In early April, the game Gravity Defied from the Russian studio Rock Entertainment was released in the Russian App Store. Since the end of April, it has been included in the gaming top ten for free downloads. Its authors told App2Top.ru that we achieved this without investing in marketing.
Gravity Defied, like the Swedish Codebrew Software‘s J2ME project of the same name, released 11 years ago, is a short-session physical arcade game in which the player must guide a motorcycle trial participant through a difficult terrain from point “A” to point “B”.
Since April 29, the project has been firmly in the gaming Top 10 in the iPhone App Store (now, on May 6, the game is on the 4th position in the gaming top). And, according to the general director of the studio Karen Bagiryan, the company did not spend on marketing: “I did not invest a penny in marketing.”
He explains the high positions not only by luck, but also by the fact that the players were waiting for such a project: “according to the reviews, it became clear that the audience was waiting for the game. Luck also played a role. And it seems to me that if you put your soul into what you do, and make a game that you would like to play yourself, believe in what you are doing, everything will definitely work out.”
“I’m for the so-called Time Killers. I believe that people want to play them in the subway when they are waiting for someone, for the simplicity of solutions, for simple games. I tried to make sure that nothing prevented the user from passing the tracks, so that he would strive to pass them in record time. There is no banner advertising in the game specifically so as not to annoy the user,” adds the director of Rock Entertainment.
Gravity Defied
At the same time, out of 124 ratings given to the game in the App Store, 63 are one—star.
“To be honest, it seems to me that these are competitors, since my GD has moved everyone into the Racing and Arcade categories,” explains App2Top.ru a similar situation to Karen.
However, he adds that he heard criticism regarding game physics: “many people write about physics that the bikes are oak. The fact is that I did it on purpose to make it easier to play.” Now the team is working to make the physics more realistic. “The game will become much more difficult,” Karen warns.
When asked about the legality of using the brand of the original Gravity Defied, Karen replied that there was no patent for this name. The Codebrew Software brand at the moment is the Gravity Defied -Trial Racing game, while Gravity Defied GD is assigned to Rock Entertainment.
In the update, which is scheduled for release in mid-May, the developers will add new tournaments, new bikes and improved, closer to reality physics. The team also plans to add a constructor for the summer, allowing the user to create tracks himself, and a new mode, thanks to which players will be able to pass the tracks of other users.
“My main goal is to make a game that will be loved and played with pleasure. And I am against banner advertising, rigid monetization, which sometimes forces the player to be distracted and does not allow him to move further in the project, achieve better results without depositing money,” Karen emphasizes.