Introduction

I started building Circle Rush as a simple game to practice my C++. I saw the potential as a mobile game quite soon and it took me a couple of weeks to get a first build running.
After that it was just adding features, fixing bugs and most importantly, promotion.
I sent about 500 mails to youtube channels and websites, and while a few did feature it, I got most traction from a reddit post.
Nowadays Circle Rush has more than 50.000 downloads and a rating of 4.1/5.

What I learned

Since it was the first game I published, I learned a lot more about what it takes to publish a game than I first anticipated.
I learned about game development for mobile, how integration with Google Play and unique keystores work, and so much more. My biggest takeaway from this project, however, is that building a game is just a small part of game development. You haven't built a game unless people are playing it.
As such, I learned about the different kinds of promotion and gained a newfound curiosity for marketing.

Media