FourPlay – Ugly or Obscure?

Design Iteration, a  North Carolina based iPhone App publisher, released a word game application about a month ago. Given the recent popularity of word games on Facebook, thoughts were that FourPlay would sell a reasonable number of copies on the App Store.  However, this has not quite been the case.  Sales of Fourplay have been low, starting off at 10 downloads per day at first and now only touching maybe 2 downloads per day.  

The gameplay is very simple.  You are trying to maximize your score by making as many two, three and four letter words as possible in two and a half minutes.  The player has 4 letter tiles to work with at any one time. 10 points are earned for a two letter word, 20 points for a three letter word, and 40 points for a four letter word.  If you exhaust the word possibilities with the letters you have, you can swap out for another letter for a price of 5 points per swap.

Take a look at the video below to see the game in action. 

There are many thoughts on why the game is not selling at the rate expected. Perhaps it is a victim of being lost within a sea of 73,000 apps. It is simply a needle in a haystack.  Or, it could be that the game board style graphics are just too old school and it does not capture the fancy of today’s word gamers.  Deep down in the gut of the development team, thoughts are that FourPlay is a solid, fun game.  The question is – “What to tweak – marketing approach, graphics, or both?”

If you have downloaded the app and tried it or just took a moment to view the video above, please drop a comment in the box below this blog with your opinions.  Hopes are that the right face lift to FourPlay may make her the prettiest girl at the dance.  Thanks for taking a moment to share your thoughts…

Tags: App, App Development, Design Iteration, Facelift, FourPlay, iPhone, Software, Software Development, Video, Word Games