Solitaire FRVR 3.0.0
On May 6th I released version 3.0.0 of Solitaire FRVR. Besides a large number of performance improvements and bugfixes the goals of this version is to increase the average day over day recency with 5% and daily play time with 15 minutes. If successful it would make cost positive user acquisition possible.
To do so, the version introduces a new Daily Game Mode where users are presented with a new level to play every day. The hope is that it will become a habit of the user to return and play the daily level each day. Additionally the game allows you to play previous levels giving players a purpose beyond winning random games.
To allow the user to navigate their progress, the game introduces a map which lists each day as bubbles on a string.
Completed days are shown with one to three stars depending on how well the user played. At any time three un-completed levels are unlocked allowing the player a bit of freedom on which day to play next. The remaining days are locked and cannot be played before the previous levels have been completed.
As the game now have a game-state the user might care about, I integrated persistent data storage using Parse tied to the already existing Facebook Login integration.
At any time, the user can authenticate from the games in-game sidebar.
Additionally users are also prompted to authenticate every time they win a game on a new “you won” dialogue.
As games are random, I did not want to base stars on points as it would result in it being impossible to get 3 stars on some levels. I therefore award stars as follows.
- 1 Star Win the game while playing draw 1 and using undo.
- 2 Stars Win the game while playing draw 1 and not using undo or win the game playing draw 3 and using undo.
- 3 Stars Win the game playing draw 3 and not using undo.
As it now matters if you play Draw 1 or Draw 3 the selection has been moved, from the sidebar, to a new dialogue shown before you start a new game.
This entire user retention system is hidden away from new players until they win their first game. For them, the game will feel exactly like before the update simply showing them a new game when they visit the website/app.
Solitaire FRVR 3.1.0
Soooo, today I release Solitaire FRVR 3.1.0...
In version 3.0.0 each day would represent a guaranteed winnable game that was the same for all users on a specific date.
While I really like the setup, as it made Solitaire a bit challenging, it did not do very well with the Solitaire FRVR users.
Over the past 4 days, the daily new games played has dropped from ~70k to ~45k, a disastrous 35% drop in games played!
Even worse, this number is not a result of users trying harder to complete each game as the average play time similarly dropped from ~60 minutes to ~45 minutes.
Having spend some time thinking about it, I believe the reason for the drop can be attributed to Solitaire users having fairly specific expectations to what a Solitaire game is. Spended extended efforts on trying to complete a specific deck is simply not something most are interested in.
While I still believe in the map and the daily games model I changed it such that the the games played for a specific day is now just random games. If the user cannot complete it, the user can simply choose a new random deck.
In essence, the map is now just a fancy way to keep track of how many random games the user has won.
I am crossing my fingers that version 3.1.0 will result in the 5% increase in recency and 15 minutes daily play time. However for now I would be quite satisfied if the daily games played simply bounced back to ~70k / day.