Being a reviewer we too have to send emails like this…
If you are one of the developers unfortunate enough to receive one of these emails from us, chances are our email wasn’t the first.
If you are wondering just why your app is getting rejected, here’s what is more than likely the problem.
- Graphics
- Ad’s
- Difficulty
- Originality
Graphics
The first thing we see before downloading your app are its graphics. A lot of the time the apps submitted are very new, meaning there are often no user ratings, nor reviews, so the only thing we really have to base our first impressions on are the app icon, and screen shots.
If your app doesn’t look crisp and neat to us, our users will likely feel the same way, and so we won’t review your app.
Ad’s
Most new games have ads, and users expect to have to watch a few in order to play, but sometimes some developers can get a little carried away…
Apps where the number of ads displayed is insane, are rejected almost instantly.
One game we once downloaded, looked and felt awesome. We would have reviewed it if it weren’t for the fact that users had to watch an ad every time they started a new run. This was extremely frustrating since some runs lasted as little as 5 seconds, making the time you spent watching ads longer than the time you actually got to spend playing the game…
Difficulty
Probably best summarised by Norman Rozental the creator of Rise Above, in his interview with us. Some developers can really get carried away with the difficulty of their app.
The hardest problem funnily enough was deciding how difficult to make the game play when the game starts. I probably spent a full day tweaking how fast the walls came down when the game started and when they started to become closer together! You see, I had played the game so often that I became an expert at it. I needed to find the right balance of not too hard and not too easy. It’s hard when you become an expert at your own game. There is a danger of making a game too hard for everybody else!
If the only person who can properly play your game is you, the developer, there is not much chance of it getting a review.
Originality
Lastly comes originality. Originality and getting reviews don’t actually have all that much in common. Often we will know exactly whose app you are copying, and will often have already reviewed the the original on our site. Even so, as long as your app is better, or fits a need the original doesn’t, we will often review your app.
The reason we choose not to review unoriginal apps is mostly because your app is worse than the original. If your app is the same or worse than the original, the chances of your app getting a review are slim. Making a copy is alright, just so long as you have enough originality to make it interesting.
Our conclusion
If while reading this you felt a little stab somewhere. That is probably the reason your app was rejected. A lot of the time the fixes to these problems are easy. If it’s graphics, find or make some better sprites. If it’s ad’s, maybe you could lessen their intensity.
If you’ve tried us once and failed, please don’t give up. Tweak your app, and send it in again.
As long as you continue to tweak and better your app, we will continue to check it out.