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Why Millipede is moving Bullistic Unleashed towards free-to-play

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There's enormous pressure for smartphone games developers to move their games towards the free-to-play model in the hopes of enticing a much, much greater audience into purchasing currency or items in-game. Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride are two leading examples of titles that have enjoyed incredible success when they flipped over towards the free-to-play model from initially charging a set price.

Inspired by Halfbrick Studios' Jetpack Joyride and driven by the unfortunately low number of sales for their very polished physics-based puzzler game, Bullistic Unleashed, Melbourne-based Millipede Creative Development have decided to take Bullistic Unleashed in a drastic new direction for an upcoming update.

In a blog post, Wil Monte (director and owner of Millipede Creative Development), describes their passion for Bullistic Unleashed and their big plan on making it an enjoyable free-to-play experience with in-game currency which can be earned while playing or purchasable with real money. What helped cement the decision was the incredible response of putting Bullistic Unleashed free for a week on the App Store...

(Wil) The price of Bullistic has proven to be a huge barrier to people downloading and enjoying our game. How do we know this? Up to June 26th, as a paid game, featured on the App Store in Australia and NZ and with great reviews all over the world, Bullistic was downloaded only 2700 times. When we made the game free for a week, it was downloaded 140,000 times! Since the price has been put back up, we’ve moved barely 1000 more units. Moving the game to a free-to-play model is what we need to do.

Millipede are overhauling a lot of the game by making it more challenge driven and encouraging players to return to levels to improve on past attempts. The big update is expected to land on the App Store on October 25, and Millepede are inviting Bullistic Unleashed players and fans for feedback and discussion on the changes at Facebook here.

For the entire blog entry by Wil, please click on the following link...