Super Hero Maker is a character creator. You design a hero, pick hair, masks, armor and boots, and save it. There are also three small arcade games inside: Flappy Hero, Swarm Smash and Chalk Hero.
In October we went through the game's analytics, and one number stood out.
What the data said
Only 29% of players ever opened a mini game.
The ones who did played about 10 rounds each. So the games weren't the problem. People who found them liked them. Most people just never found them, because they sat a couple of taps deep, behind a button most players never pressed.
To be fair to the number: it was one week of data (October 5 to 11) and about 65 players, so it's a signal, not a law. But it lined up with the rest of the funnel. About 78% of players started making a hero, and about 52% saved one. A lot of people were building a hero and then had nothing to do with it.
What we changed in 3.0.2
The mini games are now the Hero Arcade, a big card right on the home screen instead of a small button.
And the hero you made comes with you. In Flappy Hero you fly your own hero, and in Swarm Smash your hero stands on the rooftop defending the city. Making a hero and playing with it used to be two separate things. Now it's one loop.
The bug we found on the way
While going through the numbers, we noticed there were zero reminder notification opens. Not low. Zero.
The reason: the notification system wasn't loaded at all in any 3.x build. Reminders had been missing for the whole 3.x line. Nothing crashed, so it was easy to miss.
3.0.2 brings them back, and keeps them polite: at most 4 reminders over 7 days, never more than one a day, only in the early evening, and they're cancelled as soon as you come back.
Now we wait
3.0.2 went out to everyone on Google Play on October 11. The plan is to change nothing in the game for about a month, so the numbers stay clean.
The goal: if more than 45% of players reach the arcade, the card works. If it's under 35%, the card needs rethinking.
I'll share what happened once the month is up.
I used AI tools for some of the art and audio.
If you build apps: what's the feature you were sure people used, until you looked at the data?
