Impressions After Shipping a First Title

Animal Panic Puzzle shipped on August 13, 2020 as a solo-developed title. The first Git commit was on November 22, 2017, so release came roughly 1,000 days (~2 years 10 months) later.

This article records impressions and early results from a few days after launch (August 18, 2020). Store distribution has since ended, but the lessons from that first release are kept here.

Nothing starts until the game ships

Even a strong idea goes nowhere without a product. That sounds obvious, but it is often the hardest part.

Experience with RPG Maker projects in school showed how many prototypes stall midway. That has not changed while working professionally as a programmer. Animal Panic Puzzle has simple rules, but reaching them still took a long time.

After shipping comes discovery

The app market was already crowded at launch, and the odds of a solo title being noticed were low. Multi-language and multi-region release did not automatically produce downloads.

The takeaway at the time was that waiting for store featuring or for someone else to pick up the game was not repeatable. Something with clearer cause and effect was needed—promotion that includes paid spend.

### Free promotion tried at the time

• **Developer community on X (Twitter)** — The launch post reached some people, but very few converted to downloads. With a small follower base, the effect was limited.
• **Free press-release sites** — Posts went live, but the impact felt closer to visibility and search presence than to downloads.
• **A friend's blog** — The site had traffic, but almost no one reached the app page.

About five days after release, downloads were still under twenty. Free promotion alone was unlikely to move the needle much—appeal of the game could change that somewhat, but doing nothing was worse.

Without downloads, there is little to learn

Only a few titles see large download spikes right after launch. With very few installs, there is not enough data to tell whether the tutorial, pacing, or core loop was the problem.

The same failure can still be useful if it produces data for the next attempt.

Direction at the time

Complaining about the environment does not ship the next build. The plan was to consider paid promotion early enough to reach a meaningful sample size.

Waiting might eventually produce numbers, but time spent waiting does not come back. The spend was framed as an investment in shortening the learning cycle, not only in raw download count.

Summary

• Store release alone does not produce meaningful downloads
• Free promotion works best when an audience already exists
• Secure downloads and move quickly toward a stable build
• Once the build is stable, evaluate paid promotion early

That first release became part of tamilabo's later approach: finish first, and design distribution as seriously as development.