When do you give up on your game?

Game of Loot was released on the app store about a two months ago. The few reviews it has are good, the app metrics are on target with what I understand to be good, the monetization is fine given the small user base. It's unknown and isn't getting downloads tough. When do you call it?

iPhone / iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/app/id1016781837
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superultrahyper.gameofloot

I made it. I'm proud of it. I think it’s a good game. I think you will too. I recently published an update that adds Leaderboards, Achievements, and most importantly, reworks the first 20% of the game, surfacing as many of the game’s mechanics (the fun) as quickly as I could. Way sooner than the original release. If you played it before and thought it was close but a miss, I urge you to give the latest update another go.

In my initial release mistakes were made. That and my biggest issue, it didn’t get the Apple feature I was hoping for. It’s the thing that’s required for me to get downloads…considering I have no marketing budget to speak of. 

It didn’t get much press coverage either. I’m not sure what I expected there. The how to’s of online “Marketing Guides” all speak of blogging about your game and sending out marketing materials months or weeks in advance. I just don’t see it. If you’re Clash of Clans or Marvel, sure. However, if you're small, working on a new IP, especially a casual game like mine, and it’s an app, the signal to noise ratio is rough to say the least. I’d love to see Touch Arcade’s News Reporting Inbox. And even then, when Touch Arcade mentioned me it was a fleeting moment in app news. 

So the question is “When do you give up?” I want to say that my app is a good candidate for becoming featured by Apple but I can’t honestly tell if I’m bias or being objective. Looking at some of the apps that get featured each week initially frustrates me when mine doesn’t but finally makes question my perspective. I don’t know. Without a window into the featuring process and only the generic Apple submissions email address to “knock” on Apple’s door with is disheartening to say the least.

All this said and after having put so much time into Game of Loot I decided to spend just a bit more and fix a primary mistake I made. I have to kick myself for it also... Basicly, the pacing of the game was pretty slow initially. I worked for EA once upon a time and we spent 60% of the development cycle on the first 30 minutes of the game… polishing and polishing to make it as compelling as possible. If you’ve played one of EA’s racing games when they give you some hot car for the first few minutes only to take it away from you and then reveal the clunker that you’ll actually be starting with, you know what I am getting at.

To fix this I reworked the first half of the game and added 2 more enemy types to flesh out the level progression a bit. I have also surfaced as many of the game mechanics as I could as quickly as I could. When the app was first revealed I got many comments related to it’s easy difficulty level or the lack of skill / strategy needed to play it. It’s still pretty easy to play but I am no longer shy about getting to the meat of the game quickly.

In addition, I've added some things players have requested like a Dungeon Scoring System, Leaderboards, and Achievements. The sound doesn't override your playing MP3’s anymore either. 

From here...next steps...who knows? If you've never looked into marketing, marketing your game on something like Adwords is crazy expensive. Just to market my game's and company's webpage each cost 2.17 per click. That's in USD Sir!  WTF? Pardon the swearing but it's justified in this case. That doesn't even touch on buying clicks for a keyword like "Match 3 App."  Then there is the potential to purchase banners from the review sites. However, the research I have done is mostly to the tone of "Small marketing budget? Save your money." That and it's hard to get information on how well one of these 600$ banner ads drive downloads. And that appears to be the low end. Never Mind a site skin.

I guess the next steps for me is to search for a publisher that has an installed app base and could cross promote my game. I'm not really sure though. We'll see.