The Story of Mystery Math Town

Mystery Math Town, easily our most successful app to date, was originally conceived as a simple Halloween matching game to launch in 2012. Five months later in April 2013, our “Halloween” app hit the App Store with a front page “New and Noteworthy” feature and rave reviews. The success didn’t come entirely as a complete surprise. We had already released the popular Marble Math series of apps and we had been testing Mystery Math Town with kids, parents and teachers, so we knew we were onto something. For me, the “moment” came over Christmas break - my son, who was seven at the time, discovered a rough beta version of the game on my iPad and started playing...and playing...and playing.

Original Mystery Math Town concept art - simple matching

Working title: Scrollable Haunted House Logic Quest Environment With Doors/Elevators

I personally love Mystery Math Town. I love it because it is fun to play but I also love the story. The setup is simple, “Save the fireflies!” but on your journey you encounter the townsfolk of Math Town in the form of talking portraits and each of the characters reveals a little bit more about the town and the mystery you now find yourself trying to crack, along with some of their own individual peculiarities.

I spent some time writing screenplays in my 20’s and Math Town gave me an opportunity to try something cinematic with a kids educational app. My good friend (and Artgig Creative Director) Lis, designed the wonderfully atmospheric look of the game and managed to keep it spooky without getting scary. Lis illustrated all of the character portraits and handed them over to me to write their stories - all 27 of them. I have to say, I can’t recall working harder or having more fun in my entire professional career. It doesn’t matter if most kids never “get” that “Beans” McGuirk is highly suspicious of the cowboy, “The Outlaw” Jim McQuade (both apparently Irish), ever since his fedora hat went missing. And kids can certainly enjoy the game without ever tuning in to the somewhat one-sided budding romance between young robotics-engineer-in-the-making, Melody, and her Jack, who is more interested in beating Biff in a race, than Melody. What matters is the one kid who does get it.

iTunes screenshot concept with Melody portrait

In order to reveal the full story of Mystery Math Town, you must rescue the fireflies and collect all of the portraits in the game, which requires quite a bit of math. Alternately, you can just cruise through the initial level of play, tapping the portraits as you go and they will respond with one liners. My son kept going back to “Hank” (a crowd favorite), not because of the rich storyline but because he is just plain funny. Lis made Hank really easy for me - one look at his portrait and his prominent pompadour and I knew Hank wants to be Elvis. I imagined Hank as a guy who sees no value in math at all - all he really cares about is Hank: “I have so many fans, even a computer couldn't count them all, baby.” But the key to Hank is Steve - our Development Director, programming guru, resident drummer and as we now know, closet Elvis impersonator - he nailed the famous Memphis mumble with his voiceover and made Hank an instant hit, baby.

I mentioned backstory - all of our apps, except Shake-a-Phrase which is more of a utility app for story creation, have it to varying degrees. We like to discuss the backstory of a game even when there is no obvious intent to share it with the audience. Backstory is important for you to understand as a creator because it informs the decisions around the game you are making. I will leave you with the story of Mystery Math Town. Lis handed me a picture of Math Town, perched on the edge of the sea, and said something like “what do you think of this?”

Mystery Math Town

(1768-present)

As the story of Mystery Math Town goes, once upon a time, The Admiral (of Her Majesty's Royal Navy) became something of a specialist in hunting and capturing pirates. But one pirate in particular, known only as "The Ghost" eluded him. Eventually The Admiral chased The Ghost and his crew to the shores of what is now known as Mystery Math Town, and pushed the band of outlaws straight up into the hills, where they disappeared with their treasures, without a trace...until now.
Our ghost is the son/daughter of the infamous ghost pirate. The ghost pirate child is just hanging around town when the firefly mystery falls in his/her lap. Naturally friendly and curious, the little ghost is eager to help find and rescue the missing fireflies.
In the art collector challenge, the final painting you can collect to end the game is the infamous ghost pirate at the wheel of his ship with his little ghost by his side. It isn’t until you collect the final painting that the full story is completely revealed. 

We made a set of trading cards to tease the app prior to release

And that is the story of Mystery Math Town.

Happy Halloween.

