Apps

I’ve submitted Sugar Rush 1.1, which is a major update.

Our sales have been pretty low, but our free promotions, including the one last weekend, have been wildly successful (18,000 downloads in a single day). Therefore, I’ve made the difficult decision to move to a “Freemium” model, and I’ve made an effort to avoid pissing off existing customers.

Here’s the deal: Nothing will change for existing customers. If you upgrade from 1.0.5, you won’t see any ads, although you will still be able to purchase other premium items. New customers will see ads, but will have the option to pay $0.99 to get rid of the ads. The ads will work the same way they do in the current free version (which will be removed from sale), occupying the bottom of the screen when no bonus power is in effect. Unlike the current free version, there will be no limitation to the game.

You will also be able to purchase additional premium content. The first new item is donuts, which give you 3x the jump boost of cupcakes and occur much more frequently. You just have to buy it once and it will remain available. We will also be offering holiday themed packages and other items in the future.

Note that version 1.1 will require iOS 4.0. Anyone running iOS 3.x will need to continue using 1.0.5.

I have a major update planned for Sugar Rush later this month.

I just submitted a minor update, version 1.0.5, which fixes some problems with the settings not being saved and updates the settings format in preparation for in-app purchase in the next update. Version 1.0.5 is the last version that will support iOS 3. The next update will require iOS 4 or later. I’ll post more details about the major changes coming after version 1.0.5 is approved.

For some reason I don’t understand, iDjembe, which is my least interesting and lowest-rated app, is outselling my other apps, including Sugar Rush. This is not good because the low ratings brings down my average app store ratings, despite Removr & Sugar Rush’s much higher ratings.

Last week I tried to kill iDjembe by quietly raising the price to $1.40. That did stop iDjembe sales, but at the same time it brought down the sales of my other apps. Rather than kill it, I tried the opposite by making it free. That experiment seemed to work, and I’m now getting 700-800 free downloads a day, so I decided to keep it free and use it to help sell my other apps.

To go along with the pricing change, I submitted a minor update to iDjembe, version 2.1.2, which updates the info screen with the description & app store link for Sugar Rush, and makes the info button a little more prominent with a cute sugar rush player icon.

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After Sugar Rush Free was approved, I discovered it was using the wrong leaderboard name to submit scores to Game Center. I just submitted a quick update (version 1.0.3) which fixes it. Hopefully it won’t take too long to approve.