What is Trainyard?
Matt Rix is an iPhone developer who created a game called Trainyard. The game is a simple puzzler for the iPhone in which you must create railroad tracks for trains to cross from a starting point to an end point.
While the App is very worth checking out, what’s most interesting is how the game skyrocketed into popularity.
The Road to Success
The Rix spent a year working on the game during his spare time and it was released back in June. According to him, he was getting great critical reception, but his sales were very low. HE decided that it was time to release a demo of his game that included 60 new levels.
After that, he says that his game was received a favorable review from a well-known Italian website. This gave him just the start he needed to get his game recognized.
According to Rix, soon after, Apple contacted him about featuring the paid version of his game on the App Store. Ever since this happened, his game has been working towards popularity, and sat at #48 in the US.
That’s when he decided to post on Reddit, the news aggregator site in which players can post their own news and links. The game was originally priced at $2.99, but he decided to lower the price to 99 cents in an effort to boost sales just before running his story on Reddit.
After the Post
Since posting the information about his game, Rix has announced that his Trainyard game is now ranked at #2 at the US and UK App Stores, placing it ahead of Angry Birds, which is one of the most popular iOS games of all time.
It’s interesting to see how a Reddit post can completely, and quite literally, change the life of single person. He posted his game and it has sold more than he probably ever could have imagined.
Check out his game here or the free demo
The Full story from the Developer: Here
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Baloney.
Reddit had very little to do with the success of this app. The well-known Italian website and Apple featuring the game on the App Store had FAR more to do with its success.
This guy dropped his price 66% and then posted on Reddit. When sales went up, he concluded “a Reddit post can completely, and quite literally, change the life of single person.” Dude, do you think that dropping the price by literally 2/3 might have had something to do with it too?
looks like a good game.i can control the trains the way i want.Another good game i like to share.it’s about progressive revolutionary idea.
click on “HI IAM SPAM”
Hi really it is a good and interesting game.I can’t belief that Reddit is going to support such games.Anyway thanks for providing such useful information.
I’d totally buy an Android version.
Hey, I’m the guy who made Trainyard.
You’re absolutely right that Reddit wasn’t the only reason for Trainyard’s success, but it was definitely a factor. There are hundreds of apps that drop their price to 99c every week and they don’t even reach the top 10. I also had the benefit of a popular blog post, being featured by Apple, and having a TouchArcade review all at the same time, as well as the price drop and Reddit.
Hi Matt,
Can you tell us how you went about making the game, the tools used etc?
Cheers
two things did it for me. the post on reddit that made me aware of the game AND a demo version Because even at just 99 cents I’m not going to pay for something that I don’t get to try first. Especially games since it takes a certain something to make them fun.
The coding was done in Xcode by Apple as the IDE with Objective-C as the language. I use an awesome game-making framework called Cocos2D (http://cocos2d-iphone.org) that makes it way easier to make games.
That’s about it really. All of this is done on a used macbook that I bought on Craigslist for like $600.
It wasn’t “definitely a factor”. That Reddit post made you about 30 bucks.
There aren’t hundreds of apps that don’t reach the top 10 that were featured by Apple and had a TouchArcade review and dropped their price by 2/3. Being featured by Apple is a boon. That – in addition to the price cut – accounts for 99% of your sales.
+1 on the Android version…
If there was one, i would buy it!
In some areas it is very difficult to compete. There are more than 250.000 apps on AppStore.
In the Car Park arena, for instance, I found a new one eCarPark that is by far the best. The link is:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ecarpark-pro/id374146881?mt=8
Love the story, didn’t try the game yet. But it seems pretty amazing 🙂
Matt, what was the italian website you were featured on? Amazing that only one national website can have such a great impact on an app worldwide