Fourteen

Fourteen is a re-release of Magiecom's 14 Puzzle under US label. It went into review the same day update to HexLines went in, i.e. Dec 8th. Reviewing brand new application took a bit longer then reviewing an update. Still Fourteen review took just 9 days (as opposed to 45+ days from Canadian side).

14 Puzzle FREE

Since iPhone applications were not selling past initial two weeks I decided to test different route - release apps for FREE, bug users with advertisement and provide in-app purchase to turn advertisement off. This is how 14 Puzzle FREE came about and was submitted on Dec. 08, 2009. At that time Apple was clearing up backlog and approving applications in hundreds after just a week in review, so on Wed Dec 16, 2009 14 Puzzle FREE went live.

Surprisingly enough, people do click on the ads and the first week 14 Puzzle FREE averaged about 10 clicks and $0.6 a day in ad sales on AdMob and 5 clicks and $0.4 a day in ad sales on Quattro, or $1 a day overall give or take. Around Christmas clicky picked up and in two weeks 14 Puzzle FREE sold $33 worth of ads clearing 600 and 1833 downloads. Out of those 2435 downloads, 4 people made in app activation by year end, making it 0.16% "click-thru" or way worse then 5+% CTR on AdMob.

14 Puzzle (competition edition)

On Oct 15, 2009 Apple permitted in App purchases for free applications. Next day, i.e. Oct 16, 2009 I've submitted in-app purchase activation for "competition edition" of 14 Puzzle. 3 weeks later on Nov. 4th 2009 Apple send an email apologizing that in 3 weeks they didn't have time to look at my applications. In-app purchase receipts are logged on my server, so I could see when Apple is testing. Clearly around late Oct. - early Nov. Apple didn't have means to test in-app purchases, so they let some (early) applications in without testing and blocked review of the most. 14 Puzzle (competition edition) fate was to be blocked and be "blanket rejected" with other totally unrelated apps on Nov. 19, 2009.

After coming to their senses Apple finally let application in on Dec. 8, 2009 making 14 Puzzle (competition edition) the winner in "Magiecom app longest in the review" contest at 53 days in review.

Clearly word FREE is a key for freeloaders. Unlike 14 Puzzle FREE that cleared 602 and 1833 downloads in the first two weeks, 14 Puzzle competition edition being identical application did just 379 and 157 downloads before dropping to average 100/week for free application.

14 Puzzle 1.2

To test "release date hack" I released an update to 14 Puzzle early October 2009 (Oct. 15?) that got approved on Oct. 27, 2009. Luck would have it that right around the end of October 2009, Apple closed "release date loophole" that apparently everybody but me were using.

14 Puzzle 1.1

On Mar 22 14 Puzzle received first update mainly to be up to date with source tree. The app was buried so the update was pointless.

14 Puzzle

14 Puzzle was the first challenging puzzle game that came out from playing with different boards. Unlike 18 Puzzle that turned out to be simpler then classic Fifteen, triangular board made Fourteen a lot more challenging. Quick hack to make triangular board however made it hard to move pieces.

The app was approved on Oct 21, 2008.