What an adventure I’ve had.
It’s been an amazing experience and I have learnt (and still am learning) so much from it.
Well, where to begin? Let me see, I haven’t written a post since my launch day, so we can start there. Thursday 6th December, I went to school with a whole load of flyers to give out to all my friends and colleagues at school, before going in Douglas to do a presentation to around 30 “influential business guests” as I heard on the radio. The room, sorry – “large business suite” – at my Dad’s hotel was almost full, and I had a few press there too, which was awesome. I spoke for about 10 minutes about my game with a bit of background info, and the reception I got from everyone was fantastic. Everyone said I spoke well and were very impressed with my idea and agreed with me about the potential it has. The press included Manx Radio, the Southern Chronicle and Isle of Man Newspapers, who managed to get some wonderfully embarrassing pictures of myself after my scary pitch… here’s the best one:
The next day I actually went to Manchester to visit the Bentley factory on a school Business Studies trip, and in the afternoon we had some free time in the Trafford Centre. I took advantage of this, seeing as I had already done all the Christmas shopping I needed to do online, and gave out flyers for Save Gloop to the passing trade. Let me tell you now, you really get a feel for how difficult and awkward it is to try and get shoppers to stop, listen to you and take a flyer – just because BBC1 always manage to make it look impossible on Young Apprentice (you’d think in order to make good TV), but in-fact it’s just as hard in real life! Nevertheless, a fair few people did take a flyer, and I even saw people take a flyer, search it on the App Store and download it there and then, which was quite amazing to see.
Within two days, I’d already had a great response on the app’s actual App Store page – I had about 10 reviews all giving 4 and 5 stars with positive feedback/reviews to go with them. Also, on a linked in post, some guys gave me some fantastic feedback. Some that caught my eye from both include:
“Something a bit different which is refreshing to see”
“Really addictive like a newer version of doodle jump except it’s the opposite 
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“Just downloaded the game. Tell your lad he is a genius I cannot stop playing it . . . although he may need to set up a help line for angry partners and wives!”
“Very cute game. I downloaded the game on friday and my 3 girls spent the weekend playing it. They love it. Very well done.”
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Save Gloop also had a (brief, but mentionable) bit of chart success – it managed to make it to number 42 in family games on the UK store (according to App analytics site Applyzer.com). I managed to get a screenshot of it on the App Store when it was 52 late on the Thursday evening:
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I also had the amazing experience of being television interviewed for tvim (an internet tv station that covers the latest news on the Isle of Man). Here is the interview of me and my school’s principal (1:49):
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As if all this wasn’t enough, a fellow Manx person that works at IT recruitment company “Mortimer Spinks” – Faye Pressly – managed to set me up an interview with the one and only Computer Weekly, which was fantastic. You can read the interview/article here.
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The Isle of Man newspaper article was printed the other day as well, features some very… “interesting” quotes from my blog and yet another flattering picture. But oh well, any news coverage is great, right?
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Finally, radio stations that covered the launch and part of an interview with me include two local radio stations Manx Radio and 3FM.
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The tip of the iceberg? The icing on the cake? Most definitely the fantastic review I got from The iPhone App Review.com. Save Gloop! received an average of 4.5 stars in it’s review, and they had nothing to bad to say about it. Here’s a link to the review.
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So, yeah that’s pretty much an update into the world of Save Gloop… I’ll update another post in a while with sales figures etc. so keep an eye out for that.
JA
