The latest articles on DEV Community by Guilherme Carvalho (@guizeras). https://dev.to/guizeras https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4055583%2F4ef0f2f7-8eff-491f-9bbd-607b1f2887fd.png https://dev.to/guizeras en Guilherme Carvalho Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:06:29 +0000 https://dev.to/guizeras/what-i-learned-launching-my-color-perception-game-as-a-solo-dev-aso-edition-3e35 https://dev.to/guizeras/what-i-learned-launching-my-color-perception-game-as-a-solo-dev-aso-edition-3e35 <p>I just launched <strong>Chroma Quest</strong>, a casual color-perception game for Android, as a solo dev. The code was honestly the easy part — here is what actually moved the needle, so you can skip my mistakes.</p> <h2> The game in one paragraph </h2> <p>You have to find the exact shade among nearly identical tones before the timer runs out. There is a 12-round Quest mode, a camera mode that builds color challenges from any photo you take, and local multiplayer via QR code. Free, offline, no account: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guizeapps.chromaquest" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chroma Quest on Google Play</a>.</p> <h2> Lesson 1: Google review is not the bottleneck — your store listing is </h2> <p>The app got approved without drama. What I discovered later is that the store listing (title, short description, tags) matters more for search ranking than anything inside the APK.</p> <p>A detail almost nobody mentions: <strong>the default language of your listing defines your base market.</strong> Mine was silently set to en-IN (English - India) because that was the Console default. If you target a global audience, you probably want en-US as your default and proper localizations on top.</p> <h2> Lesson 2: wrong tags put you in the wrong shelf </h2> <p>I had tagged the game with "Coloring" (as in coloring books) for a color <em>matching</em> game. Play Store uses tags to build your "similar apps" cluster — so the algorithm was comparing me with drawing apps for kids. Fixing the tags (Puzzle, Casual, Hypercasual) changes who sees you.</p> <h2> Lesson 3: early ratings multiply everything else </h2> <p>A listing with no stars converts a fraction of the normal rate, no matter how good your screenshots are. The native In-App Review API, triggered at a "victory moment" (not at app start!), is the highest ROI feature you can ship in week one.</p> <h2> Lesson 4: sell the challenge, not the app </h2> <p>For short-form video marketing, keyword research showed "eye test" and "vision challenge" massively outperform "mobile game" as hooks. Nobody searches for your game — they search for a challenge. Your game is the answer.</p> <p>If you want to see the result (and tell me where the difficulty curve breaks — testers say level 8+), it is free: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guizeapps.chromaquest" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chroma Quest — Google Play</a></p> <p>Happy to answer anything about the launch process in the comments!</p> android gamedev mobile sideprojects