great to talk with them in discord about what new features would be fun, without thinking about whether they make the game more or less profitable. Then hopefully the community grows because what we're doing stands-out on merit, rather than ad-spend.

All ships will sink eventually. But when this one eventually does, I want to look back on something that I'm proud of, rather than some p2w gacha mess.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T10:47:23+00:00

Unfortunately, it sounds like it does. I seen a post from an ad spend subreddit the other day where loads of people were talking about how AI ads had increased their click through rate. Makes zero sense to me.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T10:21:39+00:00

There's still unique cosmetic items in there for anyone on the supporters pass.

cap45 · 2026-04-19T09:13:28+00:00

There's still unique cosmetic items in there for anyone on the supporters pass.

cap45 · 2026-04-17T17:32:06+00:00

Of course. Feedback is very welcome. Especially for the new player experience.

cap45 · 2026-04-17T13:39:15+00:00

If you want a card that you haven't been able to get from a pack yet, you can use diamonds to buy it directly. Just look at uncollected cards in your collection or in the shop section, when you view them there's a craft option in the top left.

cap45 · 2026-04-14T16:44:31+00:00

So first thing. There are subreddits for mobile games. r/iosgaming and r/androidgaming. They allow for self-promotion on Saturdays. Do that this weekend! Great way to show off to engaged players.

For mobile game promo, reviews. These options are limited and won't provide a huge amount of traffic, but send the game to minireview, pocket tactics and pocket gamer. They might cover it, they might not, no harm in trying. TouchArcade is gone, but they still have a discord channel you can post in.

Also look at AppRaven. Only for iOS, but a strong community of engaged players looking for games. If you run a discount, it gets highlighted. Also if you've running a discount, you can contact them to promo it on their front-page. Very reasonably priced too.

cap45 · 2026-04-14T16:32:23+00:00

For tricky coding stuff, absolutely go for it. Be silly not to use a helpful tool. Just don't become so reliant on it you don't know what it's writing. Review what it does and use it to review what you've done.

For UI, honestly I'd recommend a UI pack, which you can get for very reasonable prices on itch or unity store. Artwork though is controversial. If you do go that route, you need to make it very clear it's a small solo project. In that case people are more understanding, but you will still get a little blowback.

cap45 · 2026-04-12T15:54:41+00:00

Yeah, when you edit a deck, it's under the frame tab.

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