IAPs or Paid?

September 24, 2022

I’ve been doing some thinking over the past few months on whether or not Wildwood should be a paid app.

Since its release in 2019, the game has been free. This year I experimented making it $0.99 for a few months to see what kind of response I would get. Spoiler alert: it got very little traction. And understandably so. I had recently made some pretty big changes to the app that I thought warranted a paid price (potentially), but the reality is that unless you’re an established developer, or have a completed game with lots of content, it can be hard to break into the paid scene. My game is still very simple and even though I’ve put hundreds of hours into it over the years, I think I’m outside of the realm of paid games.

I would one day like to offset the cost of the Apple Developer Program ($99/year), so I am considering doing some kind of in-app purchase to help me pay for that and keep the game up and running. Right now, I’m toying with the idea of adding premium cosmetics to the game that players could purchase to help support development. I would never do any kind of pay to win thing.

I have a few more years of updates planned outside of all this, and I really love learning game design, programming and all the little things it takes to make something fun to play. Thank you to everyone who’s enjoyed playing it! It means so much to me that I can create something that others can enjoy.