App Bundles of Joy

If you’ve been to the App Store lately, you may have noticed some new bells and whistles (iOS 8 app preview videos!) and some search enhancements that should contribute to improved app discovery. Perhaps the biggest visible change for developers is the introduction of an entirely new product category - the app bundle. App bundles allow us to construct app collections to sell at a discount. We just have to name the bundle, drag and drop apps to appear in the bundle, and write a description - the rest (screenshots, keywords, etc) is automated. We were one of a handful of lucky developers to get picked for an App Store bundle feature. Our Family Math Pack includes 6 of our apps and it appears in two splashy features, “Introducing App Bundles” and “Kids App Bundles,” in the U.S.

Obviously, app bundles have the potential to significantly increase revenue. Thanks to bundles, some of our developer friends have reported doubling sales overnight. That has not been the case for us. When bundles appeared in the App Store nearly two weeks ago, our featured Family Math Pack was priced at $12.99. But after analyzing the first week of lukewarm sales and taking a look at what others were charging for similar bundles, we adjusted our price down to $10.99 (nearly 40% savings). We also went back and revised our bundle descriptions to include terms like “award-winning” and “discounted.” In hindsight, I think it’s most likely that our customers need more space - as in, iPad hard drive space. The 6 apps in our Family Math Pack require over 1GB to install and if you don’t have the space, you don’t get the apps. It’s also possible that our kitchen sink app collection for a range of ages (3-12) is not specific enough to trigger the “got to have it” impulse.

This isn’t to say bundles have disappointed. We are selling enough bundles to equal sales of an average single app. The very existence of bundles raises the likelihood that your apps will be seen. Even if a customer doesn’t purchase your bundle they may discover an app they wouldn’t have seen otherwise and that could lead to a sale (I have a hunch that this is happening with our apps) - and that’s the point, isn’t it? And if they really like that single purchase, they can always come back later to “complete” the bundle, at a discount.

Wish You Were Here - App Launch Promos

When we launched Mystery Math Town, Lis and I came up with the idea of creating a set of virtual trading cards to introduce the townsfolk ahead of launch. The promotion was a big hit on our various social media streams so we wanted to try something like it for our new Drive About: Number Neighborhood app.

For Drive About, Lis made a series of promos inspired by classic travel posters to count down the days to our Thursday launch. Here they are at nearly full size and suitable for framing (if you run a travel agency for yaks, sheep and cows).

They're quite brilliant - don't you think?

Drive About: Number Neighborhood Arrives in the App Store on Thursday, 6/12

A New Kids App! (With Extra Sprinkles)

Can you spot the new app?

With the one year anniversary of  Mystery Math Town right around the corner, I’m happy to announce a new early learning app we’re working on.

It’s called Drive About: Number Neighborhood.

As you may guess, the game gives the 5 and under crowd a license to cruise (and some basic math skills practice along the way).

We were hoping to launch sometime in April but it’s becoming increasingly clear that that just isn’t going to happen.

In the world of client contract work, we’d never let a deadline slip.

But when it comes to our apps, we just can’t resist the extra sprinkles syndrome that would stop a client on a budget in their tracks.

We can’t help ourselves because the extra sprinkles are exactly what make our apps special.

In the world of client work, we like to spec things pretty tightly up front to limit surprises downstream.

We do the exact opposite with our apps. Our own process tends to be more of a creative free-for-all.

Have you ever seen a bunch of little kids in a bouncy castle? That’s kind of our approach.

Once we know which bouncy castle we’re aiming for we dive right in.

If we spend all of our time refining specs, we’d never get to the best part which is making stuff.

And adding sprinkles.

The bottom line - making kids apps should be fun.

Drive About: Number Neighborhood will be ready for beta testing in April.

Let us know if you want to join the testing team.

You can also sign up for our newsletter and we’ll make sure you don’t miss anything.

Mystery Math Museum: App Launch In Pictures

App Store Featured Best New Apps All Categories - Front Page

Our new app, Mystery Math Museum, appeared in the App Store right around the stroke of midnight last Thursday. We timed the launch to coordinate with the weekly App Store refresh and our Halloween marketing push.

