Hello guys! I'm Dominic, the artist at Pexira (recently formed indie company). This is our second game : Tasty Bunny. (Runner / platforming)

We are wondering which way is the BEST way to monetize this game. First, I'm going to show you how it's played with this video :

- Tasty Bunny is free to play

- it's level based (not infinite) We have two areas to start with the release (jungle and desert maps), each including about 15 levels.

- The goal is to finish a level with enough speed and momentum to reach the rabbit hole before the Fox catches us. (See the timeline bar up the screen for the distance between the fox and the bunny.

We have a shop in the world map, and are wondering what is the best way to monetize this game with it. At first it was looking like this :

(using golden carrots, which are bought with real money, and cannot be found during the gameplay)

- Selling a consumable package (speed, revive, invincible bubble)

- A skin for the bunny, for each map (jungle, desert = 2 skins) these skins would add a bonus ability to the bunny, to encourage the purchase. (for example, a Leaf Bunny for the Jungle area, which would be able to double jump when its cooldown is up.)

- Extra levels to buy (maybe a package of 5 extra levels for each area)

- no ads (removing ads like interstitial)

And now we're figuring that this is a skill game. Skill / reflex. The noobs who would want to buy consumables, probably won't even play this game. So we might leave the consums out of the game to make it more of a real challenge for people who like challenges.

We are not giving any sort of bonuses (that affects gameplay) and rewards upon completing the levels, except for the classic 3 stars system. Much like oldschool platformers, the reward feel comes simply with the achievement of being able to move further, to the next level.

So our main income would be from giving them enough gameplay content (as many levels as we can give them on the release version), enough so that some of our players would be tempted to buy skins, and extra levels. (I figure, the more longevity the gameplay delivers, the most we can get out of these skins and extra levels.)

(Keep in mind that the concept of the development would be to keep creating the next areas to release later, over time, just like Candy Crush, etc.)

Now, this is when we're asking for your opinion.
Some of you have much more experience than us regarding publishing games, and it's why we would be very happy to have your input on this. How would you monetize this game type? And are we going the right way?

Thank you so much!!

Dominic

I think you're going in the right general direction, particularly with the content idea.

Extra levels, definitely. This is paying for extra real content, which almost nobody can disagree with.

Skins with special abilities, maybe. The trouble is this makes the game easier and isn't necessarily much in the way of new content. "Pay to win" is getting a lot of criticism now.

You might be better off letting them unlock entirely new characters (different species of rabbit, or even other woodland creatures), which have both advantages and disadvantages, so it changes the way the game is played. That would require more playtesting to get right for each creature, but it might be worth it.

It's something that would interest me more, anyway.

Consumables; a lot of people don't like to spend money on something they'll lose, so that's something to be considered.

Most people don't care about ads enough to pay to remove them. The question would be how well your ads are monetizing, and whether they're annoying.

If they're not annoying, hardly anybody will care.

If they're really annoying, then people may pay to remove them, but they're also probably costing you even more money by turning players away. Those factors need to be balanced against each other.

In my opinion, a casual game of this genre without social interactive (leader board, share and brag) is not that easy to well monetized, especially in my country, China. Here are my humble opinions:

1. Gambling

Due to the fact that chinese love gambling while the government doesnt allow this thing appears in the game shop, "gacha" is extremely valued by chinese developers. Even in these kind of casual games. If you have something special that players would like to approach, put it in a random "box" rather than directly sell it.

2. Fun of collection

Either skins, avatars or levels, make it collectible and satisfy those players who have a interest to gather stuff. this can boost player to embrace the "box" I just mentioned. For example, player can get red bunny, blue bunny and white bunny from the "box" simultaneously, he/she will unlock the "American bunny" (is this funny? I dont know) which runs quicker than normal bunny.

only above two idea come to me currently and hope they help a little bit.