Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game

Question

I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game.

For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient.

I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

Answer 1

I'm not an Android developer, but I guess you could do two things:

Actively bring the user to your application, then inform them of the new features when they open the app.

1. You could do this with push notifications
2. or you could also try to catch their eye by changing the app's icon (maybe adding a "new levels!" banner on it, or shorten it to "new!".

When inside the app, keep the user motivated to play until they reach the new content.

1. Does your game have a feature where the player has a limited number of hints? Try giving them a few "hint points" every day the open the game, scaling them the longer they chain this together. Don't break the chain completely if they don't log in though, maybe revert to the previous' day scaling (so if the fourth day they had 4xhint points, and they skip a day, turn them back to 3x, or if they skip two to 2x, and so on).
2. Is your game based on sets of levels, like Cut the Rope? You could design a set that is only unlocked if the player gets a 10x bonus (rules of the previous point apply) and plays at least one or two rounds each day.
3. Simply make the content immediately accessible, as long as it does not rely on knowledge acquired on other parts of the game not immediately available to the player (as you run the risk of them not knowing what something does simply because they were not taught). If such elements are present, you could include a simple tutorial.

Hope this helps :)