The App Store update is always a nail-biter on launch day. It's one thing to go through the Apple approval process and get the "Ready For Sale" green light but it's another thing entirely to get picked by Apple for an App Store feature. I switched my desktop iTunes to the UK store a couple hours ahead of the usual 4pm est refresh to look for any clues that might hint at what to expect when the US store is updated. And last Thursday, I was encouraged to see Mystery Math Museum featured in the UK, so I let myself dream a little...

#99 out of 500,000 iPad apps

When we finally got a look at the freshly stocked US App Store shelves around 4:20pm we were thrilled to see Mystery Math Museum selected as a featured "Best New App" on the App Store front page.

Today Mystery Math Museum is ranked #99 in all iPad apps.

That's 99 out of half a million.

Launch charts #11 Education, #99 Top Overall, #15 Kids, #4 Kids 6-8

 Yeah!

Mystery Math Museum is Now Available in the App Store!

Mystery Math Museum Is Here!

If you like Mystery Math Town, you’re really going to like the sequel.
Featuring a brand new town with 8 themed museums to explore and an entirely new cast of quirky characters (along with some old friends), Mystery Math Museum is truly an epic math mystery.

And...we’ve added division to the math practice options.

Get Mystery Math Museum in the App Store

Mystery Math Museum Is Here!

We got the news at 11:38 this morning.
Our new app, Mystery Math Museum, is 'Ready for Sale' in the App Store.
But you still can't have it...yet.
No, that would be rushing things and we try not to do that around here.
We really much prefer to plan our app launches rather than release them all willy-nilly.
After all, we've spent months crafting this game and it deserves a proper release.
We're not planning to make Mystery Math Museum available in the App Store until Thursday, next week.
That should give us enough time to share some promo codes with reviewers we've been talking to, and hopefully generate some buzz before the game appears in the store.
So if you write about kids apps and you want to try Mystery Math Museum, let us know.
The rest of you will just have to wait just a little bit longer.
Hang in there - we think you'll agree, it's worth it.

Mystery Math Museum is Coming to the App Store Thursday 10/24!

Mystery Math Museum Trading Cards - Collect Them All!

With our new Mystery Math Museum app set to launch for Halloween, we thought we'd give you a little treat while you wait.

It's a whole new set of virtual trading cards, featuring all of the quirky characters from the game, just like the set we made for Mystery Math Town.

We're releasing the cards on all of our social media streams so watch Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest and collect them all!

Mystery Math Museum is Coming This Halloween...

The spooky sequel to Mystery Math Town is coming to the App Store this Halloween.

Mystery Math Museum features an all new town made up of 8 themed museums and an entirely new cast of quirky characters to collect for your gallery.

And...we've added division to the math practice options.

Get a sneak peek here:

Mystery Math Museum

Mystery Math Town In USA Today

The vertical line represents the USA Today story - up to #115 in all iPad apps today!

We arrived at work this morning to find Mystery Math Town surging in sales and rising up the charts, which got us thinking that someone probably said something nice about the app.

A quick search turned up a USA Today story, "Math apps turn learning into a fun game for kids," that was posted yesterday.

We don't usually see a big spike from news but this one seems to have given us a lift.

Thanks USA Today!

App Store Kids Category Rankings

Photo was edited to show all featured apps without scrolling or tapping

Here's our quick scoop on the new App Store Kids category with a side dish of app sibling rivalry.

We have four apps currently featured in the Kids category: Marble Math and Marble Math Junior, Mystery Math Town, and Alien Buddies.

Needless to say, it's been quite a lift for us.
Sales are up 200-300% since the category launched last week.

Here's what Marble Math Junior looked like on the charts the day before iOS 7 dropped:

And here's what Junior's rankings look like today:

It's interesting to note our apps show nearly identical rankings in both the Education and Kids categories.

Of our four featured apps, Marble Math Junior is the only one to appear above the fold on the front page of the Kids category and that really helps. We know any amount of scrolling or tapping to find things will cost you sales.

Junior's older sibling, Marble Math, can actually be found on the front page of the App Store (all apps) but you have to scroll down and across to find it at the bottom of the page under Kids Apps & Games.

We're expecting to see the features rotate this week as they do in the Education category but who knows what Apple has up their sleeve?

Stay tuned...

