Review My App: Hearts Net (multiplayer iPhone card game) | Hacker News Reader

Review My App: Hearts Net (multiplayer iPhone card game)

platinumball.net

Up until I bought Hearts Net, Hearts Solo was the best hearts game for the iphone out there (UI aside).

If you want to try and get some more exposure, maybe try getting some blogs to play your game.

Gizmodo, for one, has weekly "best of" posts for apps, so you could give that a try.

http://gizmodo.com/5459997/this-weeks-best-iphone-apps/galle...

hey, thanks! i agree, the user interface for hearts solo leaves something to be desired. me and my friend steph spiffed it up a little for hearts net. i think she's going to do another new "theme" for hearts solo as well, so i can release a new version of that.

are you one of those people who likes to shoot the moon a lot? i tried to make the robots a lot more resistant to that this time around. the number one complaint i heard from my really good players was that it was too easy to shoot the moon.

i think my best marketing leverage at the moment is that hearts solo has been downloaded 30,000 times. about 5k of those were upgrades when i released version 1.1.0, so that's 25k unique users. when i release a new version, all 25k of them will get notified by the app store downloader. i'm going to try charging 99 cents, and see how many of them go for it.

I rarely intentionally try to shoot the moon, rather it happens when the robots give me something like a Q, K, and A of spades and I roll with it.

I do have one suggestion for the UI; in landscape mode the buttons at the bottom seem too large. Can you shave the text and have just the icons or have an option to hide them completely in any mode other than portrait or something?

'the buttons' at the bottom are part of a UITabBar, which is provided by the UITouch framework. i can't change their size, it's fixed to be the same for all apps. the tab bar is pretty deeply embedded into the fabric of the app, so i cannot yank it out when the phone rotates to landscape mode.

there is a smaller type of toolbar i could put down there, but if i have it do the job of a UITabBar, that's a violation of apple's human interface guidelines, and i wouldn't be surprised if they rejected my app for it.

i agree that landscape mode doesn't work all that hot, but there's not a lot i can do about it. there's just not enough pixels to go around. that problem goes away when i port the game to iPad (heh).

Dude, you really lost your goodwill with your upgrade. You gave people a free app and now you sneakingly have stolen it back. I know you want to make money for your hard work but this way trashes your rep completely. You had really good reviews and could have start charging. A grocery store that increases traffic and word of mouth doesn't try to take back the free stuff after it gets the traffic and goodwill. You could have updated to advertise your new games but you used it steal back what you gave away for free. It's looks like a bait and switch and your rep may never recover.

Hey guys,

I am one of those programmers who is clueless about marketing that we get so often here. Suggestions for improving my website, iPhone marketing in general, iPhone game marketing in particular, or other comments are welcome.

I worked really hard to make WiFi multiplayer games work well. This is best tested if you and a friend try it. If it doesn't work for you, I'd like to know why not.

Some anecdata: this app was approved for sale in less than 24 hours!

Here's some promo codes for your trouble.

RXXKXJXMJ6PR 749TRELXYAMH YPMA7J9MRK9K WTXPP76R6YRJ

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