App Icon Showdown - (A New App From Artgig Apps)

iOS 7 arrives today and soon we'll see shiny new and colorful iPhones hitting the streets.

We've been busy testing our apps on the new platform and prepping for the new Kids App category, and I'm pleased to report that our apps are iOS 7 ready.

(Pause for applause)

But that's not all.

I have even bigger news to share this morning.

We've been busy making the sequel to our best selling education app.

If you like Mystery Math Town...

You're really going to like Mystery Math Museum.

It's scheduled to launch next month for iPad.

But first we have to pick the all important app icon.

We've narrowed the design to two options.

Which icon do you like best - the Artist or the Queen?

Summer App Promo Results - In Pictures

Mystery Math Town for iPhone in Toca territory - Education Top 10 Free Apps

We'd like to thank everyone who helped to spread the word about our Mystery Math Town for iPhone app giveaway on Friday 6/28.

We let the sale run into Saturday morning to make sure everyone had a chance to download the game.

And the evidence suggests that making your app free for a day continues to be a good way to get the attention of new users.

We're happy to report Mystery Math Town for iPhone was downloaded to over 7,000 devices during the promotion.

That's a lot of fireflies.

Here's what the promo looks like in pictures:

Twitter link clicks peaked the day of the promo

Facebook activity - over 6,000 people talking about the promo (if you believe anything Facebook says)

Blog activity/views peaked the day before the promo

appFigures paid sales - positive trend, even better after the promo

appFigures units downloaded

Get Mystery Math Town for your iPhone - FREE Today!

You say you haven't downloaded Mystery Math Town for your iPhone yet?

Well, we're making it real easy today.

So why don't you mosey on over to the App Store and get yourself a free educational app to keep those math skills sharp this summer.

The Guardian even named it one of the Best 50 Kids Apps of 2013.

Go get it, and tell your friends.

Don't worry, there's plenty to go around.

Mystery Math Town for iPhone - Free Today Only

A Summer App Celebration!

Schools out for the summer!

Now how can we entice you to download our apps?

As makers of educational games, we've come to expect slower overall app sales and fewer spikes resulting from schools who take advantage of Apple's volume purchase program.

Typically, the app dog days languish well into July, like a long summer's nap.

But the arrival of August breathes new life into the educational category as the Back to School buzz rises, reaching a crescendo louder than the song of the 17 year cicadas, in a September app downloading frenzy.

Ahhhhh - summer.

Let's celebrate now.

We've got something special planned for you next week...

See you Friday, June 28th.

WARNING - App Marketing Misstep

We've been feeling good about our educational app, Mystery Math Town, since we launched the game in April.

The app debuted as our best yet, easily eclipsing the previous successes of our Marble Math and Alien Buddies apps. Mystery Math Town was picked by Apple as a featured iPad Education New and Noteworthy selection and it even spent some time on the front page of the iPad App Store. We also received an outpouring of critical praise and user feedback, telling us how much people enjoy playing the game. But amongst the positive buzz and back-patting, there was a small but very vocal group of iPhone users who felt slighted - because we'd released Mystery Math Town for iPad only.

When we next gathered around our developers round table to plot our app updates, we quickly decided to fast track development of an iPhone version of Mystery Math Town. It seemed like a no-brainer to create a separate iPhone app for a number of reasons:

1. It would satisfy a clear market need - we knew users wanted the app for iPhone.
2. It would allow us to test the performance of an iPhone app in the App Store. To this point, our apps have all been universal (iPad and iPhone) or iPad-only. Apple only gives you combined sales in reports so there is no clear way to separate iPad and iPhone sales for universal apps.
3. We already had a successful marketing campaign in place for the iPad launch and we could repurpose some of those materials for iPhone.
4. People already love the iPad game!

It was an easy decision. We immediately defined the work we needed to do, which mainly required a re-thinking of the UI to take advantage of the phone screen real estate at different sizes. Once we settled on the adjustments to ensure a good user experience on the phone, it took about 70 hours in total design and programming time to make the changes.

We released Mystery Math Town for iPhone last week on Wednesday June 3rd for $1.99.

To date it has been downloaded 38 times, selling an average of 5 apps/day and earning a whopping $40.89 in total sales. That doesn't even cover a single hour of our development time.

Let me be clear, we never expected to repeat the success of releasing a brand new app. We also know that iPhone sales are significantly lower than iPad sales in the education space.

Sure, the timing isn't great. It's the end of the school year and there isn't exactly a frenzy of educational app purchases in June...or July for that matter.

We've worked hard to cultivate our Artgig Apps brand and we have a pretty loyal following of educators, parents and app reviewers who know we produce quality games. Our family of apps consistently rank in the Top 5% of all iPad apps in the App Store Education category.

I would think on the strength of the family alone, we'd be selling more than 5 apps a day.

But in order for the concept of App Store cross promotion to work, people have to see that your apps are related.

And, in the case of Mystery Math Town for iPhone, we've learned a very hard lesson.

Apple does NOT consider Mystery Math Town for iPhone to be related to any of our family of apps, because we have not produced any other iPhone-only apps. Actually, that's not entirely true. If you're looking at Mystery Math Town for iPhone in the App Store, and you search under "Related," you'll find exactly what you'd expect - more apps, like Marble Math, that you can play on your iPhone by the same developer (us!).

But our primary challenge with a new release isn't helping users to find other apps we've produced. The big challenge is helping users to find the new release (i.e. Mystery Math Town for iPhone).

In the App Store ecosystem not all family members are so sunny when speaking of their relatives. In fact, some of them flat out refuse to say a single word about the family.

If you're looking at the Marble Math App Store listing on your phone, and you say to yourself, "let me see what else these brilliant developers have produced" and you naturally select "Related" to peruse the other apps you might consider purchasing, Apple has apparently made the decision to exclude Mystery Math Town for iPhone, because it is an iPhone-only app, and you were looking at a universal app, so that must be all you are interested in.

Ouch.

That's where we stumbled and sprained our app marketing muscles.

It's pretty incredible to me that in the vast sea of the App Store, Apple is actively squashing the idea of cross promotion.

But there you have it.
The screenshots do not lie.

If you're considering developing an iPhone-only app - you might want to think twice.
Unless you're prepared to produce iPhone-only versions of your other apps, you'll miss out on one of the few opportunities available for app cross promotion.

This PSA is brought to you by Artgig Apps.

Mystery Math Town for iPhone is Available Today!

iPhone users spoke and we listened!

We’re pleased to announce the release of our hit educational app, Mystery Math Town, as a separate version designed for iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can download Mystery Math Town for iPhone today on the App Store at an introductory price of only $1.99.

It’s the perfect game to avoid the dreaded summer brain drain!

Mystery Math Town for iPhone

Mystery Math Town for iPhone Arrives Next Week!

Yes, all you iPhone and iPod Touch users - we heard you.

Mystery Math for iPhone Available June 5th

Mystery Math Town for iPhone Spotted!

Don't worry, the numbers are not reversed in the game!

I know, we've been unusually quiet since launching our Mystery Math Town app over a month ago. Let me just say, the overwhelming response from thousands of iPad users all over the world has been fantastic. And we thank you for downloading the game.

There is however a segment of the iOS market who is feeling somewhat neglected - iPhone users we've heard your cries and for that, we apologize.

Today, I'm breaking the silence to offer you a sneak peek at something we made just for you. This picture was snapped last week at Artgig headquarters.

To all the iPhone and iPod touch users asking us when Mystery Math Town will be available for you, we finally have an answer...

Real soon.

Building a House in Mystery Math Town [video]

We are absolutely thrilled by the fantastic response to our New and Noteworthy Mystery Math Town app, and we’d like to take this moment to thank you for your support.

As a small token of gratitude, we thought you might appreciate this exclusive behind the scenes developer video, demonstrating our custom house editor.

We built the editor to make it easy for our designers to construct houses and arrange rooms, in Mystery Math Town. The simple drag and drop interface allows for quick and easy testing of configurations using art we created for doors, windows and passages, and objects like firefly jars, numbers and other goodies.

As one reviewer put it, "no sane architect would actually design a floor plan that appears in any of these houses, but that's part of the fun!"

Indeed.

Thanks for playing Mystery Math Town.